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The Perfect Day singalong: how Lou Reed's ode to heroin became an ad for the BBC
BBC presenters are now trying to cheer us up with a national singalong. But in 1997, a 'pop royal family' – plus Boyzone – did it first
One morning, in the early 1970s, Columbia university graduate Bettye Kronstad went horse riding but forgot to bring her boots. She wore her sandals instead, which left her feet bruised and slightly bloodied.
On any other day this might not have been a problem. However, her boyfriend, Lou Reed, had a date planned for the couple that afternoon. They would go to Central Park and drink sangria, perhaps catch a movie.
Reed could be awkward at the best of times. Kronstad didn’t want to let him down. She met him in the park and pretended everything was fine. “My ankles were bleeding,” she would recall.
So for Reed’s future first wife the excursion was a write-off. Seventies rock’s great contrarian remembered it differently. To him it was heavenly afternoon where the sometime heroin addict was gifted a vision of a more normal life. He even wrote a song about it.
Later, rock folklore would decree that Perfect Day was a druggy anthem in disguise. That it was about Reed wandering around New York off his face on smack. But he always protested the song was exactly what it appeared to be on the surface. A portrait of a halcyon time in Central Park with his lover – one he felt he did not deserve (hence the ominous line “you’re going to reap just what you sow”).
Twenty five years later, long after he and Kronstad had married and divorced, Perfect Day made a surprise comeback as it was pressed into service as a call to arms on behalf of public service broadcasting.
Over three minutes and 50 seconds, the BBC’s October 1997 reprisal of the dirge sees Reed joined by David Bowie, Suede’s Brett Anderson, Elton John, Tom Jones, Emmylou Harris, soprano Lesley Garrett, Huey Morgan from Fun Lovin’ Criminals and others.
Also on the roll call were Boyzone. They will have had a particularly affinity with Reed as they had followed in the footsteps of his notorious 1975 LP Metal Machine Music by releasing records that induced near physical trauma if listened to for longer than 30 seconds. It was a match forged in pop nirvana.
Ostensibly the idea was to remind viewers of the BBC’s support of live music. But there was a secondary motive. In April 1997 the BBC had secured an increase in the TV license to £91.50 (from just £86.50 in 1995). Perfect Day could be interpreted as a shot across the bows of politicians considering reducing the broadcaster’s funding. There was certainly something vaguely ominous about the fashion in which Heather Small from M-People wailed, “Yoooo’ure going to reaaaaap just what you sow.”
Celebrity singalongs have in recent years become ubiquitous. Perfect Day 1997 was, however, among the first of the species (setting aside the very different animal that is the Band Aid style group singalong). You can detect its influence to this day. Particularly over the last several weeks as, just like the rest of humanity, famous people suddenly find they have a lot of spare time on their hands.
First Gal Gadot roped chums such as Mark Ruffalo, Natalie Portman, Chris O’Dowd (who at least has the good sense to look embarrassed) into a toe-curling international assault on John Lennon’s Imagine. Gadot and the gang’s take on the maudlin classic was horrific – if you ever wondered what “celebrity entitlement” sounded like in musical form, here it was. And it wasn't even for charity.
Now, not to be outdone today BBC DJs and presenters have encouraged us to participate in a Big Singalong. Don’t worry; Greg James, Dermot O'Leary, Lauren Laverne, Dotty and Harpz Kaur haven’t been spooking us with their terrifying Skype faces. Instead they’ve been joining forces from separate studios across the UK to spin tunes recommended by listeners. It’s a sort of Pop Voltron if Greg James was Voltron’s left leg.
They can take justified pride in doing their bit to raise the national mood. And heavens knows we need some cheering up. And yet it is undeniable that they are also riding in on the very long coattails of Perfect Day 1997.
The cover was an enormous hit and, re-released as a Comic Relief single, would eventually reach number one. Unlike Gal Gadot and pals’ singalong it was, moreover, months in the planning. Perfect Day’s video was filmed in secret from April to August 1997. Reed made his contribution at Shepperton Studios, as did Tom Jones and David Bowie, then, aged 50, in the thin-white goatee phase of his career.
