Lou Reed - R.I.P.

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Captain Bacardi

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Rock legend Lou Reed has died according to Rolling Stone and The Guardian in the U.K. He was 71. No report yet as to the cause of death. Reed was a part of the Velvet Underground and scored solo hits such as "Walk On The Wild Side". From Rolling Stone:

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/n...d-leader-and-rock-pioneer-dead-at-71-20131027

Lou Reed, Velvet Underground Leader and Rock Pioneer, Dead at 71
New York legend, who helped shape nearly fifty years of rock music, underwent a liver transplant in May


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Lou Reed, a massively influential songwriter and guitarist who helped shape nearly fifty years of rock music, died today. The cause of his death has not yet been released, but Reed underwent a liver transplant in May.

With the Velvet Underground in the late Sixties, Reed fused street-level urgency with elements of European avant-garde music, marrying beauty and noise, while bringing a whole new lyrical honesty to rock & roll poetry. As a restlessly inventive solo artist, from the Seventies into the 2010s, he was chameleonic, thorny and unpredictable, challenging his fans at every turn. Glam, punk and alternative rock are all unthinkable without his revelatory example. "One chord is fine," he once said, alluding to his bare-bones guitar style. "Two chords are pushing it. Three chords and you're into jazz."

Lewis Allan "Lou" Reed was born in Brooklyn, in 1942. A fan of doo-wop and early rock & roll (he movingly inducted Dion into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1989), Reed also took formative inspiration during his studies at Syracuse University with the poet Delmore Schwartz. After college, he worked as a staff songwriter for the novelty label Pickwick Records (where he had a minor hit in 1964 with a dance-song parody called "The Ostrich"). In the mid-Sixties, Reed befriended Welsh musician John Cale, a classically trained violist who had performed with groundbreaking minimalist composer La Monte Young. Reed and Cale formed a band called the Primitives, then changed their name to the Warlocks. After meeting guitarist Sterling Morrison and drummer Maureen Tucker, they became the Velvet Underground. With a stark sound and ominous look, the band caught the attention of Andy Warhol, who incorporated the Velvets into his Exploding Plastic Inevitable. "Andy would show his movies on us," Reed said. "We wore black so you could see the movie. But we were all wearing black anyway."

"Produced" by Warhol and met with total commercial indifference when it was released in early 1967, VU’s debut The Velvet Underground & Nico stands as a landmark on par with the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and Bob Dylan's Blonde On Blonde. Reed's matter-of-fact descriptions of New York’s bohemian demimonde, rife with allusions to drugs and S&M, pushed beyond even the Rolling Stones’ darkest moments, while the heavy doses of distortion and noise for its own sake revolutionized rock guitar. The band’s three subsequent albums – 1968’s even more corrosive sounding White Light/White Heat, 1969’s fragile, folk-toned The Velvet Underground and 1970’s Loaded, which despite being recorded while he was leaving the group, contained two Reed standards, “Rock & Roll” and “Sweet Jane,” were similarly ignored. But they’d be embraced by future generations, cementing the Velvet Underground’s status as the most influential American rock band of all time.

After splitting with the Velvets in 1970, Reed traveled to England and, in characteristically paradoxical fashion, recorded a solo debut backed by members of the progressive-rock band Yes. But it was his next album, 1972’s Transformer, produced by Reed-disciple David Bowie, that pushed him beyond cult status into genuine rock stardom. “Walk On the Wild Side,” a loving yet unsentimental evocation of Warhol’s Factory scene, became a radio hit (despite its allusions to oral sex) and “Satellite of Love” was covered by U2 and others. Reed spent the Seventies defying expectations almost as a kind of sport. 1973’s Berlin was brutal literary bombast while 1974’s Sally Can’t Dance had soul horns and flashy guitar. In 1975 he released Metal Machine Music, a seething all-noise experiment his label RCA marketed as a avant-garde classic music, while 1978’s banter-heavy live album Take No Prisoners was a kind of comedy record in which Reed went on wild tangents and savaged rock critics by name (“Lou sure is adept at figuring out new ways to $#!^ on people,” one of those critics, Robert Christgau, wrote at the time). Explaining his less-than-accommodating career trajectory, Reed told journalist Lester Bangs, “My bull$#!^ is worth more than other people’s diamonds.”

Reed’s ambiguous sexual persona and excessive drug use throughout the Seventies was the stuff of underground rock myth. But in the Eighties, he began to mellow. He married Sylvia Morales and opened a window into his new married life on 1982’s excellent The Blue Mask, his best work since Transformer. His 1984 album New Sensations took a more commercial turn and 1989’s New York ended the decade with a set of funny, politically cutting songs that received universal critical praise. In 1991, he collaborated with Cale on Songs For Drella, a tribute to Warhol. Three years later, the Velvet Underground reunited for a series of successful European gigs.

