Lou Reed RIP

i do think there's a huge swath of people who think of lou reed as some guy who had one memorable ditty (walk on the wild side) once upon a time, like he was david essex or something.

listening to new york, remembering that WXRT played the shit out of this, deep cuts included, not just when it came out but for a few years after. in 93 I had a English professor who insisted upon playing songs from this and discussing them like poetry and the experience was so embarrassing that I never thought I'd come back to the album. it's not bad really.

there's this whole thing about lou being a prick to journalists but if you read his Invisible Jukebox in the wire he comes across as like this affable excitable nerd "omg this miles record!!" and it made me lose all sympathy for any interviewer that he ever treated like shit cause like, all he wanted to do was talk about records! And surely this was plain! and if you can't do that, you don't deserve the job.

yeah, he only got pissed off when people would ask questions about his public image, or how he felt about how certain of records were "perceived" by different sorts of audiences, etc. after forty-odd years journalists should have gotten the gist.

Also bristled at questions about his personal life. Presumably because he was smart enough to know that shit didnt matter.

i do think there's a huge swath of people who think of lou reed as some guy who had one memorable ditty (walk on the wild side) once upon a time, like he was david essex or something.

heh in the UK we used to have this carcrash called "the culture show" and I remember the host flirting w reed and basically asking tough questions like "why are you so great" and "why do your toes taste so nice" and at the end of the interview lou said "just so you know, there is now one english journalist I like". The scoundrel!

From earlier this year, and worth noting:

http://dangerousminds.net/comments/rachel_lou_reeds_transsexual_muse

but Redd, we're in New York.

I was just about to ask why is Rachel such a big unknown this far on.

thanks for that Ned

"why do your toes taste so nice"

pretty sure Lou would have answered this

At least I knew the name Rachel if not much else but Bettye Kronstadt I never heard about at all until I read the Luc Sante thing.

xp I'm paraphrasing I guess

Thread reminds me that I once played in band with fourth-rate Lou Reed imitator and when he gave me a tape to learn tunes off it was recorded over cassette version of Michael Franks album with "Popsicle Toes."

bum bum bum popsicle toes
bum bum bum popsicle toes

I guess result of my poll was that older people at the very least knew the big songs off Loaded and the first Velvet albums as well as some of the solo stuff whereas the discerning youth of today know all the Velvet Underground albums as well as some Factory anecdotes and other biographical material. But yeah, after all it is New York City which is the place where.

Reed answered questions about his appearance in the commercial, telling the students that Honda was supporting him more then he was supporting the brand, and Bob Dylan, saying that everyone was lucky to be alive on earth with Dylan, among others, recalled Gass.

my straw poll, first Velvets album

I knew Walk on the Wild Side and that was about it, and then in college I read a book that mentioned the song Venus in Furs, so I went out and found a used copy of Velvet Underground & Nico, my first Lou/Velvets purchase. And then I read the Venus in Furs book and came to the realization that I would have been more content just knowing the song but it was an educational excursion. And I fell in love with Nico for a good while as a result so I owe Lou quite a lot.

Anyone dip into his photography at all? I have his New York book of photos, I dig it.

The final interview, apparently: http://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/oct/29/lou-reed-last-interview

i do think there's a huge swath of people who think of lou reed as some guy who had one memorable ditty (walk on the wild side) once upon a time, like he was david essex or something.

This is me, pretty much. I've never cared for classic rock or punk rock, so I couldn't really name any other song by the dude than "Walk on the Wild Side" (which I prefer as the Finnish-language cover version done by the great jazz/pop singer Lasse Mårtenson) and "Perfect Day" (which I wouldn't know if it wasn't for Trainspotting). I'm not trying to be willfully ignorant, and I recognize that a lot of people were influenced by Reed, but IMO in the year 2013 his legacy is so far in the past, and/or heard in such marginal genres, that even someone quite knowledgable in pop music might not know him for anything else than those two hits, unless he was specifically into the specific subgenres of rock where he might still be valued highly.

