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Lou Reed - Magic and Loss - The Summation

Lou Reed - Magic and Loss - The Summation Lyrics and Youtube Music Videos

Album: Magic and Loss
Released: 1992

Magic and Loss - The Summation Lyrics

When you pass through the fire, you pass through humble
you pass through a maze of self doubt
When you pass through humble, the lights can blind you
some people never figure that out

You pass through arrogance, you pass through hurt
you pass through an ever present past
And it's best not to wait for luck to save you
pass through the fire to the light

Pass through the fire to the light
pass through the fire to the light
It's best not to wait for luck to save you
pass through the fire to the light

As you pass through the fire, your right hand waving
there are things you have to throw out
That caustic dread inside your head
will never help you out

You have to be very strong, 'cause you'll start from zero
over and over again
And as the smoke clears there's an all consuming fire
lying straight ahead

Lying straight ahead
lying straight ahead
As the smoke clears there's an all consuming fire
lying straight ahead

They say no one person can do it all
but you want to in your head
But you can't be Shakespeare and you can't be Joyce
so what is left instead

You're stuck with yourself and a rage that can hurt you
you have to start at the beginning again
And just this moment this wonderful fire
started up again

When you pass through humble, when you pass through sickly
when you pass through I'm better than you all
When you pass through anger and self deprecation
and have the strength to acknowledge it all

When the past makes you laugh and you can savor the magic
that let you survive your own war
You find that that fire is passion
and there's a door up ahead not a wall

As you pass through fire as you pass through fire
trying to remember its name
When you pass through fire licking at your lips
you cannot remain the same

And if the building's burning move towards that door
but don't put the flames out
There's a bit of magic in everything
and then some loss to even things out

Some loss to even things out
some loss to even things out
There's a bit of magic in everything
and then some loss to even things out
Writer/s: REED, LOU/RATHKE, MIKE
Publisher: Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC, SONY ATV MUSIC PUB LLC
Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind

Magic and Loss - The Summation

The Magic and Loss concept album sprung from tragedy in Reed's life. He had lost two close friends to cancer and struggled to understand the nature of life in death. By the end of the 2-disc album, closed out by the title song, he didn't find any answers, but he found a bit of hope. He told The Guardian: "At the end of Magic and Loss it's kinda: well, where do you go from here? And the thing was to try to explain well, there's magic in this life as well as loss. There is a balance, even if it's sometimes very, very difficult to see. Something terrible happens - makes no sense - but out of that years from then you might see something positive did emerge..."

This song is credited to both Reed and guitarist Mike Rathke, who also co-produced the album.

Lou Reed - Walk On The Wild Side

Lou Reed - Walk On The Wild Side Youtube Music Videos and Lyrics

Album: Transformer
Released: 1972

Walk On The Wild Side Lyrics

Holly came from Miami F.L.A.
Hitch-hiked her way across the U.S.A.
Plucked her eyebrows on the way
Shaved her legs and then he was a she
She said, hey babe, take a Walk On The Wild Side,
Said, hey honey, take a walk on the wild side.

Candy came from out on the island,
In the backroom she was everybody's darling,
But she never lost her head
Even when she was giving head
She sayes, hey baby, take a walk on the wild side
Said, hey babe, take a walk on the wild side
And the colored girls go,

Doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo
Doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo
Doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo
Doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo
Doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo
Doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo
Doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo

Little Joe never once gave it away
Everybody had to pay and pay
A hustle here and a hustle there
New York City is the place where they said:
Hey babe, take a walk on the wild side
I said hey Joe, take a walk on the wild side

Sugar Plum Fairy came and hit the streets
Lookin' for soul food and a place to eat
Went to the Apollo
You should have seen him go, go, go
They said, hey Sugar, take a walk on the wild side
I said, hey babe, take a walk on the wild side, alright, huh

Jackie is just speeding away
Thought she was James Dean for a day
Then I guess she had to crash
Valium would have helped that bash
She said, hey babe, take a walk on the wild side
I said, hey honey, take a walk on the wild side
And the colored girls say

Doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo
Doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo
Doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo
Doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo
Doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo
Doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo
Doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo doo

Writer/s: LEWIS ALLEN REED, LOU REED
Publisher: SONY ATV MUSIC PUB LLC
Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind

Walk On The Wild Side Song Chart

This song is about cross-dressers who come to New York City and become prostitutes. "Take a walk on the wild side" is what they say to potential customers. Each verse introduces a new character. There is Holly, Candy, Little Joe, Sugar Plum Fairy, and Jackie. The characters are all cronies of the infamous Andy Warhol Factory, as was Lou.

Reed had an empathy for these characters that comes through in the song, as he struggled with his sexuality for most of his life. His parents even tried to "cure" his homosexuality when he was young.

"Little Joe" refers to Joe Dallesandero, who was also one of Andy's kids in the factory. He was in several films by Warhol. Sugar Plum Fairy is the nickname of actor Joe Campbell. (thanks, Jamie - New Orleans, LA; Laura - New York, NY)

"Holly," "Candy," and "Jackie" are based on Holly Woodlawn, Candy Darling, and Jackie Curtis. They are all real drag queens who appeared in Warhol's 1972 movie Women In Revolt. Woodlawn also appeared in Warhol's 1970 movie Trash, and Curtis was in Warhol's 1968 movie Flesh.

Said Reed: "I always thought it would be kind of fun to introduce people to characters they maybe hadn't met before, or hadn't wanted to meet."