Reed and Morales divorced in the early Nineties. Within a few years, Reed began a relationship with musician-performance artist Laurie Anderson. The two became an inseparable New York fixture, collaborating and performing live together, while also engaging in civic and environmental activism. They were married in 2008.

Reed continued to follow his own idiosyncratic artistic impulses throughout the ‘00s. The once-decadent rocker became an avid student of T'ai Chi, even bringing his instructor onstage during concerts in 2003. In 2005 he released a double CD called The Raven, based on the work of Edgar Allen Poe. In 2007, he released an ambient album titled Hudson River Wind Meditations. Reed returned to mainstream rock with 2011’s Lulu, a collaboration with Metallica.

“All through this, I’ve always thought that if you thought of all of it as a book then you have the Great American Novel, every record as a chapter,” he told Rolling Stone in 1987. “They’re all in chronological order. You take the whole thing, stack it and listen to it in order, there’s my Great American Novel.”



Capt. Bacardi
 
Hmmmmm, and my brother-in-law asked me if "Reed" was Lou's real last name & I sure didn't think this was why he'd gotten brought up...

Had a lot of Reed's early work, and loved his documentaries on disc... This is really sad news, for sure...


-- Dave
 
Lou Reed made his only local appearance on April 30, 2008 at the TN Theater in Knoxville at age 66. Sure glad I caught that performance.
JB
 
Lou Reed is in the same league as Bob Dylan (as a singer) for me....I don't get the appeal. I've never heard a performance by either one of them that I've liked. If I never hear "Walk On the Wild Side" again my life would be improved.

But....there are lots of artists I don't like, so that doesn't mean that either one of these guys is a bad artist. Just not my taste. I just don't get what it is about them that appeals to people. A singer like Jim Morrison, I can understand his appeal. But Reed, I just don't get.

Having said that...R.I.P. I just won't be buying the best-of album!
 
Lou Reed is in the same league as Bob Dylan (as a singer) for me. I just don't get what it is about them that appeals to people. A singer like Jim Morrison, I can understand his appeal. But Reed, I just don't get.


I've had Berlin which while not quite as anything resembling a reference to East/West Germany, in which the way it seemed tightly coded to a novice like me in Reed's work, could quickly or as easily understand...

I bought it because bassist Tony Levin played on it, which unfortunately was only one track ("The Kids") and it had a very interesting concept, otherwise... And it was produced by Bob Ezrin, collaborating w/ Lou's post-Warhol-istically satiracle approach, but otherwise was forgetaable, save for portions of a couple songs...

I've heard of Rock And Roll Animal being very definitive, though mainly the guitar work given to Dick Wagner was all there was that was ultimately in it for me... If it did have the catchiness of Reed's "Sweet Jane" among its few other charms, albeit Louie really just being too laid-back to really convey anything... As if standing by warbling away as the band played around him (think this album was Live) was what was supposed to be so "touchstone" about his career...

"Sally Can't Dance" was the "Walk On The Wild Side" of its time w/ the "Sweet Jane"-hangover, and the accompanying album had its moments, but I decided to go furthur on in Reed's catalog just to get "Walk On The Wild Side's" home... (Forgot what LP it was ...!)

And if I MENTION "Walk On The Wild Side" one more time...-- :laugh: It was Reed's signature song, and seemed to be influenced by street and rap music, whereas that it turn seemed to have been railing against the rock 'n' roll it had been sampling off of... And about a transvestite... The only one of Lou's songs that I can think of copied, Herbie Mann covered it in a jazz version, in 1978 on his Yellow Fever album... (Hardly anymore interesting there, especially w/ Mann avoiding the very nature of the story line & only making the "Do-da-do-da-da-do-do-do-Doo-doo" of any importance in his interpretation...)

I don't think I've anything like The Blue Mask or Legendary Hearts, so whatever he'd done before might have been where I'd stopped at, as those two being at such a late of a date and the former revolving around his marriage may have bene just a bit hard for me to grasp...

And Metal Machine Music, which having heard so much bad about it, I've never had...! At the time, I was too much into Robert Fripp's Frippertronics, (I was a fan of King Crimson) of which I'd only owned a couple: No Pussyfooting (just for the interesting cover w/ Brian Eno) and of course, Exposure (an album which did have a "plot" although spoiled by a few "Part 2's" of stuff done earlier & less-listenable on stuff I'd skipped), so I had a hard enough time dealing w/ that, to really go that Avant-garde...

Oh, and Bob Dylan: There was just Greatest Hits Vol. 2 on an 8-Track that broke & got a cassette because it was before "Mighty Quinn" which was the Mannfred Mann song, as I'd later found out & luckily enough listenings of that tape (God Knows!) self-destructed it... And along that time there was the first Greatest Hits on cassette & may have had it on LP and CD, and appreciated it better...

