Lou Reed

Picture one of rock's longest-standing and most significant icons, standing on a stage ringed by a small amphitheater, with the lights of Lake Garda glimmering below in the distance. Picture Lou Reed at the Vittoriale in Gardone Riviera, in front of just under two thousand people (still a historic record for this stunning venue in the Brescia area), on a midsummer evening.

On Friday, July 22nd, reality outdoes imagination. The sun has just set when the great New York artist appears on the stage set in the shadow of his friend Mimmo Paladino's blue horse, flanked by the seven musicians who, all night long, will chase each other through a winding musical thread of solos and genuine feats of skill: Toni Diodore and Joseph Aram Bajakian on guitars, Robert Wasserman on bass, Kevin Hearn on keyboards, Louis Calhoun on effects, Tony Thunder Smith on drums and Ulrich Krieger on sax. All dressed in black, they fall in behind Lou Reed, the smallest of the bunch, and at first glance the most frail under the weight of years that force him into small, careful steps and have him get help, time after time, putting on his inseparable guitar.

They open with a classic, the Velvet Underground's "Who Loves The Sun," here in a faster version than the original and topped by Reed's powerful, unmistakable voice, as he asks for — and gets — the house lights kept on at the sides of the floor "so I can see the faces in the crowd," he explains. Every facet of an endless career is on display across the two-hour show: there's the rock of "Senselessly Cruel" and "Sweet Jane," which brings the first half of the set to a triumphant close. There's the funk of "Charlie's Girl." There are real orchestral-style crescendos and long instrumental passages: the extraordinary "Street Hassle" is the happiest example of this.

Above all, there's the original, properly Velvet-era Lou Reed: "Femme Fatale," "Venus In Furs" and, especially, a goosebump-inducing solo version of "Sunday Morning," with the band gathered around him as if in some kind of pagan prayer. And then, as the show nears its close, a "Pale Blue Eyes" moving enough to shake even its own author, his voice cracking at the moments of greatest feeling.

In short, we get to see the countless facets of a living legend, an icon with a hieratic, impassive gaze, unmoved even as he repeatedly calls for applause from a crowd that never holds back. A few big classics are admittedly missing — "Perfect Day," "Satellite Of Love," "Walk On The Wild Side," to name a few. It hardly matters: two hours in the company of a living legend, indifferent to the passing years once he steps onto a stage, can deliver emotions that are hard to put into words. And when the setting is the Vittoriale, the task becomes even harder.

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