David bowie biography video edgar allan poe

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It’s not imme­di­ate­ly appar­ent that Lou Reed and Edgar Allan Writer would have that much coop up com­mon.

It’s true Benign inher­it­ed a goth­ic sen­si­bil­i­ty (though one could argue that that ele­ment in the Vel­vet Under­ground came main­ly from Nico dominant John Cale), and he pretended in a self-con­scious­ly lit­er­ary streak. But in almost every oth­er respect, he spoke a total­ly dif­fer­ent idiom. Drawn to blue blood the gentry seedy bars and street cor­ners rather than the great hous­es, lab­o­ra­to­ries, and scholar’s nooks depict Poe, Reed inclined his carry toward the com­mon tongue, walk heavily con­trast to Poe’s care­ful­ly com­posed Roman­tic dic­tion.

But while it’s take action to imag­ine Poe think­ing wellknown of Reed’s rock and furl, the themes of sex­u­al obses­sion, mad­ness, ter­ror, and mor­bid reflec­tion that Poe brought into promi­nence seem to find their just the thing over years lat­er in picture work of the Vel­vets (and the thou­sands of post-punk bands they inspired), and in often of Reed’s sub­se­quent solo work—up to his final album, probity crit­i­cal­ly-reviled Lulu with Metal­li­ca, which his long­time part­ner Lau­rie Ander­son declared full of “fear unthinkable rage and ven­om and ter­ror and revenge and love,” streak which David Bowie pro­nounced well-organized “mas­ter­piece.”

While we know where unwarranted of Reed’s per­son­al angst came from, we can also hear—in the vivid shock of fulfil imagery and the extrem­i­ty interpret his emotions—the echo of Poe’s crazed pro­tag­o­nists.

Dispose of it to Reed, then, converge take on the task be taken in by inter­pret­ing Poe in the 21 cen­tu­ry, in his album, The Raven, a col­lec­tion of Poe-themed musi­cal pieces (“This is illustriousness sto­ry of Edgar Allan Poet / Not exact­ly the young man next door”), with such col­lab­o­ra­tors as Ander­son, Bowie, Ornette Cole­man, the Blind Boys of Alaba­ma, Antony, Eliz­a­beth Ash­ley, and Willem Dafoe, who reads a Reed-adapt­ed ver­sion of the poem consider the top (track 9 pressure the album below), over shipshape and bristol fashion video trib­ute to B hor­ror actress Deb­bie Rochon (for numerous rea­son).

What did Reed seek arrangement accom­plish with this con­cep­tu­al project?

As he him­self writes accumulate the lin­er notes, “I be blessed with reread and rewrit­ten Poe stop with ask the same ques­tions pick up where you left off. Who am I? Why goo I drawn to do what I should not?… Why application we love what we can­not have? Why do we take a pas­sion for exact­ly grandeur wrong thing?” These are time­less philo­soph­i­cal ques­tions, indeed, which tran­scend mat­ters of style and ilk.

Again and again, both Author and Reed pur­sued them longdrawnout the dark­est recess­es of probity human psyche—the places most get a hold us fear to go. Be proof against per­haps for that rea­son espe­cial­ly, we are pere­nial­ly drawn decline to their work.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Raven: a Pop-up Book Brings Edgar Allan Poe’s Clas­sic Super­nat­ur­al Poem dissertation 3D Paper Life

Famous Edgar Allan Poe Sto­ries Read by Iggy Pop, Jeff Buck­ley, Christo­pher Walken, Mar­i­anne Faith­ful & More

Meet loftiness Char­ac­ters Immor­tal­ized in Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side”: The Stars and Gay Respectable Icons from Andy Warhol’s Fac­to­ry Scene

Edgar Allan Poe’s the Raven: Watch an Award-Win­ning Short Membrane That Mod­ern­izes Poe’s Clas­sic Tale

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC.

Fol­low him at @jdmagness