Lou Reed/Metallica Collabo Anticipation Thread

ooooooOOOOOOOOOOOOooooooo iCED HONAYYYYYYEAHHH

I made it about 3 minutes into track 3. I'm done.

YOU HAVE TO KEEP GOING

DON'T GIVE UP!!!

"junior dad" is at the end dude

i mean that.

if you feel like giving up on this record skip to "junior dad"

This thread is informative, as we now know which board member would have walked out of the first performance of ” Rite of Spring”

XD

Harsh but otm

my friends and i just did this: http://blogs.villagevoice.com/music/2011/10/lou_reed_metallica_lulu_lyrics.php

"Don't Cheat On Me" sounds like if "Saturday Night Special" and John Stewart's "Gold" were mashed-up and someone added an outtake of Bob Seger pinching a loaf and singing the lyrics to "Atomic Dog".

Could used a gradual five-minute fade-out as well.

i officially don't want to listen to any other music

what is other music, even?

It's a store and oh never mind

what is democracy?

for iced honey, any junior dad would give up his only begotten little dog.

I love how they go for fake out endings on more than one track.

'C'MON JAMES!' definitely the highlight so far (currently on 'little dog')

I think Little Dog is the worst track.

Are we sure the "spermless like a girl" part of "Frustration" isn't from one of the fakes?

This thread is informative, as we now know which board member would have walked out of the first performance of ” Rite of Spring”

This thread is informative, as we now know which board member thinks 2011 Lou Reed = Stravinsky.

Your are pretty salty about this album huh?

i want to hear Jesu cover Brandenburg Gate.

unperson: what's with your frustration, little dog? don't like the view over from brandenburg gate?

kind of interesting playlist from Loooou in rolling stone. I touch myself!

Reed describes these 10 songs as the cream of his "mental jukebox," from songs he loved growing up to ones he discovered later. All reflect the flab-free aesthetic he perfected first with the Velvet Underground, then as a solo artist. "One of the beautiful things about rock is the no-kidding-around," he says. "I wanted to get a sense of closeness, like William Burroughs. That's asking for trouble: Who could beat Uncle Bill? But there was a way you could: in a rock song."

1."Smoke From Your Cigarette" | Lillian Lech & Mellows, 1955
Lillian Leach has the most beautiful smoky voice, like a femme fatale. And the tempo is so slow. Even though it is doowop, the record transcends it. They had a male lead singer, but he was smart enough not to sing this.

2."Angel Baby" | Rosie and the Originals, 1960
I love the stumbled beat and the out-of-tune guitar. It's teenage lust at its peak. Warhol played this constantly at the Factory, with Edith Piaf and Maria Callas.

3."The End of the World" | Skeeter Davis, 1962
If there is a better bar song, I'd like to know what it is.

4."I Touch Myself" | Divinyls
This captures a whole different world of being in love than these other songs.

5."Save The Last Dance For Me" | The Drifters, 1960
[Co-writer] Doc Pomus was getting married. He had polio, he's in his wheelchair, and his friends were dancing with his wife-to-be. He started writing on a place card: "You can dance, you can carry on." Doc's daughter gave me the place card. You will never hear this song the same way after knowing that.

6."The Wanderer" | Dion, 1961
I always loved that guy-group thing. "The Wanderer" – "I tear open my shirt and show 'em Rosie on my chest" – is hard to beat. Isn't that a weird title from some white guy in the Bronx? That would be a dream. He's not going to wander past the A train.

7."Hello Mary Lou" | Ricky Nelson, 1961
It's the James Burton guitar solo. [Guitarist] Robert Quine once made me a tape of all of the Burton solos from Ricky Nelson's records. Burton had this great way of sliding into each one. When he played with Elvis Presley, it got buried in the big band, the gospel choir and the 14 banana-and-bacon sandwiches.

8."Ooby Dooby" | Roy Orbison and Teen Kings, 1956
He's known for the great ballads, but this is rockabilly at its best. Roy Orbison is the real Ricky Nelson here. The other side, "Go Go Go," has a great guitar break, like the white version of a Chuck Berry solo. A dead aim – two fast rockabilly songs on the same record.

