RIP Tony Bennett

Tony left us today but he was still singing the other day at his piano and his last song was, “Because of You,” his first #1 hit.

Tony, because of you we have your songs in our heart forever. ❤ pic.twitter.com/hsOqtSdTNg

— Tony Bennett (@itstonybennett) July 21, 2023

From the New York Times :

Tony Bennett, Champion of the Great American Songbook, Is Dead at 96

From his initial success as a jazzy crooner through his generation-spanning duets, his career was remarkable for both its longevity and its consistency.

 

More on Tony at -

 https://greggchadwick.blogspot.com/2011/12/the-ghost-in-human-machine-tony.html 

Astrud Gilberto and Stan Getz - The Girl From Ipanema (1964) LIVE

From the Guardian:

"Astrud Gilberto, whose dreamy interpretation of The Girl from Ipanema became the most popular version of the song, has died aged 83.

Paul Ricci, a collaborator with Gilberto, confirmed the news on social media, writing that he had been asked to announce it by Gilberto’s son Marcelo. “She was an important part of ALL that is Brazilian music in the world and she changed many lives with her energy,” he added.

Born in 1940 in the Brazilian state of Bahia and raised in Rio de Janeiro, Astrud Weinert married musician João Gilberto in 1959. In 1963, she accompanied him on a trip to New York where he would record with jazz artist Stan Getz and fellow Brazilian bossa nova star Antônio Carlos Jobim. The session’s producer wanted an English-language singer to help The Girl from Ipanema cross over to a US audience, and Astrud – who had no previous recording experience – was the only person who could speak it."

Gregg Chadwick

City of Desires (Rio de Janeiro)

72"x96" oil on linen 2000-2008

Private Collection, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil 

 

Astrud Gilberto (1940-2023) n'y est plus. La chanteuse brésilienne qui a immortalisé plusieurs chansons de la Bossa nova, y compris La Fille d'Ipanema (Garota de Ipanema) avec Stan Getz en 1964, l'année tragique du coup d'état militaire au Brésil https://t.co/vZu6mbkWye

— Ana Lucia Araujo, PhD (@araujohistorian) June 6, 2023

Let the wild rumpus start! - Thinking of Maurice Sendak

On May 8, 2012, author, artist, illustrator, and visionary Maurice Sendak died. On that day I wrote some thoughts on his life and work. Now eleven years later I am reposting those words with some further ideas. 

“Dear Mr. Sendak,  How much does it cost to get to where the wild things are? If it is not expensive, my sister and I would like to spend the summer there.”

 -From a letter sent by an eight year old reader to Maurice Sendak

Maurice Sendak
 Where the Wild Things Are
Pen and ink and watercolor on paper  1963

Maurice Sendak was an artist in love with the world and with things that go bump in the night. Sendak looked deeply at the world around him. His vision included the visible nature of  our existence and the invisible, but no less real, world of dreams. Sendak's beautifully crafted artworks for his books began with simple pencil sketches that were then enlarged and fleshed out with pen and ink which was then layered with glowing watercolor washes. 

The finished paintings on paper reflect what Dave Eggers described in a Vanity Fair article on Sendak as the "unhinged and chiaroscuro subconscious of a child." Sendak's books and images appealed to readers of all ages. Sendak took the deep mysteries of life head-on and allowed us all to journey to where the wild things are.

 In an interview with Terry Gross in September 2011, Maurice Sendak reflected on his mortality and the transient nature of life in general:

"Yes. I'm not unhappy about becoming old. I'm not unhappy about what must be. It makes me cry only when I see my friends go before me and life is emptied. I don't believe in an afterlife, but I still fully expect to see my brother again. And it's like a dream life. I am reading a biography of Samuel Palmer, which is written by a woman in England. I can't remember her name. And it's sort of how I feel now, when he was just beginning to gain his strength as a creative man and beginning to see nature. But he believed in God, you see, and in heaven, and he believed in hell. Goodness gracious, that must have made life much easier. It's harder for us non believers.

But, you know, there's something I'm finding out as I'm aging that I am in love with the world. And I look right now, as we speak together, out my window in my studio and I see my trees and my beautiful, beautiful maples that are hundreds of years old, they're beautiful. And you see I can see how beautiful they are. I can take time to see how beautiful they are. It is a blessing to get old. It is a blessing to find the time to do the things, to read the books, to listen to the music. You know, I don't think I'm rationalizing anything. I really don't. This is all inevitable and I have no control over it."

