Lou Reed RIP

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.

Well yeah, but I meant ignorant in the general sense, not ignorant of a particular canon. If someone doesn't know who Barack Obama is, I'd call him ignorant. If he doesn't know who Lou Reed is, I wouldn't (especially if he's in his 30s or younger).

in the year 2013 his legacy is so far in the past, and/or heard in such marginal genres, that even someone quite knowledgeable 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.

you weren't talking about "random people" here, but "knowledgeable" pop music fans. Ignorance is not bad, since there will always be stuff you haven't heard, but someone who has no familiarity with the Velvet Underground is almost by definition not a knowledgeable pop music fan.

I'm having lunch with my 64-year-old dad today. He was 19 in 1968, big Beatles fan, lived in Memphis, could name every No. 1 song of the Nixon Administration... and I don't know if he could name one Velvet Underground song.

He likely knows about the Velvet Underground, about Andy Warhol, but does he know "What Goes On" off the top of his head? I don't think so, but I'll find out.

Hi,

This thread is on ILE.

thx.

We are lucky to have pplains' dad, the ultimate measure of average musical knowledge, as a resource.

He will happily tell anyone about the time Elvis took his sister to ride the ferris wheel at Libertyland.

"But wait, Elvis didn't have a sister," you say...

I know it's kind of pointless to argue with you, Tuomas, but wouldn't you think people would at least know about Herbie Hancock's association with Miles Davis and some of his better known tunes such as "Watermelon Man," "Cantaloupe Island" and "Maiden Voyage" as well as the albums they might have been on?

I'm having lunch with my 64-year-old dad today. He was 19 in 1968, big Beatles fan, lived in Memphis, could name every No. 1 song of the Nixon Administration... and I don't know if he could name one Velvet Underground song.

He likely knows about the Velvet Underground, about Andy Warhol, but does he know "What Goes On" off the top of his head? I don't think so, but I'll find out.

Yeah. I consider myself to be a big pop music fan, and I've learned that VU were an important band by reading some books and hearing people talk about them, but all I know about them beyond that is that one of their album covers was designed by Andy Warhol, and that they have a song called "Heroin".

Velvet Underground had no hit singles or albums, Lou Reed had one or two. So it shouldn't be surprising if a pop (as in "popular") music fan only know those records and nothing else.

Elvis story just made this whole derail worth it.

This is like what happens if you try to request a VU song from a Classic Rock station: "we only play songs that hit the top 40"

there is a similar topical thread on ILM, Mark G, except I was hoping this one would be more about Lou the icon, as I started it 6 years ago to join the fun of joke obit threads about icons like Jennifer Aniston and Fidel Castro.

Well yeah, but I meant ignorant in the general sense, not ignorant of a particular canon. If someone doesn't know who Barack Obama is, I'd call him ignorant. If he doesn't know who Lou Reed is, I wouldn't (especially if he's in his 30s or younger).

trainspotting made most people know who he was, and the re-release of that awful cover of "perfect day", at least from a european perspective. i would consider someone p ignorant if they didn't know who he was on the back of that, even.

I mean, I know you all know how much I love playing Capt Sav-a-Tuomas here, but yeah, President Keyes hits it. I spent so much time answering phone calls at the classic rock station, taking requests from people who wanted to hear "Baby, Take a Walk on the Wild Side" by David Bowie. Lou Reed was to many some sort of David Essex, one-hit wonder.

If you think that's sad, then you'll really not want to know how many songs the average classic rock radio listener could name by T. Rex.

Hi, dr.

My point was that people on this thread should not assume (or insist) musical knowledge on any contrib, as this is not ILm here.

trainspotting made most people know who he was, and the re-release of that awful cover of "perfect day", at least from a european perspective. i would consider someone p ignorant if they didn't know who he was on the back of that, even.

Well yeah, I'm sure most European people who were aware of pop music in the 90s would know the song, but not necessarily anything else about the guy. As Pplains says, they might just think he was an old one-hit wonder who got to remake that one hit with the UK stars of the 90s.

And it is those people that the DM are telling, that he was a big drug user who encouraged everyone else to do likewise, and that Sid Vicious died because of him.

Sid Vicious the wrestler?

which has contributed more to the world: lou reed or finland?

xpost thread's in ILE so we should only talk about Reed's acting and political views here

Feel like this example has finally enabled me to understand in detail what is so annoying about this shtick of Tuomas's but I can't type it into my phone right now.

/fermats_last_theorem

best film appearances:

1) dick producer in One-Trick Pony
2) those monologues in Blue in the Face
3) keeping me briefly awake in Faraway So Close!

Fred Maher, who was in Scritti Politti, makers of "synth pop crap."

tuomas otm except, admittedly, for the 'knowledgeable pop fan' thing

I mean maybe if it was still the early eighties and you still had to go to Bleecker Bob's to get your VU or you were an Onion Area man stuck in the 80s, but all the intervening decades of Tower and Virgin megastores, deluxe box sets reissues, MTV, cable television, streaming services, PBS documentaries, Trainspotting, Doors Movie cameo, Wes Anderson movies, entire generations of bands citing them as an influence, generation that would know who he was all grown up and running things, the Czech's naming a revolution after them, the Israeli's naming a spider after him. My dad, like PPs, wouldn't know who he was, but he wouldn't be able to name a Beatles tune either. Not a good sample set.

Forgot to mention shelf full of books like Please Kill Me, From Velvets to Voidoids, Uptight, recent coffee table books devoted specifically to the VU.

I never know how to gauge these things, who's gonna who what about whom. But I was completely stunned and shocked to hear, along with the usual "Walk On The Wild Side," clips of "Heroin" and Metal Machine Music on the NBC News piece on Reed the other night. I don't know if there's someone at NBC News who's a huge Reed/Velvets fan, or if it was an accurate reflection of what most people know about Reed.

I mean, jeez, even our local newscasts (upstate NY) did stories about Reed's passing that highlighted the Velvets.