Perfect Day (1972) – Lou Reed

This Lou Reed gem was recommended to me by Blogger friend Tom (ala dylan6111). I had heard Perfect Day in my young adulthood but I let it slip from memory like so many other songs. Thanks mainly to you kind folk, I am often reunited with great music which I add retrospectively to the music library project.

Perfect Day featured on Transformer; Reed’s second post-Velvet Underground solo album and as B-side of his major hit, Walk on the Wild Side. Its fame was given a boost in the 1990s when it was featured in the 1996 film Trainspotting. The original recording, as with the rest of the Transformer album, was produced by David Bowie and Mick Ronson (who also wrote the string arrangement and played piano on the track). The song was written after Reed and his then fiancée (later his first wife), Bettye Kronstad, spent a day in Central Park.

[Verse 1]
Just a perfect day, drink Sangria in the park
And then later, when it gets dark, we go home
Just a perfect day, feed animals in the zoo
Then later, a movie too and then home

[Chorus]
Oh, it’s such a perfect day
I’m glad I spent it with you
Oh, such a perfect day
You just keep me hanging on
You just keep me hanging on

[Verse 2]
Just a perfect day, problems all left alone
Weekenders on our own, it’s such fun
Just a perfect day, you made me forget myself
I thought I was someone else, someone good

The dichotomy in interpretation of Perfect Day as explained in the Wikipedia reference below:

• The lyric is often considered to suggest simple, conventional romantic devotion, possibly alluding to Reed’s relationship with Kronstad and Reed’s own conflicts with his sexuality, drug use and ego. Some commentators have further seen the lyrical subtext as displaying Reed’s romanticized attitude towards a period of his own addiction to heroin. This popular understanding of the song as an ode to addiction led to its inclusion in the soundtrack for Trainspotting.
• The above interpretation, according to Reed himself, is “laughable“. In an interview in 2000, Reed stated, “No. You’re talking to the writer, the person who wrote it. No that’s not true. I don’t object to that, particularly…whatever you think is perfect. But this guy’s vision of a perfect day was the girl, sangria in the park, and then you go home; a perfect day, real simple. I meant just what I said‘.

References:
1. Perfect Day (Lou Reed song) – Wikipedia

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