Lou Reed and the Mayflower Restaurant and Pub in Ottawa
On Sunday the Mayflower restaurant and pub in Ottawa closed after 35 years in business. It was located on Elgin Street, just around the corner from where I went to high school in the 80s. The truth is that there really wasn’t anything remarkable about the place. It had a small, British style pub in the back, a nook for secret, afternoon drinkers, I always thought, and a generic, motel-style type of restaurant at the other end. Our bus stop was right in front of the place and if it was freezing out we’d make a nuisance of ourselves by huddling inside the front doors, or if flush with money, settle into a booth and nurse a hot chocolate for as long as possible, maybe adding a soup (the type that always came with a little package of maternal crackers) if we felt pressure from the waitress.
The bar was pretty much off-limits for us at this age, but every once in awhile we might catch a glimpse of one of our teachers leaving the pub. It felt scandalous, that, like seeing the gym and math teacher skinny-dipping. Teachers just weren’t supposed to be people, more like mannequins, and to see suggestions of a life exterior to our school was shocking.
The Mayflower was a part of the constellation of my youth, part of a web that included the vintage clothing store Andy Upstairs (impossibly cool!), Cantor’s Bakery (awesome cookies!) the Penguin, (so sophisticated!), Johnny Shampoo ( New Wave haircuts!) the Party Palace (best hot dogs in the city!), and many other small points of light that connected our high school years.
In an indirect way, Lou Reed, who also came to his terminal point on Sunday, was a part of that network, too. A friend, who had a particularly keen and scholarly interest in music, introduced me to the Velvet Underground in grade 10, and although they weren’t of our generation, that band opened a big, thrilling window into the world that could be. Impossibly cool, dangerous and Avant-garde they were the very opposite of Ottawa, representing everything bigger, edgier and closer to the bone than we were. When I put on my Velvet Underground and Nico t-shirt I felt transformed, as if lifted up and out of my high school life and moving toward a limitless and exotic horizon, and now, some 30 years later, the news on Sunday reminded me that horizons recede and end, too.
And so, a melancholy day.
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Finding your writing, thrills me. This, this put it right there… I was someone else when I sat in my room at 13 years and listened to “heroin.” A world so far away from who I would ever be, but the world… the world out there… Lou Reed brought it to the quiet, too shy afraid of life girl that I was.
Alexandra:
I listened to Heroin, too. I just thought it was the most amazing and exciting song, and I still do, actually. Lordy, I even wrote some sort of creative writing project ( a screen play?) based on that song and Dr. Faustus back in high school. I absolutely shudder to think what it was like, although I know it had one good thing in, the song Heroin. I’ve always been a huge fan of Street Hassle, too. I could listen to that song for days.
They are leaving in droves, those voices and players who stirred so much emotion in our souls when we were all much younger. Some had been silent for years but were still here among us; some who continued to make music up until death stilled their voices.
Listening to the old music is comforting. I no longer walk on the wild side but listening to Lou provides a soundtrack to the documentary which exists only in my memories. The Velvet Underground introduced me to Sweet Jane, Sister Ray, Heroin and All Tomorrow’s Parties… to the warmth and danger of White Light/White Heat and the salvation to be found in Rock n’ Roll.
They are leaving us, these visionaries who traveled where a 14 year old in Texas could not go, but they recorded diaries of their travels so that those among us who dared tread the path later in life could someday find their way home.
Beautifully put, Mr. Miller, beautifully put.
You are too kind, sir. Thank you for an elegant, eloquent encapsulation of what this singular band provided to so many.