9."Foot of Pride" | Bob Dylan, 1983
That's the song I picked to do at Bobfest [in New York in 1992]. I'd been listening to it almost every day for two months. It's so fucking funny: "Did he make it to the top? Well, he probably did and dropped." There are so many verses, it was impossible to learn. G.E. Smith, who was playing with me, turned the pages. There is a lot of anger here. It's not the Three Stooges.

10."Mother" | John Lennon, 1970
One of the greatest songs ever. It has straight-out-of-the heart feeling about a filial relationship, done in the simplest way, with the simplest language possible. It breaks your heart – a very brave recording. When I was touring Europe recently, we did "Mother." It was fun going for the primal note.

i officially don't want to listen to any other music

wait, waht?

joek, yes?

You are pretty salty about this album huh?

"Salty" implies that I'm angry about the fact that it's fucking awful. I'm not. I'm very disappointed that Metallica participated in this project, because I like all but two of their (primary) albums (Load and ReLoad - I don't care about S&M, even though it should have been an early warning as to their vulnerability to awful ideas). And/but even the extremely low expectations I had for Lou Reed's participation - based on my belief that roughly 95 percent of his output is garbage and his critical reputation is one of those undying mysteries which I will never, ever be able to understand - fell short of the mark. His vocals on this thing are absolutely awful, even by the standards of his own previous output. He sounds like he recorded the vocals for each track in a single take after being awakened from a coma. He doesn't even attempt to give the lyrics any kind of meter or cadence that matches the music behind him. He just shouts arrhythmically, letting his voice crack not for dramatic purposes but just because he's lost control of his instrument in old age. It's boring, depressing and basically the opposite of pleasurable in every way. But I'm not mad. If anything, I'm happy, because I work for Roadrunner Records, and the new Megadeth album comes out the same day as Lulu, and the latter's total irredeemable shittiness absolutely guarantees that for once in his career, Dave Mustaine will outsell Metallica.

Ok. my rites of spring post was a joke btw

opening acoustic part of brandenburg gate really reminds me of something off of New York

If anything, I'm happy, because I work for Roadrunner Records, and the new Megadeth album comes out the same day as Lulu, and the latter's total irredeemable shittiness absolutely guarantees that for once in his career, Dave Mustaine will outsell Metallica.

I don't think so. Megadeth will sell, what, 40-50,000 copes of 13 the week of the 1st, and there are still many, many Metallica fans who will still buy anything they put out, regardless of how bad it is. Even if Lulu sells a quarter of that Death Magnetic sold in its first week, it'll still probably top the US album chart. It'll be interesting to see how many Metallica fans stay away from this.

Well, I know what the iTunes pre-orders look like, and it's Megadeth > Metallica by something like 4-1. I think Metallica's gonna take a hit on this one. The taint of Reed will sink them. Especially now that people can actually hear before buying.

I love the idea that there are millions of Metallica fans who don't even know this album is coming yet. Their reactions are going to be so delightful.

there are some really good riffs on this album, i love the heavy part of dragon

i'm getting irl goosebumps from jr dad

this is the closest metallica came to being polvo

The taint of Reed!!!

that is one heavy taint

wow the end of jr dad is legitimately fucking amazing

agreed on little dog

i will go on record as saying both ILX little dogs smoke that song

the only total dud that i won't want to go back to

yeah i can't believe i listened to all of this and it actually got good in the end... ?

"the taint of reed will sink them" needs to be the title of something

unperson otm yet i unironically love this album

opening acoustic part of brandenburg gate really reminds me of something off of New York

Whole opening song has a similar chord progression and subject matter and opening-song set-the-tone feel of "Romeo Had Juliette". (Not a bad thing.)

yeah for sure..."romeo had julliette" is one of my all time fav lou songs

'It has so much rage': Metallica and Lou Reed talk about their new albumIt's a collaboration that has prompted much head-scratching, but Lou Reed and Metallica tell Edward Helmore that teaming up to make their new album was a thrill

Lou Reed and Metallica were leaving Madison Square Garden in October 2009, when Reed came up with an idea. Reed and the band had performed Sweet Jane and White Light/White Heat together at the Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame 25th anniversary concert, and Reed thought they should build on that collaboration. "Lou said: 'Let's make a record together,'" recalls Lars Ulrich, Metallica's drummer and co-leader, along with singer-guitarist James Hetfield. "We were down by the garbage and parked cars. I said: 'OK, let's do that.'"

