Pass Thru Fire: The Collected Lyrics

by Lou Reed

As the songwriter who brought plainspoken realism to rock and roll (New York Times), Lou Reed has long been considered a keen-eyed observer of the social scene. This definitive collection includes lyrics to Lous earliest work and to his most recent recording. Its brilliantly innovative interior design has brought it praise and awards.

Genres: Poetry, Music, 20th Century, New York, Anthologies

496 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2000

About the author

Lou Reed was an influential American rock singer-songwriter and guitarist. He first came to prominence as the guitarist and principal singer-songwriter of The Velvet Underground (1965-1973). The band gained little mainstream attention during their career, but in hindsight became one of the most influential of their era. As the Velvets’ principal songwriter, Reed wrote about subjects of personal experience that rarely had been examined in rock and roll, including bondage and S&M ("Venus in Furs"), transvestites ("Sister Ray" and "Candy Says"), drug culture ("Heroin" and "I'm Waiting for the Man"), and transsexuals undergoing surgery ("Lady Godiva's Operation"). As a guitarist, he was a pioneer in the use of distortion, high volume feedback, and nonstandard tunings.

Reed began a long and eclectic solo career in 1971. He had a hit the following year with "Walk on the Wild Side", though for more than a decade Reed seemed to willfully evade the mainstream commercial success its chart status offered him. One of rock's most volatile personalities, Reed's work as a solo artist has frustrated critics wishing for a return of The Velvet Underground. The most notable example is 1975's infamous double LP of recorded feedback loops, Metal Machine Music, upon which Reed later commented, "no one is supposed to be able to do a thing like that and survive." By the late 1980s, however, Reed had won wide recognition as an elder statesman of rock.

Reviews

[Dawn Lennon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Experiencing the lyrics of Lou Reed songs is akin to walking the dark and often disturbing paths of his life. Out of the darkness Reed sought freedom and transcendence; his lyrics are a glimpse of that.

Reed is a poet-musician. Words are important to him, whether he uses them randomly for effect or directly for a point. He doesn't wince at life and challenges us not to wince wither.

This collection of lyrics is beautifully arranged by album. In addition, they are presented on the page often in non-linear array. The reader begins to feel the chaos in some lyrics as they cantilever before him/her in black and white.

Needless to say, this collection is a unique reading experience. If you love verse and music and the mystery of a musician's mind, you'll find this book fascinating. In many ways, it's the story of Reed's clawing way through his life. You might want to read his biography, Transformer, too.

[Adam Howells · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is soothing salve for the passing of Lou Reed. I need not go into superlatives; the music speaks for itself. Pass Through Fire: The Collected Lyrics collects nearly everything spanning a 40+ year career of musical imaginings.

Each album's lyrics have an idiosyncratic artful appearance, from a rain-spotted Loaded by The Velvet Underground to the falling-off-the-page words from Magic and Loss. One could spend some time interpreting the appearances' connection to the words:

- Are the "tears" from Loadedmourning the final album Lou recorded with The Velvet Underground?

- Do trailing words of Magic and Loss represent Lou falling apart over the passing of close friend Doc Pomus?

- In Lou and John Cale's eulogy for Andy Warhol, Songs for Drella, each song contains boxes in which a particular word is embedded. For the song "I Believe," which details Warhol being shot by radical feminist Valerie Solanis, the each box contains Andy's given name. One box near the "stomach" is missing. Does this represent the gunshot wound?

And that's as far as I got. For the most part, the artwork seems gimmicky, but is interesting to look at and does not seriously detract from the lyrical content except in a few cases that require some minor squinting, as well two very short songs from The Velvet Underground compilation Another View which require the use of a mirror as the lyrics are printed backwards. (Get it? Another view? Hyuck, hyuck!)

Often, the lyrics are dull divorced of the music, but that is to be expected in any lyric anthology. As always, they pair gorgeously with the music and are handy when investigating some of the oft-neglected corners of Lou's discography. The Velvet Underground's lyrics for the most part are enjoyable to read sans music, as are Songs for Drella and Magic and Loss.