Bono sang his two lines from New York where U2 were on their disastrous PopMart tour. Boyzone were backstage at Wembley Arena. Tammy Wynette is said to have driven five hours to a studio in Atalanta for her bit.
Posterity does not record where Evan Dando of the Lemonheads was though, given the state of his hair, he seemed to have recently walked through a hurricane. He would at least have known the words, having covered Perfect Day with Kirsty MacColl in 1995. The second half of the Biblical “you’re going to reap…what you sow” line is concluded by Laurie Anderson, Reed’s partner.
Perfect Day was not exactly plucked from obscurity by the BBC. It had gained a new lease of relevancy when Danny Boyle used it to soundtrack the scene in 1996’s Trainspotting in which Ewan McGregor’s character over-doses on heroin (giving credence to the “it’s about drugs” theory). Enter Jane Frost, ex-deputy marketing director with Unilever and, in the mid-1990s, the BBC’s new head of corporate marketing. She was eager to shake up the BBC brand and remind everyone watching of its unique position in British society.
A great deal of metaphor is packed into the four minutes by the ad’s creators, Ian Ducker and Will Farquhar of the agency Leagas Delaney. The garden where Reed sings at the start represents the boundless human imagination. It was put together at Shepperton while the blue skies overhead were shot at Richmond Park.
The BBC’s first choice for song was the then-ubiquitous Wonderwall. However, Oasis “weren’t having it”. So instead Frost turned to Lou Reed and Perfect Day. Next the corporation drew up a wish-list of artists to sing. Once Reed was on board and Bowie caught wind and joined everything fell into place. If anything the challenge was convincing participants to do less.
Bono was so thrilled to be involved he sang the whole song and considered releasing his version as a U2 b-side. There was also some tension within the BBC over the number of classical performers to include, with Radio 3 pushing for more (it got Garrett, baritone Thomas Allen, the Brodsky Quartet, horn player Sheona White, jazz saxophonist Courtney Pine and others). Technical limitations had to be overcome too. A fixed 16 millimetre camera was used in order to cut down on time (some of the performers had 30 minutes or less to spare).
“Everyone had their own favourites,” Ducker would say of the process of stitching together the contributions into a seamless whole. “The difficulty was that on one hand you had a visual agenda, but musically it might not sound right. You also needed contrasts. It was like a house of cards – as soon as you took one person out the whole thing collapsed.”
“We wanted to say that the BBC was a unique organisation,” Frost said several years later. “That if it disappeared, you'd really be losing something, and it deserves your support. It was about showing that the BBC can put together these stars, with this sort of quality, that it can surprise people and do something they really enjoy.”
There had been some resistance from the higher-ups when Frost suggested a near four-minute promotional film featuring Seventies rockers singing (potentially) about heroin. But that had melted away as Bowie, Reed, Elton John etc signed on. Particularly when they agreed to perform for a minimum fee of £250 a head (Bowie waived his altogether saying the BBC had given him “years of pleasure” with 1950s children’s series Flower Pot Men).
“Once we saw it, we all had faith in it and knew it was going to work,” said Frost. “It became the anthem of the BBC. It was also wonderful to see other TV channels such as MTV having to carry our promotional video for free.”
MTV was forced to carry it because, several weeks after airing as a promotion, the song was officially released as a single. It would sell two million copies, raising £2.5m for Children in Need (Reed could afford to be generous, having earned a reported £200,000 from the Trainspotting soundtrack).
Still, not everyone like it. “It's tripe. Bland, no soul behind it,” said Martyn Ware of Heaven 17 who had covered Perfect Day for his British Electric Foundation Music of Quality and Distinction covers project in 1982. “I’m all for charity work, but let's not pretend it's not benefiting the people involved. You end up with a pop royal family.”