I’m glad HuffPo Religion dug up this clip of Lou Reed reading from his reinterpretation of Poe’s The Raven at the Downtown Seder during the Passover of 2004, because it contains of my favorite Lou Reed moments – A moment made all the more significant by the rocker’s death this weekend at the age of 71.
Yes, it’s nice that he’s “participating” (that is: reading his own poetry, apropos of nothing) in a Seder. And okay, he sure does look goofy in that fedora. But for me Lou Reed is at his prickly best when he explains that he re-wrote The Raven because Edgar Allan Poe “[is] Dead. He couldn’t protect himself.”
Let’s hope a new generation of wise-asses honor the cantankerous, brilliant, never-gave-a-fuck Reed by offering their interpretation of “Walk on the Wild Side” at some futuristic Passover seder, in the decades to come.
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