In an interview with The Guardian published December 13, 2008, Holly Woodlawn said: "My father got a job at a hotel, so we moved from New York to Miami Beach. I was going to school, getting stones thrown at me and being beaten up by homophobic rednecks. I felt I deserved better, and I hated football and baseball. So, aged 15, I decided to get the hell out of there and ran away from home. I had $27, so hitchhiked across the USA. I did pluck my eyebrows in Georgia. It hurt! My friend Georgette was plucking them and I was screaming, but all of a sudden I had these gorgeous eyebrows and she put mascara on my eyes. We ran into some marines in Lafayette in South Carolina. They tried to attack me. I was 15 and not used to this stuff. I was sitting in a car with this marine, terrified that he was going to rape me and kill me. I said, 'I've never done this before.' He said, 'You don't wanna have sex with me?' I said it wasn't that I didn't find him attractive, I just didn't want to do it. But he was wonderful. He protected me. While Georgette was in a motel screaming and yelling with 18 marines but having a good time, he said, 'When you're with me, nothing will happen to you.' And they drove us all the way to New Jersey.

In New York I was living on the street. Then I met Jackie Curtis and Candy Darling, and they'd watch Marlene Dietrich and Greta Garbo movies at 1am. There was this club called Max's Kansas City. Jackie and Candy had just done this movie called Flesh, and they said, 'You have to meet Andy [Warhol]. He's gonna make you a superstar.'

I didn't want to be a superstar. My wig looked like yak hair. One day Jackie put on a show and I was in the chorus. I saw this bag of glitter and a jar of Vaseline, and smeared myself with it and got this boyfriend to throw the glitter on me. [Director] Paul Morrissey said, 'I don't know who she is but she's a star.' Next thing Paul's calling me up to star in a movie called Trash, and the rest is history.

One day a friend called me and said, 'Turn on the radio!' They were playing 'Walk On The Wild Side.' The funny thing is that, while I knew the Velvet Underground's music, I'd never met Lou Reed. I called him up and said, 'How do you know this stuff about me?' He said, 'Holly, you have the biggest mouth in town.' We met and we've been friends ever since."

In a 1972 interview with Disc and Music Echo, Reed described this as an "outright gay song," saying it was "from me to them, but they're carefully worded so the straights can miss out on the implications and enjoy them without being offended. I suppose though the album is going to offend some people."

This was not banned by the notoriously conservative BBC or by many US radio stations because censors did not understand phrases like "giving head." Depending on the regional US market, the song was, however, edited for what we now call political correctness. Reed leads into the female vocalists' "Doo, doo-doo" hook with the words, "And the colored girls say," but some stations played a version that replaced the phrase with, "And the girls all say."

Reed recorded this two years after leaving The Velvet Underground, a band that was very influential, but not commercially successful. Transformer was Reed's second solo album. His first album flopped, and for a while it looked like his music career was over.

David Bowie and Mick Ronson produced this track. They were big fans of Reed.

The sax solo at the end was played by Ronnie Ross, a Jazz musician who lived near Bowie in England. When Bowie was 12 years old, he wanted to learn the saxophone and begged Ross to give him lessons, which he eventually did. When they needed a sax player for this, Bowie made sure Ross was booked for the session, but didn't tell him he'd be there. Ross nailed the solo in one take and Bowie showed up to surprise his old friend.

The album version of this song runs 4:12. The single, which reached its US peak position of #16 on April 28, 1973, was edited down to 3:37 for radio play.

This came out at a time when audiences were intrigued by cross-dressing and homosexuality in music. "Glam Rock," where the performers wore feminine clothes, was big, and artists like David Bowie and Elton John were attracting fans both gay and straight.

This was a rare venture to the pop charts for Reed, who was not known for hit singles. This song provided his biggest hit, and it was his only Top 40 in the US.

The famous bass line was played by a session musician named Herbie Flowers. He was paid 17 Pounds for his work. Flowers was modest about his contribution to this and other songs. He once told Mojo writer Phil Sutcliffe about his role as a session musician, "You do the job and get your arse away. You take a £12 fee, you can't play a load of bol--cks. Wouldn't it be awful if someone came up to me on the street and congratulated me for Transformer."

Three songs on Transformer were commissioned by Andy Warhol for a Broadway musical he was planning based on Nelson Algren's novel A Walk On The Wild Side . The show was never materialized, but Reed kept the title and applied it to characters he knew from Andy Warhol's Factory to create this song. (thanks, Bertrand - Paris, France).

The female vocalists singing backup on this track were Karen Friedman, Dari Lalou and Casey Synge. In 1974, they recorded as "Thunderthighs" and had a UK hit with "Central Park Arrest."

Rap and Hip-Hop artists frequently sample this track. The most famous appropriation is by A Tribe Called Quest on their 1990 song "Can I Kick It?"

Marky Mark's second single, after "Good Vibrations," was a remake of this called "Wildside." He is now known as Mark Wahlberg and famous for movies like Boogie Nights and Rock Star.

At Live Aid in 1985 at Wembley Stadium, while U2 was playing their song "Bad," Bono improvised 2 Rolling Stones' songs and then this song into the end, changing the lyrics of "Walk On The Wild Side" to: "Holly came from Miami F.L.A., hitchhiked all the way across the USA, she could feel the satellite coming down, pretty soon she was in London town... Wembley Stadium, and all the people went, Doo-Doo-Doo-Doo-Doo." He then had the audience sing this line while he walked offstage and the band finished playing. (thanks, katie - somewhere, NJ)

Reed's musical influence extends to Third Eye Blind: they got the idea for the doot doot doot hook on their hit "Semi-Charmed Life" from this song.