Lou Reed Solo

also thought JCLC's favorite was Rock n Roll Animal and not CIB but consensus seems to have formed pretty securely around the latter in the past decade

oh I dunno -- Sally Can't Dance is a fun, smutty album even w/out knowing about the chaos in his life. The kids who made it a top ten album weren't reading the Lester Bangs interviews, or at least not all of them.

Coney Island Baby has been my favorite Lou Reed album since I first heard it, R&R Animal is close to my heart but CIB has always been the one where his best qualities rise to the surface & his worse ones recede - his vocals have never been treated more lovingly (it's kind of hilarious how the records that followed are the ones that led him into the finger-wagging panicked baritone quality that became his signature going forward), his guitar never subtler (nor more effective save in the crazy live work-ups of mid-period VU sets), his POV never more relatable for me. some of that's personal - I did my time with the same substances Lou's reckoning with there - but tonally it's just a gorgeous record, which I largely attribute to the studio used & the engineers there.

Rock and Roll Animal is just a kick-ass rock record for me but part of what I love about it is exactly that you don't have to have any investment at all in Lou to bang your head to it. It could be an Alice Cooper album with a more sensitive understudy singing, really.

finally, if a hefty percentage of the sales of Sally weren't label people spending label money in actual stores to get the damn thing to chart, please, we spent a lot of money on this guy, I'll eat my hat.

this'd be my Lou solo 70s ranking most days:

Coney Island Baby
Rock and Roll Animal
Transformer
self-titled
Sally Can't Dance
Street Hassle
Live: Take No Prisoners
Lou Reed Live
Rock and Roll Heart
The Bells

back when, I loved the hell out of "Take No Prisoners" and still think the band there smokes, but for desert island purposes I could happily lose everything after Sally on that list

oh I forgot Berlin. which is fine, because I have no use for it.

Amusing myself by imagining a Lou Reed soundcheck somewhere sometime... "Can you hear the drums, Fernando?"

Chart positions were meant to be manipulated in 1974, but it's hard not to believe that after Transformer and R&R Animal he didn't have career momentum (even with the sodden Berlin as roadblock).

I don't know how much of the guitar work on CIB is Lou's. I'm pretty sure Bob Kulick played the prettier slide work.

Yes, like Lou could play guitar like that!

He rarely played lead post-Velvets until The Blue Mask, and I can hear the difference between him and Quine.

He plays quite a bit of (lead) guitar on "Rock and Roll Heart".

... no session guy, worth his salt, would ever admit to playing the lead guitar on "Ladies Pay" for instance.

the one where his best qualities rise to the surface & his worse ones recede - his vocals have never been treated more lovingly (it's kind of hilarious how the records that followed are the ones that led him into the finger-wagging panicked baritone quality that became his signature going forward), his guitar never subtler (nor more effective save in the crazy live work-ups of mid-period VU sets), his POV never more relatable for me.... but tonally it's just a gorgeous record, which I largely attribute to the studio used & the engineers there.

well put, my feelings exactly. I stumbled on a vinyl copy of CIB at Rhino Records in Claremont while in high school in 1989 and it's been close to my heart ever since

In fact, having just checked, he plays all the guitars on "Rock and Roll Heart".

the lead work on the title track of CIB is so stately and smooth, there's no way that one was Lou. Like Alfred, I'd wager the majority (if not all) of the leads there are Kulick.

All of the lead work is by Kulick.

agreed on coney island baby as a peak of his '70s work, it's so beautifully recorded and feels like a continuation of the later velvets records in a way he never really went for again (which is why it's really nice when "she's my best friend" pops up, though i guess if i'd bought this record at the time it'd be the only version i was aware of)

it's also a v thematically connected suite of songs without being ponderous and obvious about it like berlin (i love berlin, i love theatrical lou obv bc i love ecstasy and lulu but there's such a lightness of touch on coney island baby)

Berlin’s sound is p oppressive, is my main problem w it. With a gentler approach to the arrangements it would’ve made a decent Fassbinder musical.

but Lou's rhythm work on CIB is also p good! it does what it needs to do -- pedals the song forward nicely, sits in the pocket maintaining the groove. there was a quote from Lou at some point along the lines of "if God asked me today, what do you want to be? do you want to be a bestselling author? a millionaire? no, I want to be the rhythm guitar player in a rock band" that resonates for me in that CIB/Street Hassle moment

i really do love the rhythm section on berlin (jack bruce and aynsley dunbar) and also the brief appearances of the hunter/wagner twin guitar attack that drives rock n roll animal

His rhythm guitars on "Foggy Notion" and "What Goes On" are the best in recorded history.