Also of interest are the liner notes for Metal Machine Music which are helpful if you do not wish to own an entire record of guitar feedback. The liner notes are worth the price of admission alone as Lou more-or-less claims to have invented heavy metal with this album. It also includes one of my favorite Lou Reed quotes, "My week beats your year."

Take your time with this beautiful book.

[a.g.e. montagner · Rating 5 out of 5]

“All through this, I’ve always thought that if you thought of all of it as a book then you have the Great American Novel, every record as a chapter,” he told Rolling Stone in 1987. “They’re all in chronological order. You take the whole thing, stack it and listen to it in order, there’s my Great American Novel.”

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/new...

I discovered this quote only last night, 27 october 2013.
I may have read and forgotten it — it makes so much sense it hardly needs to be stated: there's no doubt Reed's lyrics are his Great American Novel. It also makes sense, perhaps, that a scholar of anglo-american literature should revisit such a book.
Pass Through Fire collects all of his verses, published and unpublished, from the VU days to 2000's Ecstasy, in chronological order. As an epitaph of sort to the canonization of this body of work, each record is printed with a different typographical flourish: shades of gray, lenses, stains, verses that go vertical or coil upon themselves or seem to crumble, block letters that tower like skyscrapers. The Italian edition adds an appendix with translations printed in pink.

And speaking of epigraphs:

http://bbc.in/HbKmfz BBC obituary
http://rol.st/17rHPZ0 Rolling Stone obituary
http://rol.st/191FxjA Rolling Stone cover story, may 1989
http://rol.st/1a3pa21 Rolling Stone, pictures of Lou
http://bit.ly/HlMwJT Andrea Tarabbia (italiano)
http://bit.ly/17T7xSM Creem 1975, Lester Bangs & Lou Reed (italiano)

[Diann Blakely]

To continue with DaCapo's offerings for 2008, you have to be pretty damn cool to toss your collected lyrics, otherwise known as *Pass Thru Fire*, into the fray with a December pub date. At a time when traditional newspapers and even alt-weeklies, which assign titles weeks if not months in advance, assuming they cover them at all, they tend, after all, make do with end-of-the-year lists much briefer than this one, which strives for inclusiveness, and who’s to say what the reviewer’s taste will be? It helps if you’re Lou Reed, whose early combination of shock treatments, study with poet Delmore Schwartz, and Brill Building expertise resulted in some of pop/proto-punk’s greatest works stretching over three decades. Think back, just for a moment, to the deftly terrifying lyrics of “Walk on the Wild Side” and the laidback melody, punctuated with horns. Or “Femme Fatale,” or “Sweet Jane,” or any other of Reed’s signature work with the Velvet Underground. Perhaps Reed says it best himself: on a Turner Network interview back in the day when such encounters were more than promo for a forthcoming movie or album, he was asked, if he couldn’t be Lou Reed, who he’d rather be. “Well, if I couldn’t be Lou Reed,” he answered with his trademark world-weariness, “which, let’s face it, is pretty cool, I guess I’d rather be Dirty Harry.” I felt lucky when *Pass Thru Fire* arrived at my door. It made my day.









(originally published on *Swampland* as part of "Best Music Books of 2008*, now available in its entirety at http://www.diannblakely.com/newupdate...)

[Malcolm · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's nice to have them all in one place.

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Wrote about meeting him around the time this book came out in my obituary for The Millions: http://www.themillions.com/2013/11/lo...