The result is Lulu, recorded over 10 days last summer at Metallica's studio in northern California. To the backing of Metallica's formidable, stadium-shaking riffing, Reed supplies a story that touches on all manner of after-dark activities, from penetration to evisceration, flagellation to incest, blood, puke, guts and pets. And that's just disc one of the 89-minute, two-CD album. Up in the Manhattan offices of Metallica's management QPrime, the Reed-Metallica collaboration is closely guarded before release – no advance copies are sent out, and anyone wishing to hear it has to come to QPrime, to be ushered into a office where Lulu is driven at volume through band-approved Genelec speakers.

There's no mistaking Lulu's substantial recorded impact, or that the Reed-Metallica conjunction allows each to play to their respective strengths. No one is more thrilled at this conjunction than Reed himself, who is uncustomarily cheerful and at ease.

"This has so much rage it's thrilling," he says. "I've waited for a long time to have a shot at doing something like this with the right people. I'm energised and jacked up. Sometimes I find it so emotional I have to get up and turn it off."

"The music is demanding on the listener, no question," says Hal Willner, the producer of Lulu. "I don't know what to call it but it is not background music. Lou came in with material, Metallica brought the ticket and took the ride. They showed themselves incredibly courageous, open and not pandering. They always said something if they didn't want something a certain way and they were totally free to express themselves."

"I didn't expect to be involved in a process of this magnitude," says Ulrich, who is perceptibly in awe of Reed. "I'm invigorated at how absolutely awesome the record turned out. Lou walked into the studio and about seven seconds later my head was spinning like Linda Blair in the Exorcist. It was so impulsive it'll take me years to access what happened."

Two days earlier, Metallica had showed off their enduring musculature uptown at the Yankee stadium where, with the help of smoke bombs and fireworks, they showed co-headliners Anthrax, Megadeth and Slayer who remains the big dog of thrash metal. It's hard to say if Reed has much occasion to come this far uptown since he sang of heading up to Lexington and 125th, but he's in the audience, and it's easy to see why any musician, especially one as interested in – in his words – the "power of rock", would want Metallica behind them.

The way Reed tells it, theirs is a union blessed by the gods. "The moment we played together it was like: Wow! This is really serious. My guitar on top of James and Kirk [Hammett]. The odds on that working – three guitars – is almost zero. It's very hard even to get that two-guitar lock. I started playing against James – it was like, whuump!" He presses his fist in his palm. "If that hadn't happened we'd still be there …"

Although Reed has inspired a multitude of guitar bands with wraparound shades, Metallica were not among them. But the differences between their respective traditions – east coast art rock, west coast metal – didn't matter, despite the fears of some fans about the project. "I'd played with them so I didn't have to go beyond that," Reed says. "I didn't need to ask for their biography. Whatever the thing is, it exists in the playing. Feeling is everything to me in rock – to make it really happening and not degenerate into pop music. That's not to put pop down." In fact, Reed has been sneaking into dance clubs where the good sound systems are and speaks admiringly of the drum sound on Kanye West's Runaway.

Lulu was initially destined to be a covers album of a dozen or so lesser-known items from Reed's catalogue, with Metallica on board to provide backup. "I didn't know we were going to be so involved on a creative level," Ulrich says. "I was perfectly happy in a perverse way to be a backing band, because that's something we've never done."

Ten days before Reed and Willner were due to arrive at Metallica's studio in San Rafael, Reed switched the plan. Instead of recording covers, they would adapt the story of Lulu, a turbulent morality tale told across two plays – Erdgeist (Earth Spirit) and Die Büchse der Pandora (Pandora's Box) written by the German expressionist playwright Frank Wedekind at the turn of the 20th century. The idea initiated with the avant-garde stage director Robert Wilson, who has produced the play (indeed, next month he's directing Lulu in Paris, with music supplied by Reed). Reed and his wife Laurie Anderson sat down to hack a path through the melodrama to the story itself.

"Mr Glockenspiel and Mr Weingold?" Reed says, remembering his first encounters with the text. "I mean, what's actually happening? Who is she with now? It was hard to get a grip on. I was just happy it had an ending."