Maurice Sendak
Outside Over There
Pen and ink and watercolor on paper 1978

We are fortunate that Maurice Sendak's love of beauty and the mystery of existence forged a unique vision that led to his magical books and images. He has been greatly missed. I like to think that there is a bit of Sendak's influence in my paintings of animals. My latest pachyderm inspired artwork "Elephant Song" carries a bit of a magical world into its painted environment.

Gregg Chadwick

Elephant Song

30"x24" oil on linen 2023

Elephant Song will be featured at at Los Angeles Zoo's Beastly Ball in May 2023.

Let the wild rumpus start!  

Portrait of Maurice Sendak by Annie Leibovitz 

More at:

Maurice Sendak, Author of Splendid Nightmares, Dies at 83

Sendak on Sendak Exhibition 

Terry Gross Interview With Maurice Sendak - September 2011

RIP Gordon Lightfoot - Canadian Railroad Trilogy

Listen to Gordon Lightfoot's “Canadian Railroad Trilogy” and pour one out for a true original who is out riding that big Mystery Train.

RIP Irene Cara - OUT HERE ON MY OWN (from FAME)

Very Sad News - Irene Cara, Oscar-winning singer of title tracks to 'Flashdance,' 'Fame' dies at 63, rep says

Thank you, Ms. Carey. I'd like you to know that Irene spoke of you often and was so honored that you considered her to be an inspiration as you found your place in the music industry. She was very proud of you and your accomplishments. Through you, a little of Irene will live on. https://t.co/Ns2jos30SY

— Irene Cara (@Irene_Cara) November 28, 2022

Honoring a Life: RIP Peter Schjeldahl

Quite a loss - My thoughts on Peter Schjeldahl from April 2005
Speed of Life: Peter Schjeldahl at SFMOMA https://t.co/1gKhLJMePZ pic.twitter.com/C6oO1Mm6h3

— Gregg Chadwick (@greggchadwick) October 21, 2022

In 2005, during the Q&A after a lecture at SFMOMA, I asked Peter Schjeldahl about the place of beauty in contemporary art. Peter leaned forward and spoke from the heart." This is an important, if not controversial, question that I write about often. In the 60s and 70s in academia it was the forbidden word. A group of art historians could look up at the blue sky and and declare it a beautiful day on their way to a conference on contemporary art. But once in the doors of the conference room, beauty ceased to exist." Peter concluded by stating, "Art does not have to address beauty- to reach for beauty. But it sure is great if it does."

RIP Ronnie Spector

#RIPRonnieSpector

Spector & The E Street Band

Ronnie Spector photographed in the United Kingdom on April 28, 1971.

Jack Kay/Daily Express/GI

Painting Is a Team Sport: Wayne Thiebaud

by Gregg Chadwick

"At the heart of Wayne Thiebaud's greatness was his love of art's history and his ability to translate art's standards into his own language for our present.." - Tyler Green

"My favorite Wayne Thiebaud painting is Cup of Coffee. Look at this coloring, what a miracle. What he called being able to 'see the edges of the edges'” - Max Lakin

I was fortunate to meet Wayne Thiebaud a few times when I lived in San Francisco. He was always engaging and always present. The first time I met Thiebaud he was walking out of  the Washington Square Bar and Grill in North Beach on a Fall afternoon in 1991. The Washbag, as the restaurant was affectionately known thanks to San Francisco columnist Herb Caen, was the ultimate place to schmooze with Bay Area politicians and power brokers in the 1980s and 1990s. 

Thiebaud was by himself and didn't seem to be in a hurry after his lunch, so I ventured up to Wayne Thiebaud and thanked him for his artwork. Wayne looked at me and smiled then said, "You must be an artist, a painter, to have said that. You know, that means the world to me, because when a fellow artist recognizes my work, it means that I have done something worthwhile. Thank you for recognizing me." Then he strode off leaving me with a giant smile on my face and a new found badge of courage as an artist. 

Artist and Professor Emeritus Wayne Thiebaud at the under-construction Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art in 2016. He died Dec. 25 at the age of 101. 