Also had Real Live, done in 1985, backed by an interesting band, w/ Colin Allen on drums (from Focus) and even Carlos Santana guesting on it (at least him on the back cover playing w/ Dylan was the grabber) along w/ the songs & performances being justifiably inspired and inspiring to me at the time...


-- Dave
 
And Metal Machine Music, which having heard so much bad about it, I've never had.
Back in our 8-track days here at the store, we had a copy of it on 8 track. A guy bought it, and returned it thinking it was defective (or at least that's what he said). We let him pick out a different tape, partly because I'd heard about MMM and was curious what it sounded like. So after he left, I played it. I think maybe we lasted about 3 minutes before we shut it off. I wonder if anybody in the world has ever heard that thing end-to-end. (Wasn't it a 2-record set originally?)
 
The album has its fans...not many, but they're out there. Some claim it as the birth of punk rock.

Pat Metheny did a very similar album Zero Tolerance for Silence that was basically all feedback and distortion as well. A few say it's art, others say it's noise, you either love it or hate it, yet many claim it was Pat's "middle finger" final album for the record label he was departing (Geffen). :wink: The dingy, dirty fluorescent light fixture on the cover should hint to the album's contents. :wink:

Lou Reed often pushed the envelope on his recordings, never standing still, yet always influential and willing to take a chance on something working or not working. I'm no Lou Reed fan either (I can take some of it), but I'll take that restlessness over those artists who basically just remake the same album over and over again in their careers.
 
Yeah, MMM was a double-album set, surprisingly enough. I've never made it more than two or three minutes into it myself!
I would have to agree with Mike and similarly file Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground/Nico on the list of artists I personally just don't "get," but then, Reed also tended to exhibit very anti-commercial tendencies as a performer (i.e. Metal Machine Music, Berlin, Lulu, etc.; even "Wild Side" could have been a much bigger hit if not for the outrageous nature of its lyrical content, which deprived it of a lot of radio play) and my own tastes tend more often than not to land on the more commercial side of pop music. And I do have to give Reed props and say that, while I've never really gravitated towards him as a performer, I do think he had his talents as a songwriter and I do tend to like most of the cover versions I hear of his songs, especially Mott the Hoople's version of "Sweet Jane," David Bowie's cover of "White Light/White Heat," and, believe it or not, Duran Duran's version of "Femme Fatale" (which is admittedly way over-the-top, but I definitely prefer Simon LeBon's singing to Nico's, which is the biggest reason I reach for their version more often than the VU's original.)
Interestingly enough, I used to belong to a local pop band here who, during my tenure with them, used to regularly play the VU's "Who Loves the Sun?" in its live act. It was such an unusual choice for a cover, I thought, 'cause it's not one of the VU's better-known songs and it's one of the most atypically commercial songs Reed ever penned back in that era and tends to get written off by critics as a transparent attempt at a hit single for that reason. For anyone here who normally doesn't gravitate towards the Velvet Underground's music, that's one song you may actually like.
 
I always dug Reed's music, just because it was so different. I enjoy artists who push the envelope. I always thought of him more as a poet with a rock band behind him. He wasn't conventional at all, and it seemed that he didn't really care what anybody thought about his music. He did it his way and made no apologies for it. I wish more artists were like that these days.



Capt. Bacardi
 
I went to the 8 Track Shack website which I wrote to them about extra tracks (not on album) or edited versions & the 8 track of Lou Reed "Berlin" has more instrumental music than on the original album!! Matt Clark Sanford, MI
 
If you look at the comments on Metal Machine Music on Amazon, it's surprising how much some people like it. One guy said his girlfriend actually studies to it.
 
I always dug Reed's music, just because it was so different. I enjoy artists who push the envelope. I always thought of him more as a poet with a rock band behind him. He wasn't conventional at all, and it seemed that he didn't really care what anybody thought about his music. He did it his way and made no apologies for it. I wish more artists were like that these days.

In which case, you could simply cite Lou Reed as the East Coast's Frank Zappa...! :D

John Gutterman & Owen O'Donnell cited Metal Machine Music as one of the '100 Rock 'N' Roll Records'in their book... Right down to saying: "If you think that this album is defective and decide to return it, YOU WON'T BE LYING!!!!" :evil:

But at this point, a record I'd avoided, I think I'm tempted to finally buy & really see what it is all about...! (With Headphones, as well?) :phones:

Like I said, I enjoyed Reed's documentaries, while at the same time, didn't quite understand how there was such a vast interest in his work, proving that Velvet Underground & post-Velvet really WAS underground...! As that was what I was typically into enough at the time, though clearly strayed away from his later work, no matter how much New York really was one of his best later works & a very credible, masterful comeback, after a brief, inactive period...


-- Dave
 
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