Despite his initial bafflement, it's not surprising Reed was drawn to the story of a beautiful, sexually powerful woman who ruins men until she is herself ruined. "Sex and death are the only subjects seriously interesting to an adult," the Lulu sleeve notes assert, quoting WB Yeats.

In Lulu, Reed reaches back to the depiction of women from an era when uninhibited sexuality demanded punishment, usually through death or the onset of madness. Wilson suggested otherwise, but Reed looked to Louise Brooks's portrayal of Lulu in the 1929 film Pandora's Box. He looked, too, at Marlene Dietrich's Lola in The Blue Angel – the ultimate femme fatale, who leads Professor Rath into a sexually induced madness, in which he crows like a cockerel. "I never forgot that image," Reed says.

Lulu's themes are ones that Reed has been worrying at for decades, first with Velvet Underground, then as a solo artist. Lulu, though, may be less damaged and more wanton than the protagonists of his earlier work. "Lulu is in my pantheon of heroines," he says, pointing out that unlike so many of his subjects, she's no New Yorker. "This is another milieu and her relationship with men is much different than some of the other women I write about."

Perhaps he's known women like Lulu?

"I don't know any man who hasn't. Berlin [Reed's 1973 double album] is based around this kind of person, though in that one she's surrounded by drugs. This has nothing to do with drugs – this is just pure sexual aggression and attraction. Then she moves on to the next."

Lulu was shocking and degenerate in Wedekind's era; she becomes a prostitute, is sold into slavery and ends up murdered by Jack the Ripper.

"She's a naughty lady, so of course she has to die. In her time she would be accused of being immoral. But she's just having a good time. What's the problem? The problem is she's a very attractive woman. They can't just walk away and find another one."

It is said Sigmund Freud admired the story of Lulu. "Well, he'd have had to," Reed says. "It's a study in the basic psychology he devoted his life to. Look at the relationships … the constant thing with the older man, but also with the son."

Conceptually, Willner suggests, the album is the next stage on from Reed's previous work with Robert Wilson, which began with Time Rocker and POEtry (which spawned Reed's album The Raven, based on the writing of Edgar Allan Poe). "These are characters that he channels in the compositions. They are complex. The music demands that the listener actually listen. That seems to be difficult for most people, which is unfortunate. As Hunter S Thompson said: 'Buy the ticket. Take the ride.'"

Reed has long since insisted that attention is paid to his lyrics and Lulu is no exception. "The idea is the same as it's been for ever. What would happen if you could write like Tennessee Williams and put it in a long-form song? Wouldn't that be amazing if you had rock with lyrics that could hold their own?"

As the story unfolded, Reed continues, and he began to see what the characters were doing to one another, he no longer needed Wilson or Wedekind as mooring points. No need to dust off the manuals on sexual decadence, then? "That's like saying, can you draw a seagull? Do I have to read up on seagulls to draw a seagull? No. I've seen a seagull. I know what a seagull does. I think I know that area cold if anyone does and I'm still here to report back."

Ulrich, who clearly enjoys Reed's deadpan delivery, is now laughing.

In Metallica, the lyrics come after the music, in an often fraught process. But since the lyrics were already written when recording began, the band were able to play to the lyrics, a process Ulrich and Hetfield found liberating. "It offered us an incredible opportunity to do something that had no boundaries around it," Ulrich says. "We could concentrate on playing."

What is odd, Ulrich continues, is the idea that the coupling is incongruous, even incoherent. "We run parallel courses in how we relate to everything around us," he says. "That's why it seemed so effortless. We've never been part of a particular movement or adhered to a particular style people want from us. Lou and James have different writing styles, but they still come from a sense of alienation, of being on the outside looking in. They use different words: Hetfield has never yet used the word 'armpit' [in a lyric] but it's one of my favourite words on the record."

For a band as prone to indecision as Metallica have been in recent years, Reed brought them the message that agonising isn't necessary. "It was an opportunity for us to rid ourselves of thought. It wasn't complicated. That's exciting for us because it may point the way for what Metallica will do in the future."

