"Transformer":

Lou Reed RCA LSP-4807 Reviewed by Richard Best

Lou Reed got married the other day - and a few gay hearts may have cried a few tears. See Lou married this woman. And we all thought Lou was homosexual. Like in hum fucking and Vaseline.

Now, a long time ago, music was simple. Dicki Do and the Don'ts made a record tailed "Click. Clack" — and no one knew where Dick and company lay in bed. Fabian was heterosexual 'cos he wore Vaseline where other men wore it.

But now it's different. You all thought Lou smacked of Decadence (praise the New Journalism) and you loved it. Maybe you even thought Lou was Decadence.

Sadly, folks, you played the fairy this time around — Lou sucked you off and you spent six bucks on a record that rings of greasy hot-dog stands in a hick-town circus.

Course there's no disputing the music's nice. A friend tells me it's the "transcendentalism of normality" and Lou's "Perfect Das" (you made me forget myself/ I thought I was someone else/someone good) is something special. There's also a cutting three minutes of "Vicious" ness which craps over any of Alice"s shams at sexual aberrations. And, yeah, the rest of the tunes are rather gay. Not like that paranoid bi-guy Bowie but just queer.

So what do you get for six bucks: eleven tunes, 53 minutes, a New York telephone conversation, David Bowie and his Spiders helping out.

You thought it was some gay slut's diary...... and then Lou got married. Pooled again.