Lou Reed/Metallica Collabo Anticipation Thread

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.

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

"Life is like
a mayonnaise soda
Life is like
space without room
Life is like
Bacon and ice cream"
-Lou Reed, 1992

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

Sorry all, but "Junior Dad" is as good as anything Lou Reed (or anybody, to use his words) has ever done. Tightly sums up the heavy emotion behind the generational battle (disguised as the recession/OWS/whatever) going on right now. Totally vital and necessary poetry and music. A few of the details hit so close to home I can't really express it without crying. Not a joke.

So did this come out already? I sort of felt like my world was rocked earlier today, but I wasn't sure why. I figured it was because this album was out.

it leaked yesterday and then was made available streaming on http://loureedmetallica.com shortly after

streaming here:
http://www.loureedmetallica.com/listen-to-lulu.php

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http://i.imgur.com/RsWdI.pnghttp://i.imgur.com/RsWdI.pnghttp://i.imgur.com/RsWdI.pnghttp://i.imgur.com/RsWdI.pnghttp://i.imgur.com/RsWdI.pnghttp://i.imgur.com/RsWdI.pnghttp://i.imgur.com/RsWdI.pnghttp://i.imgur.com/RsWdI.pnghttp://i.imgur.com/RsWdI.pnghttp://i.imgur.com/RsWdI.png

the generational battle (disguised as the recession/OWS/whatever) going on right now

lol waht

wagglemyasslikeadarkprostitutecoagulatingheart pumpinblood c'monjames!
wagglemyasslikeadarkprostitutecoagulatingheart pumpinblood c'monjames!
wagglemyasslikeadarkprostitutecoagulatingheart pumpinblood c'monjames!
wagglemyasslikeadarkprostitutecoagulatingheart pumpinblood c'monjames!
wagglemyasslikeadarkprostitutecoagulatingheart pumpinblood c'monjames!
wagglemyasslikeadarkprostitutecoagulatingheart pumpinblood c'monjames!
wagglemyasslikeadarkprostitutecoagulatingheart pumpinblood c'monjames!
wagglemyasslikeadarkprostitutecoagulatingheart pumpinblood c'monjames!
wagglemyasslikeadarkprostitutecoagulatingheart pumpinblood c'monjames!
wagglemyasslikeadarkprostitutecoagulatingheart pumpinblood c'monjames!
wagglemyasslikeadarkprostitutecoagulatingheart pumpinblood c'monjames!
wagglemyasslikeadarkprostitutecoagulatingheart pumpinblood c'monjames!
wagglemyasslikeadarkprostitutecoagulatingheart pumpinblood c'monjames!
wagglemyasslikeadarkprostitutecoagulatingheart pumpinblood c'monjames!

http://i.imgur.com/ttENJ.png

A+

the generational battle (disguised as the recession/OWS/whatever) going on right now

lol waht

http://mail.tku.edu.tw/kiss7445/KissHomePage/Literature_Intro/goya_saturn-son.jpg

If loving this record is wrong, I don't want to be right.

It's goofy, ridiculous and awesome.

"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."

I agree that Lars will be wondering wtf this was about during the "Metallica Plays The Black Album tour" in 2016.

In 2004, Metallica's legacy seemed iffy. Their last album, St. Anger, had come under fire for its bizarre production, and a new documentary, Some Kind of Monster, chronicled their messy near-breakup. The band that perfected thrash in the '80s and stormed the charts in the '90s was adrift in the aughts.

Cut to a rosier 2011. This year, the quartet racked up two career highlights: Their globetrotting package tour, "The Big Four," with fellow metal titans Slayer, Megadeth and Anthrax. And Lulu, a 90-minute experimental collaboration with newfound soulmate Lou Reed.

The new album, which sets the former Velvet Undergrounder's psychosexual poetry to Metallica's doom-steeped riffs, feels like a breakthrough for Reed as much as the members of Metallica. There's plenty of the NYC legend's beloved abstraction on Lulu, but the art balances perfectly with the rock. "I have to have Metallica muscle," Reed asserts when asked if Lulu will influence his future work. "Sixty miles an hour won't do. It's 110 or nothing."

GQ: What were each of your preconceptions of the other before you started working on this project?

Lou Reed: I've loved Metallica since I was a kid.

Lars Ulrich: The reason we formed was to fulfill Lou's vision of one day working with us. I think we go back not only many years; we go back many lives, many planets, many solar systems.