And Reed, who loves to disassemble and reassemble expectations, is as happy as can be. "When I finally heard it back I was beyond stunned. Now I don't even associate myself with it. This is as good as my writing gets. I can't do better. I listen to it and my poor heart breaks over some of what's in it."

man what quotes!

"It was an opportunity for us to rid ourselves of thought. It wasn't complicated. That's exciting for us because it may point the way for what Metallica will do in the future."

Those bastards, we could have used those quotes for the precovers! Why hold back until now!

I've seen a seagull. I know what a seagull does.

reviews are coming in

I just want to say, honestly, I’M FUCKING HOOKED ON LULU. MY GOD… This is fucking heavy shit, such good production, the drums, the guitars, the bass, the LYRICS are fucking TWISTED (in a very good way) and the vocals, well I have to say, I think they fit pretty well, I’m quite pleased with this whole thing. Just remember, Metallica and Lou Reed can do whatever the fuck they want! I’m so glad that I tuned into this, to me it was so worth the wait, literally my favorite album right now. My favorite songs on it are…. well, ALL OF THEM! They are all amazing! :) But other then The View (Amazing song), I LOVED Frustration, Dragon, iced Honey and Junior Dad. To me the best song on there is Frustration!

It sounds like Death Magnetic, mixed with Master of Puppets, the Black Album, St. Anger, and ReLoad, which happen to be my FAVORITE Metallica records! :D

\m/

or

Summary: “Do you like spaghetti? Do you like ice cream? Would you ever eat them together?”

Nothing about this seemed like a good idea when it was announced. Metallica, for all their years of being perhaps the most successful heavy metal band of all time, are unquestionably fading into the background of today’s music scene. Their partner-in-crime, Lou Reed, is now sixty-nine years old and hasn’t written anything significant in decades. Add the fact that the parties involved made careers out of entirely different styles of music, and you have Lulu. It’s bad, folks. You might have once thought that Metallica would never outsuck St.Anger, their most vilified release to date. And while this is technically not a Metallica album, the fact remains that this is the bottom of the barrel for James and the boys.

The whole thing reeks of desperation. Just from listening to the ridiculously long collection of songs, it’s fairly easy to tell that both Metallica and Lou Reed are attempting to cling to their respective reputations as a selling point. Indeed, you have to think that long-time Metallica fans will pick up this album simply because of the band involved, only to likely use it as a coaster (or a Frisbee.) For that reason, the band probably assumes that they can put out anything they want, because people are always going to buy it. That does not excuse them, however, for this miserable pile of garbage. In fact, it actually incriminates them even more for expecting everyone to buy into what they’re selling.

The music itself is just a complete and utter mess, not that any band could realistically make gold out of a senile man singing from a perspective of a female prostitute. Lou Reed sounds like a hobo that James and Lars handpicked from the dumpster behind their studio. His lyrics make absolutely no sense, and they actually border on being painful to listen to. “Waggle my ass like a dark prostitute coagulating heart-pumping blood” has to be the worst line ever conceived by man, and gems like “To be dry and spermless like a girl” and “I swallow your sharpest curdle like a coloured man’s dick” are nothing short of vomit inducing. Metallica sounds bored and lifeless, constantly repeating senseless riffs that just go nowhere. When they aren’t trying to hammer plodding riffs into the listener’s ears, they’re awkwardly plucking strings and strumming patterns that sound like Creativity Hour at the local mental hospital. I mean, at least St. Anger had songs that followed a certain formula (granted, the formula was pretty terrible.) This just sounds like a bunch of kids noodling around in their basement while Grandpa Jim rambles about life in his easy chair.

In short, this is a clear example of something that should have never seen the light of day. The best part is that these windbags actually had the audacity to make the whole thing two disks long, as if it was some kind of great achievement. When Metallica wrote “The Thing That Should Not Be” back in 1986, they were actually predicting the release of Lulu twenty-five years later. Maybe they should have retired while they were ahead and gone into the fortune-telling business. At least that way we could have been spared the downward spiral that finally hit rock bottom on this release. If Cliff could hear this, he’d probably bitch slap James and Lars until they agreed to stop making music forever. Lulu is nothing more than a future bargain-bin resident, doomed to forever be the ugly red-headed stepchild of Metallica’s career.