I'm with you on that, Alfred. Particularly on the Live 69 WGO. Just amazing work by Lou and an obvious influence on the next few generations of indie rockers. I'm looking at you David Gedge, and of course many, many others.

I just learned today that Wakeman & Howe played on his S/T debut. Hot playing on that one!

Also -- I dig The Bells. It's a bit hairy in parts, but sure has personality... (And how can you beat an LP with the credit, "Don Cherry - African hunting guitar, trumpet"?)

I still haven't dived into that one, I prefer to find these kind of 70's classic-era things on LP as opposed to streaming. that does sound cool.

lol wait I do have this, I found a copy in the last couple years

a. who the fuck is Michael Fonfara

b. what's up with the weird SBS binaural sound logo

Just a pity Wakeman and Howe et al have no idea how to play rock and roll. (xxp)

Michael Fonfara is from one of those terrible late 60s Elektra bands like Rhinoceros.

We welcome newcomers to the Lou Reed Solo thread.

Lou's taste in sidemen in the 70s left something to be desired, of course all of them could play rings round Mo and Sterling, draw your own conclusions from that.

listening now, wow "All Through The Night" is so tossed-off with the crazy studio chatter on top, ridiculous off-kilter mix, whispered "JUNKIES"

Lou sounds genuinely anguished here, imo

but the anguish is undercut by the giggling studio chatter track, I guess that encapsulates him in the late 70's.

OK "Families" is a little repetitive but y'know it's a Lou Reed album, again I think his vocals sound really desperate and longing on this, I like it.

your comma splices are very Lou Reed imo

i tried with growing up in public but i find it really confusing for the most part. i think i could see myself liking it? i think the first track is p good? but also i have no desire to hear it again

xp I'm not sure if that's good or bad because it's been so long since I've studied grammar, but you are the writer whose chops I most admire here so any criticism is always welcome <3

all of them could play rings round Mo and Sterling

oh hi Brad I see you were repping The Bells upthread, I am really digging this inscrutable title track, I think that's Cherry on trumpet again?

yep!!! god that song is such a ride

Sterling Morrison is the Platonic ideal of rhythm guitarists, therefore this is false QED

I'm pretty sure Sterling would have struggled to get a gig with Rhinoceros or the Flock or Seatrain, let alone Yes.

Just a pity Wakeman and Howe et al have no idea how to play rock and roll. (xxp)

xp further proof of MatthewK's theory ;)

Lou wasn't hiring players like Sterling Morrison in the 70s or any time thereafter tbh. Three years after playing with Mo Tucker he was working with Aynsley Dunbar!

(xp) No!

That a thread called Lou Reed Solo would get into a discussion about what Sterling Morrison does or does not contribute to a tentative Yes gig boggles the mind.

xp I'm not sure if that's good or bad because it's been so long since I've studied grammar, but you are the writer whose chops I most admire here so any criticism is always welcome <3

― sleeve, Tuesday, September 18, 2018 8:50 PM (fifteen minutes ag

besos

Just a pity Wakeman and Howe et al have no idea how to play rock and roll. (xxp)

among this crew, besides with lou, rick wakeman played on "get it on (bang a gong)", bowie's "space oddity", "changes", "oh! you pretty things", "life on mars", and "it ain't easy". but he had no idea!

I still don’t get the joke here(?) I wasn’t making fun of, or disparaging, their presence... I just didn’t know about it

I was disparaging their presence, I don't think they were cut out for playing Lou Reed songs. I must admit I was impressed that Wakeman had played on "Get It On", which I never knew before, until I found out he only contributed the occasional piano glissando part and Blue Weaver played the main piano part.

of course any of the guys in Yes could play rock in straight 4/4 & do so well. playing rock in 4/4 is not magic or "a feeling," it's a skill set, pretty much any prog band member could play in most rock bands &i be good at it . Howe & Wakeman on the s/t are terrific.

Yeah, it's the dull production rather than Howe/Wakeman that's the problem w/ the first solo alb imho.

It's one of the interesting contradictions of Lou's solo career that while he clearly was one of the 'godfathers of punk', w/ the exception of Quine (who was something of a punk outlier in any case), he steered clear of working w/ young upstart musicians, preferring to pick slick session musos.

second side of the s/t has that run of "i love you" -> "wild child" -> "love makes you feel" which i think is really underestimated

i had no idea howe and wakeman were on the first album.