That said, I've nothing against the dude, just wanted to point out that people who know him for only one or two tunes aren't necessarily ignorant. RIP.

p

wow tell us more about not liking rock music tuomas never heard that before what a fascinating posting style keep up
the good work

Haha, from that interview story:

"Don't mention David Bowie's album," his publicist warned, half-jokingly, as the interviewer before me left. "The last guy who did that got the wrong side of Lou."

When I was kid all I knew about Lou Reed was this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2JXy1Z9ovs

Does Perfect Day ever get performed on X Factor or similar shows?

Tuomas only mourns true musical visionaries and legends:

Scatman John: C/D?

well lotsa ppl just like horrible contemporary pop

Tuomas only mourns true musical visionaries and legends:

Scatman John: C/D?

I had no idea the amount you mourn a musician should be proportionate to his historical importance. It's sad that both of them died, but Scatman John's dead made me sadder than Lou Reed's, because his music meant more to me personally, and because he was only in his 50s when he died.

Thread taking inevitable turn here

wow tell us more about not liking rock music tuomas never heard that before what a fascinating posting style keep up
the good work

― buzza, Wednesday, October 30, 2013 4:08 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the Fresh Air retrospective began with Gross saying that she once tried to interview Reed, but he walked off after several minutes, annoyed by her questions.

"Don't mention INSERT_RANDOM_TOPIC_HERE," his publicist warned, half-jokingly, as the interviewer before me left. "The last guy who did that got the wrong side of Lou."

Also, feel like Lou might have been won over by Tuomas's charming naivetee- he wouldn't know enough to ask the kind of questions that bug Lou. They could have bonded over free jazz.

It's not all that charming to continually trumpet one's well-manicured ignorance as a kind of virtue

Also, feel like Lou might have been won over by Tuomas's charming naivetee-

Tuomas, a Doug Yule for the new millennium

first velvets album was the whole peel slowly and see boxset. got it from the BMG music club for something like 15$.

after that, first lou album was a compilation, then set the twilight reeling (both used).

after that, a taped c90 with transformer and berlin. i used to play the shit out of that.

then i was given a collection of classic records by someone who outgrew their record player including MMM.

after that, pretty much everything else.

How are you all ignoring the elephant that just got released into the room?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eC3108hKNZA

listening to new york, remembering that WXRT played the shit out of this, deep cuts included, not just when it came out but for a few years after. in 93 I had a English professor who insisted upon playing songs from this and discussing them like poetry and the experience was so embarrassing that I never thought I'd come back to the album. it's not bad really.

― flesh, the devil, and a wolf (wolf) (amateurist), Tuesday, October 29, 2013 9:57 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Ugh, fucking XRT drove "Busload Of Faith" into the fucking ground so much so that I grew to despise that song. It's pretty much the only reason I haven't revisited that record since '89.

first velvets album was the whole peel slowly and see boxset.

I remember buying this and one of the discs was just a bunch of 90s R&B slow jams, though the label said VU. I took it back to the store and got this incredulous clerk who refused to believe me and claimed that it was an outtakes disc so the music was naturally going to sound different from the main albums, you dummy.

the Cale-Reed demos on the first disc are horrors.

but the VU stuff ("I Can't Stand It," "One of these Days") has never sounded better.

Gross saying that she once tried to interview Reed, but he walked off after several minutes, annoyed by her questions.

*stands and applauds* Weekend Edition also played a clip of him sassing Boring Bob Edwards. "Well, I suppose I could write a song about this CHAIR, that'd be interesting..."

good lookin out pp

I wish they had played the few minutes Terry Gross got with Lou. It's always a treat to hear her fall into incoherence when someone isn't entirely pleasant.

"fall into"?

Drummer/Producer Fred Maher's email to Bob Leftsetz re working with Lou

Subject: RE: Lou Reed

Lou Reed.

Bob, I co-Produced and played drums on Lou's "New York". I did some half assed engineering too. I met Lou (Prior to "New York") through Bob Quine. I played drums on a couple of his albums, Legendary Hearts & New Sensations,
did a bit or touring with him and, then I went off to be in a POP Band called Scritti Politti.

