It takes gumption to give a song a title as declarative as “Rock & Roll,” but Lou Reed could hardly contain his excitement for his subject, young Jenny, whose “life is saved by rock and roll.” In this loose-limbed, three-chords-and-a-cloud-of-feedback track, Reed’s voice runs up and down and all around the melody: “One fine mornin’ she puts on a New York station/ She doesn’t believe what she heard at all.” Building up to an ecstatic frenzy of “It’s all right now’s,” the song encapsulates the creation myth of rock ‘n’ roll fans trapped in backwater towns until they happen upon something mind-blowing from a big city that cracks the whole world open. Ramshackle and fiercely ambitious at once, “Rock & Roll” fulfills its own dare: this must have been the song Jenny heard on the radio.
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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EkbpmFOuKrc]