Talented Eggs and Lou Reed's Kidney

Two uncomfortable truths I’ve discovered this week: that Lou Reed is apparently one gnarly old arsehole and that you can never find a woman a strong arm and calm nerves when you need one.

Picking up the newspaper from virtual stoop this morning, I noticed that last night was the finale of ‘Britain’s Got Talent’. I’ve now done my background research on Youtube and watched the highlight of the evening as an imposter leapt to the front of the stage and pelted Simon Cowell with eggs. Unfortunately, the excitement of the moment seemed to have affected the poor girl’s aim. Months of throwing lead-filled coconuts clearly didn’t pay off as she repeatedly missed her target. However, as memorable moments go it was certainly one of the better things to come out of that buzzard of a show in a very long time.

It did get me thinking about Lou Reed. In an article this week, journalists reflected on the worst interviews they’ve ever conduction and Lou Reed, it seems, has something of a legendary reputation for being truculent, rude, and downright offensive to his interviewers. I’ve also read of instances when fans have approached him in coffee shops only to receive a snarl in exchange for their good wishes.

I’ve been a big Lou Reed fan for a very long time, though I’ve also had to dodge the odd egg he’s thrown my way. His recent album, ‘Lulu’, made with Metallica was brave, experimental, and unfortunately utterly unlistenable. In fact, in discovering his music, the only egg I’ve had to dodge that had a more stinking yolk was 1975’s double album (yes, double album) ‘Metal Machine Music’. I admit I’ve not heard the whole album but I defy anybody to get through the first part without needing to self-harm.



Now that Lou Reed has a new kidney, I sincerely hope it changes his attitude towards fans and journalists who have only ever wished him well. But if it doesn’t, then we’re hardly any worse off. Reed’s last truly great album was ‘Songs for Drella’ (1990) or ‘New York’ (1989) if we’re talking pure solo efforts. Since then, he’s spent twenty years exploring strange barren roads where his audiences have been reluctant to follow. I admire his dedication to his art even if I think there’s a sadistic streak to any artist who enjoys trying to out intellectualise (or out aestheticise) their listener.

Reed’s music has always trod a thin line between musicality and atonality. He found an absolute perfect place with ‘New York’, often boasting that nothing was better than guitar, bass, and drums, only to then head back off into the avant-garde. ‘The Raven’ even had a hurdy gurdy listed in the instrument, for Christsakes! Lou Reed acoustic would, of course, be the way to go. For a man so into Tai Chi, I would have thought he would understand the concept of minimalized effort for maximum result. Experimentation can be a kind of artistic impotence – indeed, it is often used when artists feel stuck and unproductive. I don’t personally hold the line that artists or their art must be difficult to be great but I do think that sometimes it helps fill in the gaps when the talent is lacking.

It helps in the way that our friend the egg thrower showed that if you can’t sing, write, dance, or otherwise perform, then you can still be artistic if you are simply spontaneous, liberated from the rules of the form, and indistinguishable from a wild-eyed lunatic. [Since I wrote that line, I've discovered that the egg thrower is a BAFTA-nominated viola player, which makes her actions even more impressive since they express something about the frustrations of true musicians in an age dedicated to superficiality.] Had I been voting for ‘Britain’s Got Talent’, the egg thrower would have got my vote [This is doubly true give the new revelation]. There was something crass about what she did but at the same time she revealed a more important truth about life than any of the bland acts that made the final. The same is true about Lou Reed, even at his difficult moments. He lives it how he sees it. I understand the vision and I think I understand the man even if I don’t think I would want to meet him.

Britain's Got Talent

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Auditions Begin For 'Britain's Got Talent'

It’s the show that critics accuse of exploiting vulnerable members of society but the family of its latest star are quick to point out that he’d be the first person to boast about his appearance on the new series of Britain’s Got Talent coming to ITV later this month.

Only, when the footage of last night’s audition is aired, it’s very unlikely that Harry Swollen will be able to enjoy his fifteen minutes of fame. In all likelihood, he will be in the same Level One coma he’s been under for the past eighteen months.

Swollen is but one victim of the rash of trampolining accidents that have filled hospital waiting rooms in the past twelve months. Only, for Harry, there was no hour long wait in A&E followed by a plaster cast and weeks spent preventing his wife’s slow brother Verne from covering his leg with semi-pornographic doodles. His trampolining accident threw him through a second floor bathroom window where he cracked his head on the bidet before momentum carried him out onto the landing and down the stairs. He has been unconscious ever since.

‘We’ve certainly been through some dark times,’ admits his wife, ‘but we have to keep going and look forward to some happier days for the children’s sake.’

Those happier days are the work of amateur puppeteer Maxwell Higginbottom and the story of Harry Swollen’s success is really the story of how the two men came together and started to make dreams happen.

The 2010 series of Britain’s Got Talent holds bad memories for Higginbottom. Unable to proceed past the qualifying round, he failed to win over the judges with his five minute shadow theatre of Polish folk tales performed to Stravinsky. It was the kind of disappointment that might have ruined a less determined man but Yorkshire-born Higginbottom admits that he can be stubborn. ‘Northern grit we call it,’ he says from his workshop in Halifax. ‘I just had to go back to the basics and reassess where I went wrong. Turns out I was missing the X factor.’

He found that X factor being fed intravenously two hundred miles away in a hospital in Hillingdon. After reading of the story of Swollen’s accident, he approached the family and proposed that he could turn their grief into laughter by reanimating their husband and father via two lengths of sold three by two for the purposes of song and dance.

‘It’s remarkable what he can make Harry do,’ explained Hilda Swollen as she washes down her husband ahead of a candid photo session with a national newspaper. ‘The first time I saw Maxwell at work, it was just like Harry had woken up and was eager to get down to the Labour club. He always loved to dance, did Harry, though I think he’d surprised to discover how good he’s suddenly become at tap.’

Hilda and the family have sworn to keep the result of the audition a secret until the day of broadcast but Higginbottom has dropped a few clues as to how it went.

‘Let’s just say that we’re keeping Harry’s bikini line well waxed and we’re putting him through twice daily stretching sessions to help make him more supple. I want to see Harry finish a dance with the splits. It’s hard work on my wrists but if we can work the right amount of slack into his groin I think it could be the kind of performance to win over the hearts of a nation.’

That news is certain to please Swollen’s growing number of fans who believe the coma patient might become this year’s Susan Boyle. ‘Where SuBo led, HaSwoI can follow,’ says family friend, Jimmy Pool, who is now acting as Swollen’s manager. ‘This time next year, we expect Harry to be conquering America, assuming, that is, that we can get him through customs as hand luggage.’