After the 18 month rush of Scritti Politti I came back home to NYC and Lou called me to ask if I would play drums on his next record that would become "New York". I told him that I would be happy to. I was all of 23 or 24 at that time and was looking to become a record producer. I never thought I would end up Producing "New York" with Lou. It was going to be another gig with someone I knew and felt comfortable with. He liked my playing because it was simple. I was NOT a prodigy. I was just a guy with a decent sense of what was needed from a drummer.

So, Lou starts asking me (the young guy) "Who should I get to produce this
record?" I blurted out the usual suspects of that that era, Bob Clearmountain, Scott Litt and so on but, no one was interested. NO ONE. The thing that is important here is that Lou had just been signed by Seymour Stein to SIRE / Warner Bros. And he essentially had, as usual in those days of WB, total artistic
control!

After several weeks of Lou searching for someone to produce, I (brass balled twenty something year old) suggested that I produce the record. He said "What the fuck do you know about recording guitars?... All you've done is "synth pop" crap. My response was "Lou, book ONE day in a studio and let's see what happens"

He did, and that ONE day at the legendary Media Sound on 57th street changed everything. I was so cocky, I didn't even hire an engineer... I would just do it myself! Long story short, we recorded and mixed the opening track of New York, "Romeo Had Juliette" in that single day.

He called me the next morning and said "I sound like Lou Reed again for the
first time in years... Let's do this". What we did that day ("Romeo Had Juliette") IS the first cut on "New York". He did not want to change a single thing about it. No remix, no overdubs, nothing.

Although I was a child and fan of technology, I knew that this record would best be served by using NO modern appliances. No drum machines, no automation assisted mixing, nothing. My main inspiration was the recently release Leonard Cohen record, "I'm Your Man". It was my first time hearing ANY Leonard Cohen but, what struck me was the level of the vocal. It was LOUD. soaring above the music. Yes, the underpinning "score" of "I'm You Man" was synthetic but, The song, The Lyrics were the thing.

Having been "just the young drummer" on two previous Lou records, I suffered through and producers and engineers trying to get Lou to "sing". Observing the relentless desire of those producers and engineers to DELIVER a new Lou Reed hit. Lou was not a singer per se. He was a Pre-Punk Punk. Spoken, half sung words and "sort of" melodies were his strength. Raw, in your face story telling was the conceptual lynch pin of New York.

I suggested that we take it one step further and have no piano, organ or any other kind of keyboards on the record. I'm not sure how long it was from his initially contacting me to play on "his next record" to actually starting in the studio but, the whole thing took Six weeks. The funny thing about that time was that while we were recording New York, I was having my first major radio and sales success with a record I had produced a year earlier, Information Society. So, from that moment on, my fate was sealed. I would never be "That Producer" with that "Go To" Sound. I didn't get many gigs from the "Big Time" Success of Information Society but, I did get lots of work and respect from Lou's New York.
Lou Believed in me. Lou gave me one of the biggest breaks I ever had and will always be grateful.

Rest in peace Lou.

Cheers - Fred Maher

aw, I had no idea Maher was that young back then!

It's not all that charming to continually trumpet one's well-manicured ignorance as a kind of virtue

My point was that if you aren't well-versed in alternative rock canon, and/or if you weren't alive in the 70s, it's quite likely you know Lou Reed only as the guy who did "Walk on the Wild Side" and "Perfect Day", the only lasting hits he's had. Just because ILX is full of people who know their canon from A to Z doesn't mean that people who aren't that familiar with that canon are guilty of ignorance. It's not like he's Mick Jagger or Paul McCartney, an artist who's legacy is commonly known even among people who'd never listened to his records.

Like, if Herbie Hancock (one of my favourite musicians) died today, I would be immensely sad, but I wouldn't expect some random person who's not into jazz to say anything more than "Oh, wasn't he that guy who had that tune with scratching and robot arms in the video?".

doesn't mean that people who aren't that familiar with that canon are guilty of ignorance

This is the definition of ignorance. Ignorance just means not knowing about something. So if you don't know the canon, then you are ignorant of it.