(Gregory Urquiaga/UC Davis)

I love how Thiebaud painted San Francisco and the Sacramento Delta. My brother went to college at UC Davis and I would sometimes hang out there, trying to soak up the spirit of Thiebaud and Robert Arneson who taught there. “Wayne Thiebaud believed teaching and learning were life's most important pursuits. He loved to read, discuss, and look together with his students,” said Rachel Teagle, founding director of the Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art at UC Davis. “‘Painting is a team sport,’” Thiebaud liked to say. “And for his many, many lifelong students, learning with Wayne was a great honor.” 

Wayne Thiebaud

Sunset Streets

48" x 35 3/4" oil on canvas 1985

Collection SFMOMA

Purchase with the aid of funds from public subscription, William L. Gerstle Fund, Fund of the '80s, Clinton Walker Fund, and Thomas W. Weisel

© Wayne Thiebaud / Licensed by VAGA, New York

Wayne Thiebaud was a great teacher in the classroom and within his artworks themselves. His paintings compel us to recognize the enticing color and subject matter and simultaneously comprehend how they were created. See the form? Good. Now look at the edges. And then the edges of the edges. Thiebaud's painted forms are ringed with glowing auras of color that define space and atmosphere while at the same time keeping us aware of the flat surface they are painted on. Sebastian Smee in the Washington Post writes about this: 

"Thiebaud rims the objects he paints — often pies, cupcakes, ice cream cones or candy machines — with multiple lines of vivid, contrasting color. He does the same with their shadows.

These lines mediate between the objects themselves and their surroundings until the whole ensemble starts to quiver, like a strummed chord."

As a young artist, Thiebaud learned much from Sunday Morning Comics and animation.  Thiebaud expressed that all great artists used the principles of cartooning or caricature as a means of creating individuality and a distinct style. French artist Pierre Bonnard's vibrant work could be described as a caricature of color. And Italian artist Giorgio Morandi's quiet still lifes are also tension filled images. Thiebaud describes the objects in Morandi's painting as if they gripped by a vise. (See video below) In notes for the exhibition Wayne Thiebaud at Museo Morandi - the Morandi Museum in Bologna, Italy finds great affinity between Thiebaud and Morandi:

"an interest for everyday objects, simplified so as to become purely formal elements, the tendency to align them in strictly ordered progressions, the apparent repetition of representations, the study of variants, the aesthetic isolation of objects or groups thereof, the search of strong visual impact through a deep attention to light, form and brushstroke quality. The juxtaposition of their work reveals a shared tendency to subjectively interpret and reconstruct visual reality in conformity to their inner vision." 

Wayne Thiebaud

Girl With Pink Hat 

36" x 29 1/2" oil on canvas 1973

Collection SFMOMA

Gift of Jeannette Powell

© Wayne Thiebaud / Licensed by VAGA at ARS, New York

Photo by Gregg Chadwick 

California museums, especially in the Bay Area, are rich with Thiebaud's artworks and I have spent days studying his paintings. I find that when an artist's work speaks to me it makes me want to rush back to my studio and paint. When I look at Thiebaud's paintings, I am filled with a kind of artistic epiphany that inspires me and urges me forward. Sebastian Smee describes this well:

 "The color intensification is not affectless and artificial...Your perceptions don’t feel traduced. They’re heightened, as happens when you’re walking through the streets of San Francisco on a summer evening and golden, slanted light ignites everything it hits, casting dramatic, diagonal shadows, and you can’t believe how preposterously gorgeous it all is."

Gregg Chadwick

Gravity's Empire

72"x36" oil on linen 2014

Carlo Siliotto Collection, Los Angeles and Rome, Italy

My painting Gravity's Empire is a San Francisco cityscape that is an homage to Wayne Thiebaud. Indeed, when I am walking the evening streets of San Francisco and a golden, slanted light ignites everything it hits, I often think of Thiebaud. And I can’t believe how preposterously gorgeous life is.

Robert Arneson

California Artist

68 1/4 in. x 27 1/2 in. x 20 1/4 in. stoneware with glazes 1983

Collection SFMOMA

Gift of the Modern Art Council

© Estate of Robert Arneson / Licensed by VAGA at ARS, New York

Photo by Gregg Chadwick 

 

THIEBAUD VIA MORANDI from Victor Loh on Vimeo.

