The first story in a new occasional series at Local Spins revisits a landmark 1970s appearance in West Michigan by the late, great Lou Reed, who startled some fans with his graphic depiction of drug use.
The Photo That Never Made the Paper: Lou Reed ‘tying off.’ (Photo/Mark Harmel)
EDITOR’S NOTE: Some milestone concerts should never be forgotten, from ‘the band of tomorrow’ U2 playing Fountain Street Church in 1981 to a fledgling Alice Cooper shocking small lakeshore venues in the early 1970s. Vintage Gigs looks back at these historic West Michigan concerts. Today, just a few days after the first anniversary of Lou Reed’s death and a few weeks before the 40th anniversary of his Grand Valley State Colleges concert, Lansing-area writer Steve Miller — author of “Detroit Rock City” — gives us a glimpse into the Allendale debut of the “N.Y. Star.” Were you there? If so, share your memories of the show in the Comments section below.
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Grand Rapids circa 1974 was a million cultural miles away from New York’s Union Square, where The Factory birthed the Velvet Underground and its leader, Lou Reed.
Lou Reed at the Grand Valley State Colleges fieldhouse in 1974. (Photos/Mark Harmel)
If you wanted to catch a GR show and keep it local, you were going to be checking out Gordon Lightfoot, The Eagles, Santana and The Beach Boys … unless you wanted to take a little drive to Allendale, where some students were making things happen in the circular, domed fieldhouse at what was then Grand Valley State Colleges.
They brought in pre-fame Aerosmith, Sly and the Family Stone (yes, they hit stage promptly an hour late) and Frank Zappa, a step ahead of the folkies that dominated the city.
But none of them crossed the cultural divide like Reed did during a Sunday evening concert in November 1974.
Reed already was a legend at the height of his solo career, touring for his latest LP, “Sally Can’t Dance,” which had become a weird commercial success. There was no hit single, a la 1972’s “Walk on the Wild Side,” but it was a set of a sleazy R&B, balladry and bombast with an uptown haze to it that stuck in the brain’s grooves.
Reed was still singing about drugs, drag queens and derangement, much the same territory as he had in the Velvets. He had dyed his hair a golden blond and carried a meth habit that turned him into a walking stick figure, all limbs and all mouth, the man who reminded everyone more than once that “my week beats your year.”
The Dome: The old fieldhouse was closed in the late ’70s. (Photo Courtesy of GVSU Digital Collections)
Grand Rapids radio station WLAV-FM (96.9), like a bunch of radio stations across the United States, was shifting into Coolsville full time, a for-real AOR station that played album sides and nine-minute songs and tunes that were never meant for radio, but rather deep night bong-and-booze sessions.
And that meant Lou Reed deep cuts, on a good night. Imagine hearing “Kill Your Sons” on the radio. That sort of airplay piqued the interest of West Michigan rock fans.
For $5 on a Sunday night, who wouldn’t want to check out Reed, playing on a bill with Dr. John the Night Tripper, who had started to make money with his 1973 single, “Right Place Wrong Time”?
NEARLY A FULL HOUSE FOR THE PERFORMANCE OF ‘HEROIN’
It was pretty much a full house, says Mark Harmel, then a 20-year-old sophomore at Thomas Jefferson College, who was assigned to shoot the show for the Grand Valley student newspaper, the Lanthorn.
“These were the days when you could get in there and shoot the whole show, it wasn’t just three songs,” Harmel says. “And a lot of the time, I was the only photographer there.”
‘Walk on the Wild Side’: Lou Reed on the front page of the Lanthorn on Nov. 21, 1974.
He turned in a number of shots of Reed, but the paper’s editors passed on the money shot: the singer tying off with the mic cord and miming administering himself a shot of heroin as he performed the song of the same name.
“I was shocked when he first started wrapping the cord around his arm,” says Harmel, who shot for The Grand Rapids Press before moving to California, where he is now a public health consultant in Los Angeles. “I mean, I was from Detroit, but it was the suburbs.”
Harmel realized later that there was little chance of the fixing shot making it into print, as it “was probably a little much for the student paper.”
A photo on the front page of the Nov. 21 Lanthorn showed Reed with something that today is considered by the lifestyle police just as evil as junk: a cigarette.
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From Grand Valley student and walking music encyclopedia Steve Aldrich: “Was not there, but had Karate class the next morning in the dome. If I’m thinking of the right show, Dr. John opened, still in his Gris-Gris phase, we had to sweep up the glitter, because we couldn’t get any footing.”
I was setting in the front row with a super 8 movie camera and a roll of film … so a bit of documentation was in store! Excellent concert with a crack band and his drug induced theatrics!
I saw the same show in Toledo a couple of weeks before. Even did the poster for it (see website, scroll down). Lou was jacked-to-the-gills on god knows what. The band did the Sweet Jane intro and Lou appeared, seemingly floating like a ghost albeit with a handler at each elbow, at the rear of the stage. For some reason the overhead lights had been left on at the opposite end of the basketball fieldhouse and as soon as Lou saw that he wouldn’t go any further. He retreated. The lights were extinguished and another, different, Sweet Jane intro was employed to bring the deranged, meth-head out. It was my first time seeing Lou. I saw him 7-8 times in subsequent years and not one of those nights didn’t have a show stopping incident of some sort.
Mr. Aldrich is right — Dr. John was included in the Lanthorn ad. What an amazing show that must have been. I’m a sucker for that era Lou and that era Dr. John.
The inclusion of Dr. John at the show IS mentioned in the article.
What a trip. My daughter forwarded this story to me simply because as much as she’s heard me talk about Lou over the years, she was sure that I must have been there that night and I was. Right in the front row – and I have the pictures to prove it. I was taking a lot of concert photos in those days, but that night was one of the most memorable. I have a picture with Lou standing right over the top of me looking like he was going to bust my head wide open with his microphone stand. And yes, I’ve got photos of Dr. John as well (along with the glitter shooting mortars). Believe me, having him open that night sounded as weird to us back then as it does know. Rest in Peace Lou. We miss you and if there’s any justice in this damned world we’ll be inducting you into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame again this year.
Here is the poster richard kelley references in his comment above: http://pizzadontgobad.blogspot.com/2010/11/11274-lou-reed-hall-and-oates.html
Thanks for posting this. I was backstage with Dr John and Lou…he really was shooting up…and drinking Johnny Walker right out of the bottle. We literally carryed him up to the stage. One of the highlights of my brief gvsc career. I was the first on air jock at WSRX..that’s how I got to be backstagee.