Saint John’s Eve is a big deal in my hometown of Porto, in Portugal. The night of June 23rd into the 24th marks the peak of midsummer festivities and coincides with the celebration of the city’s cherished patron saint, through a unique merge of Catholic and pagan rituals that stretches back centuries. There are bonfires on the beach, sardine barbecues, music coming from virtually everywhere, and midnight fireworks over the Douro river.
I lost my virginity on Saint John’s Eve. I did acid for the first time on Saint John’s Eve (different years). It’s like the entire city enters a vortex of collective madness, enabling any behavior that would normally be considered dangerous, transgressive, or simply plain weird.
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Saint John’s Eve 1980 was also the day Lou Reed arrived in Porto. Enjoying a day off after his Lisbon date, he was only scheduled to play the city’s Pavilhão Infante de Sagres on the 24th. I have no idea who planned his itinerary, but that person was clearly oblivious to the possible repercussions of letting Lou Reed loose amidst such festivities. Though what exactly happened remains to a certain extent unclear, the fact is there was no concert the following evening.
Lou Reed’s Growing Up in Public tour hadn’t been without the occasional mishap. In Madrid, he arrived almost two hours late to an impatient and mildly infuriated audience, and his performance was plagued with technical issues and an object thrown in his direction that made him leave the stage after a mere 20 minutes. Unsurprisingly, the evening ended in a riot. Though Lisbon’s show also suffered a considerable delay, reviews spoke instead of a mix of bewilderment and delight as Reed played a full three hours of hits both old and new (Ana Rocha from Música & Som magazine called him “Lou(co),” meaning “crazy,” “fool”). Naturally, his fans up north were expecting to be treated to a similar experience.
However, the moment Lou Reed set foot in Porto on the afternoon of June 23rd he immediately sensed something off. Noticing the streets surrounding his hotel filled with people in euphoric (and already slightly inebriated) commotion, he promptly inquired what the hell was going on. A revolt? Another riot? After all, the Carnation Revolution which overthrew four decades of Salazar’s right-wing dictatorship had happened only six years prior.
The hotel manager found his curiosity amusing and explained it was Saint John’s Eve.
“So… what do you do?”
“Basically you just go out on the streets and celebrate. You eat sardines, dance, jump over fires, hit people on the head with plastic hammers or garlic flowers to wish them good luck.”
Lou Reed seemed interested.
“But go see for yourself,” the manager added. “It goes on until dawn.”
(This is the story as it was told to me by my late grandfather, who was friends with the hotel manager.)
By the time evening came, Lou Reed was enthusiastically armed with his very own plastic hammer, ready to go out and mingle. His entourage knew it would be impossible to dissuade him from this impromptu walk on the wild side, so they suggested instead that a label representative should chaperone.
Lou apparently found it immensely more fun than what he was initially expecting, because when a timid suggestion was made that they return to the hotel by 11pm., he would have none of it. Engulfed in the unpredictable Dionysian crowds rocking him left and right like a 15th century caravel, Reed vowed to carry on until morning like locals traditionally do.
This is where the facts get tangled up with the myth, which over the years has acquired proportions of a proper legend. In fact, the beauty of this story lies precisely in it being so overly ripe for the kind of speculation that constitutes this type of lore, complete with a considerable number of alleged Lou Reed sightings over the evening: There’s always a cousin of a cousin who swears they saw him downing shots of white port like there’s no tomorrow to the umpteenth rendition of “São João Bonito,” or a family friend’s dinner party anecdote consisting of the time they shared a joint with Lou Reed on Homem do Leme beach. “Lou Reed even said he wanted to use plastic hammers on his show,” Polygram representative João Afonso later recalled. “He went to every tavern, ate sardines and caldo verde, drank a lot of wine and whisky, and took God knows what else.”
But while the official version speaks of a very hungover (and even feverish) Lou Reed being thoroughly incapacitated after having returned to the hotel at an ungodly hour, some branches of the legend claim label representatives actually lost him, and that for a while he was thought gone forever. Though such incidents frequently occur during Saint John’s celebrations (it’s common to see groups of people holding hands in a single line as they make their way through the crowd in order to avoid exactly this), it’s easy to imagine how panicked his chaperones must have felt. According to these rumors, the decision to cancel the concert actually resulted not from Lou Reed’s deplorable state but from a pure and simple inability to locate him.
He was in Porto alright—but where?
Whether Lou Reed was indeed briefly swallowed by Porto’s great midsummer delirium or merely unable to fulfill his musical obligations, Saint John’s Eve 1980 will forever be remembered as the night Porto out-partied Lou Reed. The following week, a newspaper article appropriately titled “Porto’s Discontent” voiced the fans’ very palpable disappointment with the unfortunate no-show while also attempting to place the blame: “Is it the musician’s, whose personality consists in finding new ways of embarrassing concert organizers? Or is it the (national) organizers’, whose personality consists in overestimating hipness?”
Lou Reed wouldn’t return to the city until 2005, to play at the inauguration of Casa da Música—coincidentally, not far from where he had stayed in 1980. “Lou Reed is indebted to the people of Porto,” João Afonso told Jornal de Notícias at the time. “This show has been 25 years in the making.” Fittingly, Reed closed a rather uneventful set with “Perfect Day” as the sole encore: This would be his first and last performance in Porto.
Last December I was at a Christmas dinner with some friends, and after getting our bellies full with delicious francesinhas (look it up, Anthony Bourdain knew what’s good) we took a stroll downtown to see the lights. Along the way the 12-year old son of one of the couples decided to tell me about how Saint John’s Eve is his absolute favorite holiday because he always manages to escape his parents sometime during the evening and have some fun on his own. After his enthusiastic narrative of temporary emancipation, I told him this story. He seemed to find it amusing, but his comment at the end was “Who’s Lou Reed?”
Oh, you’ll get there, kid. You’ll get there.
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