Grand Rapids Press Review of 1981 U2 Concert at Fountain Street Church

The offset story in a new occasional series at Local Spins revisits a landmark 1970s advent in West Michigan by the late, bully Lou Reed, who startled some fans with his graphic delineation of drug use.

The Photo That Never Made the Paper: Lou Reed 'tying off.' (Photo/Mark Harmel)

EDITOR'S Notation: Some milestone concerts should never be forgotten, from 'the band of tomorrow' U2 playing Fountain Street Church building in 1981 to a fledgling Alice Cooper shocking small lakeshore venues in the early 1970s. Vintage Gigs looks back at these historic West Michigan concerts. Today, just a few days after the outset anniversary of Lou Reed'southward death and a few weeks before the 40th anniversary of his Grand Valley State Colleges concert, Lansing-area writer Steve Miller — author of "Detroit Stone Urban center" — gives us a glimpse into the Allendale debut of the "N.Y. Star." Were you there? If so, share your memories of the show in the Comments section below.

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West Michigan'south music scene

Grand Rapids circa 1974 was a million cultural miles away from New York's Union Foursquare, where The Manufacturing plant birthed the Velvet Underground and its leader, Lou Reed.

Lou Reed at the M Valley State Colleges fieldhouse in 1974. (Photos/Marking Harmel)

If you wanted to grab a GR show and keep it local, you were going to be checking out Gordon Lightfoot, The Eagles, Santana and The Beach Boys … unless you wanted to take a little bulldoze to Allendale, where some students were making things happen in the circular, domed fieldhouse at what was and so Thousand Valley State Colleges.

They brought in pre-fame Aerosmith, Sly and the Family unit Stone (yes, they hit stage promptly an hour belatedly) and Frank Zappa, a step ahead of the folkies that dominated the city.

But none of them crossed the cultural divide like Reed did during a Dominicus evening concert in November 1974.

Reed already was a legend at the summit of his solo career, touring for his latest LP, "Sally Can't Trip the light fantastic toe," which had become a weird commercial success. There was no hit single, a la 1972'due south "Walk on the Wild Side," but information technology was a ready of a sleazy R&B, balladry and bombast with an uptown haze to it that stuck in the encephalon'south grooves.

Reed was withal singing nigh drugs, drag queens and derangement, much the same territory as he had in the Velvets. He had dyed his hair a golden blond and carried a meth habit that turned him into a walking stick figure, all limbs and all mouth, the human being who reminded anybody more than in one case that "my week beats your year."

The Dome: The old fieldhouse was closed in the late '70s. (Photo Courtesy of GVSU Digital Collections)

Grand Rapids radio station WLAV-FM (96.ix), like a agglomeration of radio stations beyond the United States, was shifting into Coolsville full time, a for-real AOR station that played anthology sides and nine-minute songs and tunes that were never meant for radio, but rather deep night bell-and-alcohol sessions.

And that meant Lou Reed deep cuts, on a good night. Imagine hearing "Kill Your Sons" on the radio. That sort of airplay piqued the involvement of Due west Michigan stone fans.

For $v on a Sunday night, who wouldn't desire to cheque out Reed, playing on a nib with Dr. John the Night Tripper, who had started to make money with his 1973 single, "Right Identify Wrong Fourth dimension"?

Well-nigh A Total Business firm FOR THE Functioning OF 'HEROIN'

It was pretty much a full firm, says Mark Harmel, then a 20-yr-old sophomore at Thomas Jefferson College, who was assigned to shoot the evidence for the Thousand Valley student newspaper, the Lanthorn.

"These were the days when you could arrive there and shoot the whole show, information technology wasn't but iii songs," Harmel says. "And a lot of the time, I was the merely photographer at that place."

'Walk on the Wild Side': Lou Reed on the front folio of the Lanthorn on November. 21, 1974.

He turned in a number of shots of Reed, but the paper'due south editors passed on the money shot: the singer tying off with the mic string and miming administering himself a shot of heroin as he performed the vocal of the same name.

"I was shocked when he first started wrapping the cord around his arm," says Harmel, who shot for The Thou Rapids Printing before moving to California, where he is at present a public wellness consultant in Los Angeles. "I mean, I was from Detroit, but it was the suburbs."

Harmel realized later on that there was little chance of the fixing shot making it into print, equally it "was probably a lilliputian much for the pupil newspaper."

A photo on the front end page of the November. 21 Lanthorn showed Reed with something that today is considered by the lifestyle constabulary only as evil as junk: a cigarette.

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