Reading music ... James Joyce and Lou Reed, his putative musical biographer. Photographs: AFP/Getty
In 1990, Lou Reed and John Cale made Songs For Drella, a musical memorial to their mentor Andy Warhol that traced his life from cradle to grave (well, from Pittsburgh to Manhattan, at least). Reed followed it with Magic and Loss, an album that took the lives - and deaths - of two of his closest friends, one of whom was the legendary songwriter Doc Pomus, as its rather glum subject matter. These records, promised a typically earnest Reed, marked nothing less than the beginning of an ambitious new chapter in rock history: the biographical album.
Around that time, I remember reading an interview - I assume through the cracks in my fingers, hyperventilating slightly - where Reed intimated that an album on the life of James Joyce would be next. That particular concept didn't fly, however, and we never did get to hear Reed's four-minute distillation of Joyce's motivation behind creating those mischievous imps, Buck Milligan and Blazes Boylan.
It's easy to mock, but in the ensuing 15 years the lyrical ambition of most pop and rock music has shrivelled to the size of Fred Durst's brain. Sufjan Stevens has made an attempt at picking up Reed's baton with his proposed project to record albums about all 50 US States, but even he seems to be getting cold feet after ticking off Michigan and Illinois. Prefab Sprout's masterly Jordan: The Comeback, meanwhile, had a go at Elvis Presley, but Paddy McAloon's muse proved too mercurial to stick to a single, discernible narrative thread.
Maybe it's all just a little too much like hard work for people accustomed to tossing off any old platitude in lieu of real inspiration, but I must confess I'm starting to come around to Reed's grand plan. Is the high falutin' concept of A Life in Music such a terrible idea? I think not.
So - whose life would you like to hear stretched over 73 minutes of tunes your postie could whistle? And who would be up for the job of writing and recording it? Here's one for starters: The Decembrists Present The Life of Abraham Lincoln. And another: Kate Bush: Being Emily Brontë. Your turn.