One of the great painters of the post-WWII era, and a wonderful man with whom to talk painting and art history. A titan. https://t.co/Qdj5GrMmcc

— Tyler Green (@TylerGreenBooks) December 26, 2021

“That’s what you do as a painter: You live on hope.”
—Wayne Thiebaud https://t.co/92G86na7F8 pic.twitter.com/t6IBWisU8C

— Austin Kleon (@austinkleon) December 31, 2021

RIP W.S. Merwin

Gregg Chadwick

The River Dreams

16"x11" oil on linen 2009

I learned tonight about the death of  W.S. Merwin. I had a chance to chat briefly with W.S. Merwin after his wonderful reading at the Hammer Museum on October 29, 2009. We spoke of elephants and mystery and nature. Inspiring memories.

The poems of W. S. Merwin’s mature career were often Delphic, haunted, and bleak. They seemed to have been delivered unto him, and he transcribed them by lightning flash. https://t.co/Z4biUog5VT

— The New Yorker (@NewYorker) March 17, 2019

More on W.S. Merwin:
W.S. Merwin Profile
Paul Holdengraber In Conversation with W.S. Merwin
Poem for Merwin 

The Angel Falls to Earth: Bruno Ganz Dies

by Gregg Chadwick

Bruno Ganz as the angel Damiel in Wim Wender's Classic Film Wings of Desire

Bruno Ganz  has died at 77 leaving us with a rich legacy. The Swiss film actor played numerous iconic roles over the years from an angel longing for human love in Wings of Desire to Hitler facing imminent defeat in Downfall. The New York Times reports that Bruno died at his home in Zurich.

 Bruno Ganz  left his mark on Berlin in Wender's Wings of Desire. Painters, writers, and filmmakers from Max Beckmann to Christopher Isherwood to Wim Wenders have created visions of Berlin that still guide us across the city's potent memoryscape. 

Gregg Chadwick
The Angel of History
29"x73" oil and sumi on Japanese screen

In honor of Bruno, I am posting my oil and ink on screen painting The Angel of History  inspired by the writings of Walter Benjamin. 

Benjamin wrote: "This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing in from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such a violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward."
- Walter Benjamin, "Theses on the Philosophy of History," IX 

Solveig Dommartin and Bruno Ganz in Wim Wender's Classic Film Wings of Desire

Peter Falk in Wim Wender's Classic Film Wings of Desire

Look Closely: Are There Angels Hiding in the Ruins of the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church?
photo by Gregg Chadwick (Berlin 2010)

RIP - Aretha Franklin - Respect [1967] (Original Version)

Aretha Franklin - Respect
Song written by Otis Redding
Album: I Never Loved A Man The Way I Love You [1967]
_________________________

RESPECT

(oo) What you want
(oo) Baby, I got
(oo) What you need
(oo) Do you know I got it?
(oo) All I'm askin'
(oo) Is for a little respect when you come home (just a little bit)
Hey baby (just a little bit) when you get home
(just a little bit) mister (just a little bit)

I ain't gonna do you wrong while you're gone
Ain't gonna do you wrong (oo) 'cause I don't wanna (oo)
All I'm askin' (oo)
Is for a little respect when you come home (just a little bit)
Baby (just a little bit) when you get home (just a little bit)
Yeah (just a little bit)

I'm about to give you all of my money
And all I'm askin' in return, honey
Is to give me my propers
When you get home (just a, just a, just a, just a)
Yeah baby (just a, just a, just a, just a)
When you get home (just a little bit)
Yeah (just a little bit)

------ instrumental break ------

Ooo, your kisses (oo)
Sweeter than honey (oo)
And guess what? (oo)
So is my money (oo)
All I want you to do (oo) for me
Is give it to me when you get home (re, re, re ,re)
Yeah baby (re, re, re ,re)
Whip it to me (respect, just a little bit)
When you get home, now (just a little bit)

R-E-S-P-E-C-T
Find out what it means to me
R-E-S-P-E-C-T
Take care, TCB

Oh (sock it to me, sock it to me,
sock it to me, sock it to me)
A little respect (sock it to me, sock it to me,
sock it to me, sock it to me)
Whoa, babe (just a little bit)
A little respect (just a little bit)
I get tired (just a little bit)
Keep on tryin' (just a little bit)
You're runnin' out of foolin' (just a little bit)
And I ain't lyin' (just a little bit)
(re, re, re, re) 'spect
When you come home (re, re, re ,re)
Or you might walk in (respect, just a little bit)
And find out I'm gone (just a little bit)
I got to have (just a little bit)
A little respect (just a little bit)


Great article on the song in the Washington Post by DeNeen L.  Brown: 
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2018/08/14/how-aretha-franklins-respect-became-an-anthem-for-civil-rights-and-feminism/?utm_term=.d44415dd9266

♥️https://t.co/dn7mbFw9gD

— Merriam-Webster (@MerriamWebster) August 16, 2018

Martin Luther King Jr's "I've Been to the Mountaintop" at Mason Temple in Memphis.