GQ: I didn't realize! I'm curious, though, because Metallica has always been very vocal about its influences: Misfits and Diamond Head and things like that. But we've never really heard you talk about the Velvet Underground.

Lars Ulrich: Lou, the Velvet Underground, his solo material, the New York scene, all of that was inspirational to me in a bigger picture, get-out-of-bed type of way. Find a way to get on board and change the world in your own little way. Diamond Head and the Misfits and some of that stuff, they were more of a direct musical influence. This is more inspirational—on the level of wanting to be alive and wanting to do things to the best of your ability.

When I was growing up in Denmark in the '60s, my father [tennis player Torben Ulrich] had a steady stream of people through the house—jazz musicians, writers, and poets filtered through the door, to a soundtrack of everything from the Doors, to Jimi Hendrix, to the Velvet Underground, to Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, and Sonny Rollins.

Lou Reed: Dexter Gordon.

Lars Ulrich: Dexter Gordon, right. [Gordon was Ulrich's godfather.] It was a pretty rich cultural household and upbringing. What I got from my father in those years before I rebelled was to try to be open to all these things that were going on in the house.

Lou Reed: Lars has got one of the greatest fathers you've ever met. He's amazing.

GQ: Did you get to hang out with him?

Lou Reed: Yeah, he's just this incredible presence.

GQ: Did you talk about jazz?

Lou Reed: He's known them all—it's kind of amazing.

Lars Ulrich: Lou and Hal Willner, our wonderful producer, and my dad would be off in the corner for hours at a time talking about 1957 with this and that happening in Philadelphia, and so on and so forth, meeting Don Cherry. A lot of love.

GQ: So let's talk about the new record. I only got to hear it once...

Lou Reed: You heard the whole thing?

GQ: Yep.

Lou Reed: On what?

GQ: In a studio like this. I sat in the office of Metallica's management.

Lou Reed: Through what?

GQ: Speakers, a CD player.

Lou Reed: Like a Radio Shack CD player?

GQ: No, through big monitors. It was very loud.

Lou Reed: Well, I would hope...

Lars Ulrich: And it sounded like nothing you've ever heard before?

GQ: I was impressed by how experimental it is.

Lou Reed: You noticed.

GQ: Well, I think it's interesting that Metallica is releasing this challenging work right around the same time that you're doing "The Big Four," which is a very populist gesture. They're just on opposite ends of the spectrum.

Lars Ulrich: That's what keeps us alive.

Lou Reed: It's called a big palette. Why would you just want to draw circles?

GQ: On the website, Lou says, "This is not a party record." What are some other non-party records that might have inspired Lulu?

Lars Ulrich: Listen, none of us write that crap. [Laughs] You know the story: We got together two years ago and played music at Madison Square Garden [Reed joined Metallica on a version of the Velvet Underground's "Sweet Jane"], and we fell in love with each other more or less instantly.

Lou Reed: And we swore at some point that we were going to team up, because it was just too much fun and obviously a great example of planets in alignment.

As far as "party record," that relates to a record I made where Ornette Coleman did an overdub and he did it seven times—it's on my website. One with the rhythm guitar, one with the lead guitar, one with bass, one with drums, one with the vocal, one overall. We could only put out one, and for years, I wanted to get all seven out. So we listened to what we were going to put out, and Willner said, "We should probably put out the party one." That was the party record: Ornette.

GQ: Well, it's interesting you bring up Ornette. You recently did shows with John Zorn and Laurie Anderson, working in a more abstract realm.

Lou Reed: I married one of them!

GQ: John Zorn, right? Anyway, one of my favorite moments on Lulu was "Frustration," where there's almost a drums and vocal duet.

Lou Reed: Not almost—it is. And you get used to it after a while. Then it's like, when's the whole band going to come in? It's an astonishing moment, don't you think? It goes and it goes, and then you're into the lyric, and all of a sudden, the rest of the guys come in.

Lars Ulrich: And also as a drummer to be told by Lou Reed to play some crazy, fuckin'—I think there may have been a Keith Moon reference—under his vocals, that's a gift that you don't get handed very often. So that was one of the more inspiring moments.

Lou Reed: It was so great. This stuff is mainly cut live, so it went wherever it went, leakage and all. The genius of these guys, my metal brothers, they built this beautiful studio that's based around the idea of leakage, so everybody's sitting in a big circle, singing and playing. So everybody's on everything, and that's that.

