Lou Reed Solo

One thing I only recently realised is how much he depended on Velvet outtakes during his 70s solo years. The debut album is almost all VU material. Transformer is, what, about half VU material. Even Berlin is about half VU songs! As late as Street Hassle in 1978, he's still pulling out old VU songs from the bottom drawer.

Really??? I don't think of Berlin as borrowed from Velvets material at all.

Certainly not Street Hassle.

Really??? I don't think of Berlin as borrowed from Velvets material at all.

Men Of Good Fortune, Oh Jim, Caroline Says II and Sad Song were all first done by the Velvets. The title track is also recycled.

Certainly not Street Hassle.

It's got Real Good Time Together on it

"Men of Good Fortune" is a Velvets' song?

Well, according to Wikipedia it is... although I've never heard it. You can hear the Velvets doing Oh Jim and Sad Song on Spotify though...

Oh yeah, I know they're from the Velvets era. Amusing that "Kill Your Sons" on the acoustic demos thing is a fairly naff protest song! Also that Lou was "Looking Through the Eyes of Love" in 1970 but "Looking Through the Eyes of Hate" by 1973.

xpost
A little bit of googling leads me to this site http://olivier.landemaine.free.fr/vu/andsoon/lostsongs/lostsongs.html

which says there's a tape of VU doing Men Of Good Fortune in 1966

Love the least-to-most-colourful arrangement of those shirts!

Okay, I'll give you "Real Good Time Together", but where is the Velvets version of Sad Songs, for starters? Don't leave me out of this. Ah fook, here were are with this Spotify thing, though. I can't get Spotify. Jeez, way to kill the joy.

I'll get it my own way, never mind.

Version of "Sad Song" on the expanded edition of "Loaded" with Lou going on about castles and kilts!

which says there's a tape of VU doing Men Of Good Fortune in 1966

I imagine in those days it was one of Lou's embarrassing Dylanesque protest songs

Sad Song actually sounds pretty good as a VU song. You could imagine it on the third album or something.

Yeah I had a problem because I couldn't find my copy of Loaded for awhile there. Totally panicked before I finally figured out where it was. Sorry that I don't remember this or understand why it's not on my iPod. Gonna fix this right away.

downloading all the Lou material from that site!

OK, not all of it.

Alright, listening to this Velvets version of Sad Song now and yeah I remember this, but without all the strings and grandeur, it really ain't much.

"Love Makes You Feel Ten Feet Tall" on the other hand...yikes.

<3 <3 <3 <3 Lou

I think that version of "Sad Song" is great!

Yeah, I kind of like the stripped-down Sad Song, it's got a similar vibe to the stuff on the 69 live album.

Anyway, my point was that in the few years of the Velvet Underground, he must have been bulimically writing songs at an amazing rate but come the seventies, his muse seems to have left him somewhat (drugs age etc I guess), and he has to resort to pulling out all the stuff he wrote years before but at the time didn't deem good enough or something. And he's still doing it late into the seventies

That was always one of my all time faves on this CD, that song "Love Makes You Feel Ten Feet Tall". I love it when the bridge comes in (I guess you can't really call it a proper guitar solo), it sounds so Scottish right there, or like an Irish jig or something. You want to sortof cross your feet and dance to that shit. Fucking kills me.

yeah but Zelda, I mean it's not like he didn't...develop. I think it's kindof unfair to criticize him for that.

Oh I'm not really criticising him, I like those seventies albums, it just hadn't occurred to me before how he'd really squeezed VU for every last bit of juice. I mean, Berlin is immense but I'm a bit bowled over now that I realise out of the nine tracks only four were original to the album! Obviously Berlin is all about the production anyway, love it or loathe it.

Is there a parallel with Bowie? Starts madly doing songs he cowrote with Iggy when his creative juices run dry - to considerably less good effect of course!

Remember reading a rather sneery interview with Sterling Morrison where he pointed out how many of Lou's solo albums were reliant on Velvets' retreads

yeah, it's true -- I think even "Kill Your Sons" from Sally Can't Dance even stretches back to the Velvets days. Still, those were Lou's songs -- no harm in reworking them. Some people just have really strong bursts of creativity, and 1965-70 was Lou's. I loooooove that VU "Sad Song" ... Same with "Satellite of Love." Always thought it was surprising the songs Lou didn't return to in the 70s -- "Foggy Notion," in particular.

"Over You"!

yeah! was just listening to that on Live 69. beautiful song! always liked "move right in" too -- the bootleg versions have lyrics. just a cool groove. though that may have been why he didn't go back to it - it may have just been a cool groove to him.

honestly I prefer most of VU's original versions to Lou's solo ones (with a few exceptions - the Transformer stuff is all improved, and She's My Best Friend on Coney Island Baby is about on par with the original)

listening to a bootleg now from 1976 -- what a funny band, must've been on the Rock n Roll Heart tour. So little guitar, mostly sax and keyboards. Really cheesy synths!

http://dummidumbwit.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/lou_reed_hat_std.jpg

I didn't think I had any interest in solo Lou but I heard Street Hassle and Take No Prisoners for the first time this year and they absolutely knocked me out.

doesn't Lou call X'gau some name on TNP?
still vouching for Ecstasy as one of Lou's best solo records; and one of the best records of this decade.

think he calls xgau a "toefucker"
i'll have to listen to Ecstasy again -- I really like parts of it, but am not nuts about others ...

some of the actual music on TNP is atrocious (some of it is great) but oh man it is Lou at his comedy finest

let's talk about the Bells

weird that anyone would characterize anything on here as "jazz" (Don Cherry's presence notwithstanding) - was kinda surprised at how dense and harsh the wall o' synths is on here. Disco Mystic is amazing, almost Spector-esque.

also gotta say when Lou tries to lay on his "I am SINGING, with VIBRATO" schtick it sounds terrible. he's good at singing gently and at doing his speak-singing thing, but when he tries to over-emote it's just urgggh dude you don't have the pipes for this, you can barely stay in tune...

DISCO. DISCO MYSTIC.

it's not even really disco...? the tempo is way too slow

I Want to Boogie With You is similarly ironically titled - kinda impossible to boogie to anything so sluggish. but it's a great song, wonderful combination of doo wop, typical Lou Reed venom, and a dense sludge of synths and horns

"With You" is kinda fun – doesn't he use "capricious"?

rhymes with "death wish"!

Lou must've been pissed the first time he saw the album cover of The Stranger, knowing he could've done that.

I don't see the connection

need to hear the bells again, but i think sally can't dance is my fave studio Lou from the 1970's. it may be considered a throwaway but it seems more consistent to me than CIB and St. Hassle

"Ennui"!

I'd have to go back to it but I think I deleted like 2/3rds of Sally Can't Dance... the tracks that are good on it are REALLY good though. "Billy" (rhyming "foliage" with "college"!), the line about alimony in "Ennui", the title track

xp

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXZ2C5Uil-0

All of the things that your old lover said
Look at them, they jump out of windows
And now they're just dead
It's the truth, don't you realize
Faded without any talent or fun
Running out in the streets, balling everyone
It's the truth, It's the truth
Pick up the pieces that make up your life
Maybe some day you'll have a wife and them alimony
Oh, can't you see

Lou was great at writing songs that capture that morning hangover feeling