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Comment by defrost | Hacker News Reader

Who hasn't heard of the 27 club ..

Let's clear something up first, the "addiction" in the title refers to Laurie Anderson's (age 76, not dead yet) "addiction" to using the Lou Reed chatbot she created using her deceased husbands (died liver disease following cancer, aged 71) extensive archive of interviews, prose and song lyrics, etc.

She's aware it's not him, she thinks it's mostly produces silly content but is occasionally on the mark, she's been an avante guarde technologist and performance artist most of her life.

Here's the pair of them on the one track: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zG5tG1McLzk

Laurie Anderson - Zero And One (Home of the Brave 1985) : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTYEVabkoDM

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Not quite sure what you're "clearing up" there. For me, having owned every Velvet Underground release on vinyl and lost friends to the needle I'm comfortable on the subject of addiction, metaphorically or literally. Laurie Anderson is quite poetic and intelligent enough to appreciate the face of reification and commodification wrought by techno-consumerism, whether it's selling records or AI apps.

Perhaps then you can clear up what this:

> Wherever I see self-loathing and nihilism passed off as an art-form,

refers to, and how this:

> Because nothing sells quite like the spectacle of self-immolation

ties into the content linked. As it stands it appears as though you've just riffed off the word addiction in the title, which naturally leads to pointing out why it was used.

That covered, it's like what my painter friend said to me: https://youtu.be/xTlsSXNT2bg?t=203

over to you.

I think he means he's loathing and immolating himself, and we're supposed to appreciate his artistic nihilism.

Guess I'm talking about an "industry" that when they're "done" sticks a fork in the young lives it burns through for its banquet. FWIW I don't think Lou Reed ever set out to glamorise addiction. He lost a lot of good people along the way too. He wrote the reality he saw. Maybe making it to 71... there's a bit of survivor's bias. But when someone talks about "addiction", however folksy and cute their art project, they're talking about human misery and lost life, no?

Heroin is one of his best songs. What the hell are you talking about already?!?

Have you listened closely to the lyrics? The song most definitely does not glamorize heroin use. And by all accounts, Lou and the Underground were rather bemused when the media would imply that it did. Also, little known fact, Lou didn't particularly like heroin and didn't use it much at all. He was mostly a speed freak and alcoholic.

I won't claim to know what the rest of GPs point is though :)

I have. Yet its a popular and beautiful song called... Heroin. You'd be foolish if you think Lou wasn't aware that it got plenty of people into it and did have an ultimate effect of glamorizing it in some individuals' eyes. "I'm waiting for the man" is another.

By this interpretation, do we then have to take any subject that rock and roll touches as glamorization? The sound of Heroin is dirty and gritty, the lyrics ugly and honest. The few positive notes in the song "It's my life, and it's my wife," "And I feel just like Jesus' son," "And now I'm better off than dead" are hardly glamorous. They just underscore the theme of the song: allure of self-annihilation in order to escape all the ugliness around us.

People will glamorize anything that someone famous or iconic (both in Lou's case) put out into the world. That doesn't mean the artists themselves have glamorized the subject.. This would be like accusing Fight Club author Chuck Palahniuk of glamorizing incel culture and alt-right violence, when he was in fact intending to do the opposite.

Did I say Lou glamorized it? No.

That wasn't the point of my latest comment. Oh well.

And let's not be obtuse and ignore the fact that you replied to GP's claim that Lou did not intend to glamourize addiction with "Heroin was his most famous song. What the hell are you talking about already?" You haven't outright stated much of anything of substance, but your argumentative tone has invited discussion anyway so here we are.

It's literally what you wrote...

>"That doesn't mean the artists themselves have glamorized the subject.. "

>And let's not be obtuse and ignore the fact that you replied to GP's claim that Lou did not intend to glamourize addiction with "Heroin was his most famous song. What the hell are you talking about already?" You haven't outright stated much of anything of substance, but your argumentative tone has invited discussion anyway so here we are.

OP's claim? Did you just jump in on that one post? Did I quote something that led you to this conclusion?

> a popular and beautiful song

Also "Perfect Day", some might say is a lullaby to drugs.

(Can't believe some comments are just sooooooo tone deaf thanking I'm expressing dislike for these amazing artists rather than criticising the industry that feeds on them).

Heh, this appeared right after writing my other comment. I'm glad I'm not the only one.

>(Can't believe some comments are just sooooooo tone deaf thanking I'm expressing dislike for these amazing artists rather than criticising the industry that feeds on them).

Because it's an over-dramatization. Lou wrote those songs and put them out for commercial sale. No one made him. They aren't being doubly exploited in his death.

Maybe my NY music culture chops isn't so great, but how I heard it David Bowie and Andy Warhol had to drag Lou kicking into the limelight.

A recent documentary has many people around him, including his sister who he was close with, stating that he was very much motivated by and obsessed with fame. He desperately wanted to be much bigger than he ever got.

This is part of the tension that lead to Lou kicking John Cale out (experimental rhythms and screeching viola were never going to take them to the heights of rock and roll stardom) and eventual breakup of the band.

If anything, I could see Bowie and Warhol dragging Lou into the smoky, off-color limelight of the underground and alternative arts scene, away from the pop stardom he was fixated on. He certainly left Warhol behind abruptly and unceremoniously when he felt he was being pinned down. Immediately after was when the Underground produced their most poppy, mass appeal songs like Rock and Roll, Sweet Jane, Who Loves the Sun, and Oh! Sweet Nothin' (some of my personal favorites).

What I'm curious about is Perfect Day. I want to say I read him denying it being about heroin, but it just sounds too close to the feeling to me. Maybe I just see in it what I want to see; I'm not sure.

I'll admit that I haven't read any official biographies or anything, but I have picked up from several authentic (seeming) sources over the years that Lou was just not all that into heroin after some early experimentation. He was a massive alcoholic, and liked to inject speed for much of his career, but was never very big on downers.

He wrote Perfect Day as a solo artist, so this would have been long after his experimentations with heroin, based on what I've gathered 2nd and 3rd hand. I think the association is so strong due to it playing through the iconic overdose scene in Trainspotting. Lou actually wrote a lot of genuine love songs in his later days with the Underground as well as in his solo career.

It is a melancholy, bittersweet love song, but that's just Lou, not necessarily anything (directly) to do with drugs. IMO there's no reason to assume he was thinking of heroin while writing this song. The fact that it is evocative of heroin use is perhaps coincidence, perhaps something more.

> I think the association is so strong due to it playing through the iconic overdose scene in Trainspotting

See now that is interesting because I've never seen that movie, but I guess it's not just me who can see the connection after all.

I agree with you though, it definitely fits into Lou's general theme, so it could just be a coincidence after all.

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