GQ: So the vocals were tracked at the same time as the music?

Lou Reed: Yeah, no isolation. I'm looking across the room at Lars, and James is next to me and there's Kirk, and everything's leaking. It's not like you can fix the vocals [Laughs], make them brighter. You make them brighter, you make everybody brighter!

Lars Ulrich: Yeah, no pressure while you're singing of course!

Lou Reed: So it is what it is. It's really choice-of-mike and distance-from-the-mike.

GQ: So as far as that drums/vocal duet, Lars, Lou basically told you to do it?

Lars Ulrich: More like encouraged. We're feeding off each other. I think the beautiful thing about this dynamite is there's nobody telling you what to do. We're feeding off the great lyrics that Lou brought in; we're feeding off each other; we're feeding off the space.

Lou Reed: At a certain point, you could suddenly feel some people take a breath, and we kept going, and they gave us our moment of great fun there, and they thundered back in. Because Lars does a drum signal that they must know by now: "Come on in, guys, the horses are ready."

GQ: That's interesting, because having seen Some Kind of Monster, having read about the recording of ...And Justice for All, it seems like Metallica is a very meticulous band in the studio.

Lars Ulrich: Yes.

GQ: So that is not what we're talking about with Lulu. What is it like jumping from a situation where you're able to fix every little detail on the computer to something like this?

Lars Ulrich: It's incredibly liberating and also inspiring for the future to know that these kinds of possibilities are out there. Lou walked in with these ten great sets of lyrics. With James Hetfield, the lyrics—and I mean this in the most positive of ways—are usually an afterthought. It's like, the last few lyrics are being written while the album is being mastered in New York. To have Lou walk in with the lyrics and to give Metallica a chance to be inspired from lyrics was a gift and such an absolute and total mindfuck. We're only thirty years into this, so we're just getting started; for the next four or five decades there's now other ways of doing it.

Lou Reed: I had this dream of the kind of songs you could do with rock, if you looked at it from the point of view of William Burroughs, or Hubert Selby, or Tennessee Williams, for that matter: "The kindness of strangers." If you could put together lyrics like that, and have a melody with it, what would happen if you didn't make it verse/chorus, but you stick Metallica in there and turn them loose? And that's exactly what happened: They were turned loose. The sky's the limit with this shit. I've waited forever for somebody to do this. Nobody's done it.

GQ: Lars said that Metallica would take a more spontaneous approach to record-making away from this project. Lou, what do you think you'll bring from this project into your other work?

Lou Reed: After Metallica, sixty miles an hour won't do anymore. It's 110 or nothing. To me, all this stuff's about feeling. Imagine if it has that power, and you have a line like, "It was the kindness of strangers" or "It was you, Charley." Imagine if you could do that. I sent it to Lars and the guys and said, "Are you game to do this?" No one knows this from anything—it's never been recorded. And he got back and said, "I'm really jazzed to try this. We've got to try this."

GQ: There's been some talk about how the song "Junior Dad" brought Kirk and James to tears. What do you remember about that moment?

Lou Reed: Not just them...

Lars Ulrich: All of us. My dad was down there during the moment that you're talking about, and it was shared by everybody.

GQ: I was really struck by this idea that there are these two big names on the spine of the album—Metallica and Lou Reed—and the record ends with a long stretch of viola, where you're not hearing either of those voices.

Lou Reed: Well, wait a minute: You're ignoring the extraordinary setup that went into that. That's nothing without all that incredible... There's this final push Metallica makes, and then it's like the earth opens up and you go "Ahhh." It's amazing. Every time I hear it, I'm overwhelmed by it. This is a dream come true for me. But it's not that Metallica isn't there; they're very much there.

GQ: Because they set up the moment.

Lou Reed: They make the moment happen.

GQ: Lars, we've been talking about how previous Metallica records have been very polished and controlled. How do you feel in advance of releasing something like this? Is there a fear of what the reception will be?

Lou Reed: A fear, are you kidding?

Lars Ulrich: No, I sense only joy and elation and the excitement of sharing this. I think it's the most obvious collaboration on this planet ever. It puts a smile on my face every time I read somebody saying, "That's the oddest collaboration." Can you think of people that are more suited for each other than Metallica and Lou Reed?

Lou Reed: It seems so obvious!