The day before Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, he delivered his historic "I've Been to the Mountaintop" at Mason Temple in Memphis. pic.twitter.com/cQUvkmkW4z

— COMMON (@common) April 2, 2018

MLK’s final speech — delivered 50 years ago today — was full of timely and timeless teachings.  More at: "I've been to the mountaintop."

RIP Tom Petty and Prince "While My Guitar Gently Weeps"

WWII Era Anti-Fascism Film from US - "Don't Be A Sucker"

"The world is a dangerous place...not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it"
-Albert Einstein

In the light of the horrific, fascist, white-supremacist violence against peaceful folks in Charlottesville, Virginia on August 12, 2017, I find this film produced by the US War Department during WWII to be instructive. Clips from the film are appearing on social media sites. The full film is presented here.

From IMDB:

"Financed and produced by the United States War Department in 1943, and shot at the Warners studio, although it was distributed through all of the major studios' film exchanges and also by National Screen Services free to the theatre exhibitors: A young, healthy American Free Mason is taken in by the message of a soap-box orator who asserts that all good jobs in the United States are being taken by the so-called minorities, domestic and foreign. He falls into a conversation with a refugee professor who tells him of the pattern of events that brought Hitler to power in Germany and how Germany's anti-democratic groups split the country into helpless minorities, each hating the other. The professor concludes by pointing out that America is composed of many minorities, but all are united as Americans."

• Category

  • News & Politics

Thank You Michael Bond! RIP

Thank you, Michael Bond. #PaddingtonBear pic.twitter.com/wDVOoReolF

— Flavia Fazenda (@FlaviaFazenda) June 28, 2017

Michael Bond at home in 2014. He said of Paddington Bear: ‘He’s never put down or deflated. He has the naivety of a child and the sophistication of an adult.’
Photograph Courtesy: Geoff Pugh/Rex/Shutterstock

Much more on Michael Bond and Paddington in The Guardian.

Gilbert Baker's Rainbow Flag at MOMA

.@MuseumModernArt @curiousoctopus installing the flag designed by #GilbertBaker, which is part of MoMA's collection thanks to @michellemfisher's efforts. pic.twitter.com/IIxNh2lWrB

— Gretchen Scott (@gretchen_scott) April 1, 2017

Gilbert Baker, heading the Stockholm Pride Parade in 2003, pieced together the first rainbow flags in 1978. He described himself as the “gay Betsy Ross.”

FREDRIK PERSSON / AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE — GETTY IMAGES

More at: Gilbert Baker's Rainbow Flag

Thank You Mary Tyler Moore!

Mary Tyler Moore, 1936-2017. https://t.co/untjNkK5IM pic.twitter.com/2oomydy5IU

— Michiko Kakutani (@michikokakutani) January 25, 2017

An Elegy for Lou Reed

by Gregg Chadwick

I wrote this when I heard of Lou Reed's death in 2013. Three years on the thoughts still stand. Reposted as an elegy to an inspirational figure for so many. 

"Lou Reed gave us the street and the landscape - and we peopled it."
 - David Bowie in the documentary "Rock 'n' Roll Heart - Lou Reed"

Well hey, man, that's just a lie
It's a lie she tells her friends
'Cause the real song, the real song
Where she won't even admit to herself
The beatin' in her heart
It's a song lots of people know
It's a painful song
A little sad truth
But life's full of sad songs
Penny for a wish
But wishin' won't make you a soldier.
With a pretty kiss for a pretty face
Can't have it's way

Y'know tramps like us, we were born to pay
 - From the beginning of the "Slipaway" section of Lou Reed's song Street Hassle.
    Uncredited spoken vocals by Bruce Springsteen.

Annie Leibovitz
Lou Reed and Laurie Anderson 
Coney Island, New York, 1995
Silver Print

When I found out about Lou Reed's death yesterday morning from Rolling Stone's twitter feed I turned to my Lou Reed playlist and put Reed's cover of Blind Lemon Jefferson's haunting blues number - See That My Grave is Kept Clean along with Antony and the Johnsons' song with Lou Reed - Fistful of Love, and Reed's elegiac urban hymn Berlin, on repeat. 

