Arguing With the Ghost of Peter Laughner About His Coney Island Baby Review

Arguing With the Ghost of Peter Laughner About His Coney Island Baby Review
Album	Dark in Here
Released	June 25, 2021
Length	3:58
Previous Track	"Before I Got There"
Next Track	"Let Me Bathe in Demonic Light"

Arguing With the Ghost of Peter Laughner About His Coney Island Baby Review is the 11th song on the album Dark in Here.

Lyrics

Just imagine a time and place
Sentient objects adrift in space
Trying to do the needful math
Trying to find the secret path
Seas gone silent in the spiral shell
When you fell

Blazing torches to light the way
All fuel burned right up in just one day
Will there be another way?
That won't be for you to say
You who took with you the ancient spell
When you fell

Hurt too hard too long and die too young
Silver dollar glistening on your tongue

May your passage be assured
There may your foul afflictions all be cured
Systems closing down on several fronts
You will always have been here once
Cap the west's final wildcat well
When you fell
when you fell
when you fell

Comments by John Darnielle About this Song

• "Finally, 'Arguing With the Ghost of Peter Laughner About His Coney Island Baby Review' is for David Berman, now at peace to our collective loss forever." -- Dark in Here liner notes
• "The song is not actually about that at all, that's an elliptical song title, right.... Lou Reed is this pivotal figure for many young men especially, young songwriter or would-be rock-and-roll-songwriter men especially, right, and for me, when I was fourteen, I had something like forty different Lou Reed records.... In any case of hero worship, what happens eventually? Well, eventually you turn on the hero, eventually you decide that he has let you down, you know. Uh, whether it's a new work, or whether it's some interview he gave or whatever, it's an inevitable process, right. And so Lou, as he's going through the seventies and exploring other types of music, every Lou Reed fan eventually hits this wall and says that Lou has lost it, that Lou is not doing good work anymore. As it happens, Coney Island Baby, I consider his masterpiece. I think it's the best Lou Reed album, absolutely wonderful. But a lot of Lou Reed fans, including Peter Laughner, uh, were pretty bummed about it.... So Laughner is -- he writes this review of Coney Island Baby, he hates it, he's furious, right. But what he's furious with is that Lou Reed is a father figure to many young men who are trying to work out what does rock and roll mean in their lives, and you can get really deep into thinking about this stuff, but the song is about David Berman, uh, who was -- sorry -- um, David Berman was the best lyricist of my generation and could think about these things, uh, with, uh, great clarity, um. He would have known what I was -- he would have figured out the song title, uh, quickly, 'cause he had a very quick mind. So the song's long title and that elliptical process, uh, is a tribute to the guy I consider the best of us." -- 2022-03-26 Saturday Morning radio interview (25:33 to 28:20)

Things Referenced in this Song

• Peter Laughner's 1976 review of the album Coney Island Baby by Lou Reed.

Live Shows this Song Was Played at

Dark in Here

Track list: "Parisian Enclave" • "The Destruction of the Kola Superdeep Borehole Tower" • "Mobile" • "Dark in Here" • "Lizard Suit" • "When a Powerful Animal Comes" • "To the Headless Horseman" • "The New Hydra Collection" • "The Slow Parts on Death Metal Albums" • "Before I Got There" • "Arguing With the Ghost of Peter Laughner About His Coney Island Baby Review" • "Let Me Bathe in Demonic Light"