The innocent allure of Lou Reed's 'Transformer'

I remember, when I was about twelve years old and even more naïve then than I am now, how much I blushed when my cousin showed me the cover of Lou Reed’s Transformer. It’s not that I had any moral objections to a photo of a man with an exaggerated erection in his jeans, it’s just that I never expected to see it on a record cover, and especially not in the presence of my cousin.

Still, I understood little about the underworld in those days, and even less about its role in music. At that age I had scarcely progressed from Rolf Harris to Beethoven in my musical development.

But as I listen to the music of Transformer again today, there is still just a little part of me, deep inside, that wants to blush. At the risk of describing this music with a totally absurd oxymoron, it seems to me to have a kind of innocent sleaze about it – music that strays into the dark and seedy part of town without ever having meant to go there, and then finds itself irresistibly drawn to its shadows and sordidness.

It’s a world of sex and sexuality, of drugs and dingy nights; but it’s a world that is presented to you unadorned, told with a naïveté, a simplicity, in music that sometimes dances along to a merry rocking jing-a-ling, like in ‘Hang’ Round’, or else has an oomp-pah jollity to it, as in‘Make Up’, or a merry sing-a-long bipping and bopping, like in ‘Satellite of Love’, or in music that just flows along as easy as pie, while giving you a sleazy wink of the eye, as in ‘Walk on the Wild Side’.

Not that these songs are just simple little ditties with rude words. There is often a subtle, undercurrent of irony here, which, when you sink yourself into it, can become almost disturbing in the way that it relaxes so easily into its own uneasiness. Listen, for example, to ‘Perfect Day’, a song that would be kind of nice, if kind of corny, if it was really about the simple things it at first seems to be about but which, when you realise that it’s actually about heroin, is one of the most heart-wrenching things you will ever hear.

It’s this interplay between sunshine and shadows, between simplicity and seediness, between ease and sleaze, that makes Transformer so darkly alluring, music that beckons you to join its game before telling you that the gambling stakes are going to be your very soul.

It was surely a towering achievement that Lou Reed, on this his second album, was able to achieve such a subtle balance of colours and moods in his music, music that does so much while pretending to you that it is doing so little.

I no longer blush when I see the cover of Transformer, just maybe feel a little embarrassed that a man of my age can still feel the urge to follow where its music wants to take me.