For many of us who came of age and under the influence of the New York City of the 1970's and 1980's, Lou Reed was New York. While at NYU working on my grad degree in art, Reed's music provided an aural map for my explorations across the city. Reed's staccato talk/singing proved to be a gruff yet tender guided tour through my artistic and lovelorn ventures. Often while on the A train, Marty Fogel's Junior Walker fueled sax riff on Reed's Shooting Star would blare in my walkman's headphones. And Walk on the Wild Side always seemed to accompany me across Washington Square. 

Gregg Chadwick
Ghosts of New Amsterdam
24"x36" oil on linen 2013

Reed's urban suite New York kept me close to the city I loved even as I moved west to California. On a trip back to Manhattan a few years later, a friend who had opened a restaurant in the Village told me that she thought that she had been given a sign that she would make it, because Lou Reed was becoming a regular at her joint. 

Not long after, Reed and his song Why Can't I be Good rumbled across the screen in Wim Wenders' cinematic sequel to Wings of Desire - Far Away So Close. Lou Reed's future wife, performance artist, composer and musician Laurie Anderson, also provided powerful music for the film. On a recent artistic excursion to Berlin, memories of these two films and Reed's album Berlin brought to light elements of the city that I had missed in the past. 



 


Much like an author will write about an event or a place to learn what they feel, I will create a series of artworks to understand what I have seen. I pushed my interaction with Berlin into a recent ongoing series of monotypes fueled partly by the visions of Lou Reed, Wim Wenders, Bertolt Brecht, and David Bowie, 

Gregg Chadwick
Brecht's Song
30"x22" monotype on paper 2011

As Gavin Edwards wrote in Rolling Stone,"While many musicians have made Berlin albums, Lou Reed's Berlin (1973) is the wrist-slashing standard against which they're all judged. When the record concluded with the epic ballad Sad Song, it felt like the whole world was shutting down." Berlin forces us to wrestle with the dead as we walk through its haunted and enchanted streets. After the fall of the wall, Berlin has come to embody the future while at the same time carrying the scars of the past. In the city of Berlin, the political and the personal merge, as evidenced in Lou Reed's Berlin album and David Bowie's recent song Where Are We Now?. In Berlin we are left with existential questions and are reminded that bodies age and die, marriages end, friendships dissolve and memories fade. 

Gregg Chadwick
Rauch Licht (Smoke Light)
30"x22" monotype on paper 2011

During the last years of his life, Lou Reed continued to work with and inspire younger musicians and artists. One of the most fruitful of these mentorship/collaborations was his work with Antony, of Antony and the Johnsons. John Hodgman in the New York Times recounts how the cover image of Antony's EP, I Fell in Love With a Dead Boy "caught the attention of the producer Hal Willner, who bought the EP and played it for Lou Reed, with whom he was working at the time:

'I said, 'Who is that?' Reed recalled. 'So we set out to find him, and he was a few blocks away as it turns out.' ''

Lou Reed invited Antony to tour with him throughout 2003, and every night Antony would sing Candy Says, Reed's haunting tribute to Candy Darling. Caught in the video below, Lou Reed, one of the most influential musicians of the rock era, looks across towards Antony with an expression of pride and wonder. Lou seems mesmerized by what he described as Antony's double tracking and unusual harmonies. Reed had said that he could listen to Antony sing all day. In this video we witness a legend passing on his wisdom and inspiration to another.



Antony and Lou Reed Perform Candy Says



More Videos Below:


Lou Reed & David Bowie Discuss Reed's Album Transformer
 in the documentary "Rock 'n' Roll Heart - Lou Reed"

In an interview with Rolling Stone in 1989, Lou Reed explained that he and Bruce Springsteen were both recording albums at the Record Plant in New York City when an engineer suggested inviting Bruce over to record the "Slipaway" vocals on Reed's song Street Hassle. The last line was Reed's, written with Springsteen's Born to Run in mind:

Y'know tramps like us, we were born to pay


More at:
Lou Reed: The Rolling Stone Interview
Antony Finds His Voice

  
Lou Reed greets Chuck Close in front of Close's 2012 tapestry Lou 

    published by Magnolia Editions; photo by Amanda Gordon/Bloomberg

August 2013