L.R. definitely does open a door to something when you first hear it– another world where people were grown-up and louche and a bit dangerous, but creative and funny and sensual. I heard all those songs in my early youth, a pre-adolesence where I didn’t know what they meant but they were alluring; it wasn’t until I was an undergrad at McGill in the late 1980s when those songs began to speak like some sort of new / old post Beat Generation anthem and road map for all the possibilities of youth and life. The music had been around for a while already but was fresh and energetic but hard. It’s not possible even now to listen to Lou Reed and not feel a sense of life’s light and its darkness. Thanks Michael, this vignette…
Lou had groupings of fans for each of his phases; I covered them all. He got knifed by the Warrior King; we all do. Lou once said something like “songs have to be about something…once they’re about something, that’s where they start their life”. He also said something like “you need one chord for a rock song. Two chords are acceptable. Three chords is starting to be jazz”
There are a group of four people who shaped my life greater than any other. I mean, I’ve been influenced by many, but there’s a group of four who were such an influence at an age when I was most open to be given ideas to help me start crafting this piece of art called a life. Heinlein, Strummer, and now, Lou, are gone, but Lou is making amends with Drella now, so that’s good. One left. The good news is they live forever for me.
I’ve decided I need to write a song this week. It will be called “Lou Says”. I just finished reading the lyrics for his songs Candy Says, Stephanie says, Lisa Says, caroline Says 1, and Caroline Says 2. I might be ready now.
D. Patrick and Mike:
I thank you both for sharing your wonderfully written connections to Lou Reed. He really did reach into everybody. His music wasn’t something you just danced to in a club or breezed by on the radio dial while driving to the cottage, it was carved into us all.
I have to agree with you, too, Mr. Miller. I am from Texas as well. Michael, thanks again for a lovely piece and for stirring the comments.
Great article about Lou, the Mayflower and the Ottawa of yesteryear.
I’ll never forget Lou Reed, my mother and the discovery of my album collection in the garbage.
Returning from school one day, I was stunned to find many of my most cherished albums piled onto the patch of grass in front of the house normally used for garbage cans and recycling bins.
Apparently, my mother had stumbled upon my Velvet Underground collection and had read the lyrics to ‘Heroin’. Her response was to “throw that filth away immediately”…
Later that evening, I casually ambled out to the offending albums, removed the vinyl and placed them in a variety of more discreet covers, including one entitled “Don and the Good Times”. This proved to be an effective way of counteracting my mother’s inspections from that point onward…
Rob:
Entirely brilliant!
My friend used to hide his “hot knives” in Neil Young’s Decade album as it was a triple. His mother eventually found some of her dinner knives, charred and bent, in this record and asked him what was going on. He managed to convince her that they were part of a wood burning kit, or rather, he thought he managed to convince her that they were part of a wood burning kit when in truth she was probably just exhausted by him and let it slide as something she didn’t need to know about.
Your story about your friend’s ‘knives’ reminds me of the story of Skippy the beagle, a four hose hookah pipe and a hole in the ground.
As a teenager, I frequently spent my weekends “camping” and “hiking” in the Gatineau hills near Ottawa. We were in fact drinking, toking and bonking, but whatevers…
Anyway, one Sunday afternoon I returned home after a two day “camping” trip I noticed a rather substantial hookah pipe sitting on the mantel place above the fireplace in the living room. The very same pipe had been buried in the backyard some weeks earlier, so I was somewhat surprised to see this ‘guilt bomb’ out in plain view of all and sundry.
The pipe remained on the mantel place for the next four days. Not a word until breakfast on Thursday morning, when my mother suddenly changed her usually friendly tone of voice and said “I guess you’ve been wondering why your hookah pipe has been sitting on the mantel place for the past few days….right?” I agreed that I had been wondering about this, and my mother motioned in the direction of our dog and said “Skippy dug it up”.
Skippy. Fricking dog done dug my me pipe. Just wait Skippy…just wait.
My mother’s tone suddenly became accusatory when she asked me who owned the pipe. “No, it’s not mine. It belongs to a friend of mine…”. I don’t think she believed me, but like your friend and his mum’s burnt knives, she just let it slide…
If I’d known you liked Lou Reed I could have put some on for you all those evenings at Pickwick’s Pub.
Cheers!