[Gaspar Alvarez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Precioso libro objeto, y precioso por varias razones. 1. Logra el objetivo (en vida) de Lou Reed de elevar su escritura a un nivel de poesía, pudiendo configurar este libro como una antología de todos sus "poemarios" (sus discos), y que cada uno logren separarse y funcionar independientemente gracias a: 2. Su maravilloso diseño, hecho por/en conjunto con el estudio de Sagmeister. Cada poemario va con un diseño de texto distinto, convirtiendo cada parte en un objeto con vida propia que alimenta la temática y la idea de los poemas y de la unidad que se genera en cada poemario/disco. Es brutal como funciona, por ejemplo, Transformer, donde "Good night Ladies" casi es imposible de leer por el brillo de la letra en el papel negro, algo con lo que, seguro, Lou estaría muy complacido. Por detalles como estos me hace pensar en que él mismo estuvo en el proceso editorial, lo que es muy bonito de pensar. 3. La traduccion, que si bien está al pie de la pagina, no molesta a la diagramación y se logra muy bien la idea de que es, nada más ni nada menos que una traducción. Funciona bien cuando se toma ciertas libertades de idioma, no quedandose en el lugar seguro sino que jugándosela por decisiones más arriesgadas, a veces suavizando el tono de la poesía original, y a veces haciéndola cotidiana. 4. El libro realmente tiene todo lo que escribió Lou hasta Ecstasy. Falta The Raven y Lulu, que publicó después de la edición de el libro, pero bueno. De hecho, incluye los poemas hechos para Time Rocker, una obra de teatro, que son, sin dudas, de entre sus mejores textos, y que no habían sido publicados. En fin, es un hermoso libro que logra desentrañar las obsesiones y dudas del Lou poeta, mostrando todo lo que tiene, y lo que le interesaba realmente. Ei pudiera ponerle más estrellas, le pondría mil.

[Kurt · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read the updated 2nd edition, which includes The Raven. Each chapter, corresponding to a different album, is printed in a different style, which makes this book kind of an art object in itself, but unfortunately the lyrics are sometimes obscured or downright illegible (see Transformer, for example).
I was amused to discover that I had been mistaken for decades: in Wild Child from the 1st solo album, Lou wasn't singing "Always back to the rain", but rather "Always back to Lorainne" - ha!
One error (intentional?): the book has "Last Great American Whale" from "New York" ending with the word "sick" while in fact the lyric sheet in my copy of New York and my ears tell me it's "done".

[Giuliano · Rating 2 out of 5]

I testi (quasi) completi di LR solista e con i VU - presentati in un layout creativo e accattivante meritano quattro, se non addirittura cinque stelle.
Il mio voto si riferisce all'edizione italiana - e in particolare alla traduzione dei testi, che in certi casi è davvero atroce. Un esempio per tutti: lo sberleffo alla fine delle note di copertina di MMM 'my week beats your year' viene tradotto con 'la mia settimana ritma (sic) il vostro anno'.

[C.J. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lou Reed is a beautiful, modern, tortured soul with an exceptional way of relaying what is going on in his wild, one-of-a-kind mind.

[Ralph Burton · Rating 3 out of 5]

I felt like it would be a war crime to give any book of lyrics that includes four Velvet Underground albums (the only ones that ever existed, you know), a lower score than three stars. I'm a massive fan of Lou Reed, and always used to get annoyed when people said things like "Lou Reed wasn't fit to wire Bowie's guitar" or "Lou Reed should shine David Bowie's shoes" or "Lou Reed licks up David Bowie's leftovers", given these folks were forgetting WHO taught WHO about music. Let's get it out of the way, Velvet Underground and Nico is the best album of all time. But nearly everything after Transformer (except maybe Berlin), is, to use a phrase Lou would admire, complete shit. I'm not even that keen on New York. I'm something of a contradiction, I contain multitudes etc., so I do agree with Bowie that Lulu was Reed's best work in years and demands another listen. If Pitchfork really wanted to be pretentious, they would have given that album laurels and garlands.

[Travis Hi. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Turns out, divorced from the music, Reed's fine lyrics can be damn moronic. This is more evidence that lyrics and poetry are not only not synonymous, but often entirely exclusive (or they should be).

[Fernanda FuzzBox · Rating 5 out of 5]

si alguien sabe donde venden ese libro, please tell me... larga historia

[J. Lopez · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent collection for those who are fascinated with Reed's lyrics. My only complaint was that the book did not contain any photos of the artist.

[Michael Hyneman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great design and typography help further push done of the best lyrics/poetry of Reed's best works.

[Clif · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's just lyrics - some good, some bad.

[Mikayla Magdziarz · Rating 5 out of 5]

beauitful

[Caitlin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great lyrics of course but the formatting of this particular collection is like a Shel Silverstein book with none of the cleverness.

[Simon Sweetman · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's been many years since reading this - was good to revisit, the best of his work still stands up (on the page almost especially) as good as it ever did/was.

[Alaska]

LOU REED!!!! THE VELVET UNDERGROUND!!!!!!