WHAT BECOMES A LEGEND MOST:
Lou Reed's The Blue Mask

by Rob Brookman

Go ahead and pick a favorite rock and roll icon.

Don't be shy. And don't worry, it's okay to stretch the definition. Captain Beefheart has as much right to the title as Mick, Keith and company.

Got one?

Okay, now, how many of their recordings are in print? All of them? Seventy-five percent?

Chances are, you can find more CDs on the shelves from your legend of choice than I can from mine. In fact, I'm hard pressed to think of any major rock artist - and certainly any Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee - whose recorded catalog is in worse shape than Lou Reed's.

Since going solo at the start of the 70s, Lou Reed has probably pumped out about two dozen albums, not counting best-of collections. Some of them are great, most are good, a few stink. But, thanks to the folks at RCA, Reed's record company for the majority of the 70s and 80s (he spent a bit of time at Arista and now records for Sire), you can't judge for yourself because nearly all of them are out of print in the U.S.

Sure, the balance of Reed's MIA recordings are available from the Europeans, but only for a handsome sum. But I'm not recommending anyone shell out $20 for dubious work like The Bells or Rock and Roll Heart. And really, you just shouldn't have to pay a premium for the great stuff, either. Import shopping is for die-hards, and Lou remains too interesting and too prolific an artist to be relegated to a cult just yet.

Fortunately, this month RCA is taking a small but significant step toward rectifying past wrongs with the re-release of Reed's 1982 "comeback" album, The Blue Mask. The Blue Mask proved to be a landmark for Reed, not just because it's his best solo album, but because it also turned out to be the first installment in one of the great trilogies in rock music as well as the long-overdue death of Reed the aspiring rock star. "Take the Blue Mask from my face and look me in the eye," indeed.

As great as it is, The Blue Mask is not, however, a natural choice for re-release, at least not now. Even among Reed fans the album is somewhat obscure (it's never been available on CD in the U.S., unlike some other Reed titles) and it comes to market in lieu of many of Reed's better-known titles, like Sally Can't Dance and New Sensations. As an example of its black-sheep stature, the album received scarcely a mention in "Rock and Roll Heart," the recent documentary on Reed, which instead spent several minutes fawning over one of Reed's few genuinely bad albums, 1973's Berlin.

But obscurity doesn't diminish its achievement. Coming after a string of fagged-out, imperfect albums, the juxtaposition of fury and delicacy, bitterness and redemption that define The Blue Mask almost make you believe that Reed's life really was saved by rock and roll. (Although, given the timing of the album, marriage might be a more realistic explanation.)

Like most of Reed's work afterward, The Blue Mask features not only a more Velvets-esque, guitars-bass-drums band approach, it also marks the first time since the Velvets that Reed doesn't leave the bulk of the guitar work to someone else. Seemingly informed by doo-wop and Ornette Coleman simultaneously, Reed's unstudied playing immediately unlocks a range of tones, beats and emotions missing from most of the 70s records. The Bloom to Reed's Dedalus is, of course, the sublime axeman Robert Quine, the catalyst for Reed's guitar rebirth and a later casualty of his increasing confidence as a player.

Not only is the foursquare rock and roll of The Blue Mask a welcome return to form, the album also benefits from some of Reed's most stark and visceral lyrics. The bullshit factor, always on red alert early in his solo career, falls to more than acceptable levels here. In fact, only "Women," in which Reed aggressively codifies his heterosexuality, dips into dubious territory. And on tours de force like "The Gun," ("he'll point it at your mouth/says that he'll blow your brains out") and the title track, Reed rips away his jaded street hustler persona, freely and plainly plumbing the depths of his own anger and aggression while Quine, bassman Fernando Saunders and Reed himself attack and then retreat, over and over again, until the album takes on something like a pulse.

Listening to the album afresh, The Blue Mask represents a sea change for Reed. On every album afterward, excepting maybe '86's "Mistrial" the music is both less ornamented and more exciting, and the writing is less affected. The combination of detachment and compassion that always distinguished Reed as a writer finally finds perfect balance here, and it's that balance that would eventually, in 1989, help him focus his newfound liberalism into a genuinely successful album-length diatribe on the state of the union.

The Blue Mask was followed by two other meditations on getting comfortable in your own skin, Legendary Hearts and New Sensations. As a triumvirate, the albums are easily Reed's post-VU high water mark and perhaps the most unflinching portrait of an rock artist entering middle age ever put down on tape. Perhaps RCA will get around to completing the set on CD one day for the U.S. crowd. If not, you can always count on the Europeans.