Lars Ulrich: That's what I'm saying. We've carved the same path: Lou's lived in his own bubble for four decades; we've lived in our bubble for three decades. We don't play to the tune of anybody else. We're autonomous. We live in our own self-contained musical universe. And we don't have to cater to any fucker. I can't think of anybody that's more suited to each other than these two musical entities.

Lou Reed: We were made to do this together. And it was just obvious when we played "Sweet Jane" together. I had people coming up to me for months and months saying, "You've got to record with those guys. Why don't you ask them?" I said, "I did!"

Lars Ulrich: Metallica just had to go around the world three times first.

Lou Reed: We just had to find the door.

Lars Ulrich: He said it as we were fucking leaving the bowels of Madison Square Garden. Whenever it was—October of '09. This is a true story: We were walking out of the elevator. I was going to my car, and he was going to his car. He looked over his shoulder and said, "Let's make a record together." I said, "Lou, of course we're gonna make a record together." We had to get our Death Magnetic commitments out of the way and then cleanse our bodies and our minds for a couple of months. But a few months later, it all came to fruition.

We had to get our Death Magnetic commitments out of the way and then cleanse our bodies and our minds for a couple of months.

I don't even want to know.

Lou Reed: I've loved Metallica since I was a kid.

lol classic

The reason we formed was to fulfill Lou's vision of one day working with us.

XDDDDDDD

i feel so alive for the very first time

totally missed the ornette thing on his site
http://www.loureed.com/guilty/
THIS IS ONE OF MY GREATEST MOMENTS.

Lou Reed should do an album with each of the Big Four.

Louthrax, Slaylou, LouDeth?

MegaLou.

http://images.wikia.com/godzilla/images/c/ca/Mechagodzilla2.jpg

This Lournette thing is pretty good. Seven takes!

Meantime Metallica has its own goofy project to work on next.

The Lou Reed / Metallica collaboration album is the worst crime ever committed against music. Just putting that out there.
Comment by Xartoons — Friday October 21, 2011 @ 9:59pm EDT

Lou Reed had better star in this

four-story video wall of all the webcam youtube reviews of LULU playing simultaneously

The band’s now looking for a director with the stones to direct a Metallica-style feature.

If THEY had stones, Metallica'd get Matt Mahurin to make a full-length "The Unforgiven" 3D movie. Old men's faces coming out of the shadows, sad children descending dark staircases, Kirk whipping his hair back mid-solo, two solid fucking hours of that shit.

A shirtless Lou Reed down a long dark hallway, in black and white, doing tai chi. 3D.

i'm seriously convinced that if james hetfield didn't sing a note on lulu it would be at least 10 times better than it is.

gtfo w/ that

maaaaybe on cheat on me and iced honey, but:

SMAAAAAAL TOOOWN GIIIIRLLLL

I AM THE ROOT

???

Sorry all, but "Junior Dad" is as good as anything Lou Reed (or anybody, to use his words) has ever done. Tightly sums up the heavy emotion behind the generational battle (disguised as the recession/OWS/whatever) going on right now. Totally vital and necessary poetry and music. A few of the details hit so close to home I can't really express it without crying. Not a joke.

― Ask The Answer Man (sexyDancer), Thursday, October 20, 2011 7:58 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark

lol

If it works, it works!

fave review so far
FUCK THIS PIECE OF SHIT. Metallica go back to your old ways, lou reed is fucking terrible and is ruining your vibe, your already the best band in the world and your gonna let this sack of shit ruin what you have ? My band Anesthesia can whip up better song than this lulu piece of shit with a stupid ass title, and WE DONT EVEN HAVE A DRUM SET. It sounds like an amature is playing on drums, kirk can make 1000000000000 times better riffs and solos better than this bitch lou reed. he should be in a hospital bed being medicated. james doesnt even sing and even though lou reed has been around more and sucks major dick, James Hetfield already surpassed him ! This ''project'' is shit. Lou reed wants the attention because he did something with the best band in the world, he has to get his ass, his voice that sounds like his throat was ran over by a train, and his no skilled ass, to a nursing home. my grandma can sing better than him AND SHE HAS THROAT CANCER. Metallica your better than this. FIX IT PLEASE. Let this old bitch know who's the heaviest metal band on earth.

in other news, i guess i didn't win that contest where they'd fly me to NYC for an exclulusive listening party... the greatest disappointment.

A protest

who is danko jones?