Search And Destroy: Lou Reed

american poet is awesome, maybe one of my fave lou reed recordings ever. wayyyyyy different sound than the r&r animal stuff that followed.

also a number of interesting lou shows up on wolfgang's vault. was just listening to this weird one: http://www.wolfgangsvault.com/lou-reed-and-moogy-klingman-band/concerts/kansas-city-memorial-hall-may-02-1973.html
features moogy klingman of todd rundgren fame! of all people.

http://28.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lu4k3hFxia1qgu4c9o1_500.jpg

speaking of that album, i'm reading that history of 70s NYC music and the author claims that it's lou in drag on the back cover. i'd heard that before as a rumor, but thought it was just a myth.
http://farm5.staticflickr.com/4120/4794105448_da1812d416_b.jpg
that's not lou on the left is it? doesn't really look like him.

that is absolutely not Lou. Facial features aside, Lou doesn't have those legs gimme a break.

but if lou's also the one on the right then he's checking himself out which kind of makes sense

It was no mistake...

― dlp9001, Monday, March 5, 2012 2:20 PM

I didn't think so. Why then?

Lou Reed inspires name of new spider

this Bockris book is hilarious

Nico same late, as usual. Lou said 'Hello,' to her in a rather cold way, but just 'Hello,' or something. She simply stood there. You could see she was waiting to reply, in her own time. Ages later, out of the blue, came her first words. "I cannot make love to Jews anymore.'

this book is very poorly edited

repeated quotes, wrong dates, "lead singer of Pere Ubu, Peter Laughner" etc

yeah it's a jumble for sure. some great stories, but not a great book. would love it if someone else tackled the life of lou. in that classic albums doc on transformer, one of the dude's is listed as lou's "biographer" -- i forget his name. but it seemed like he was the "official" biographer.

it's very heavy on the "dirt", so to speak, plus interview quotes from Lou, which are all quite funny. But yeah as with many other out-sized, cantankerous figures (James Brown, Dylan, etc.) sort of expect the definitive bio will have to wait til he's dead to be written.

true, tho i hold out hope that lou will write a memoir. it would be hilariously un-revealing, i'm sure.
the biographer guy was Timothy Greenfield-Sanders, who did the documentary a few years ago, Lou Reed: Rock and Roll Heart. so i assume he's not writing a book.

lol would totally read self-serving, bitchy Lou autobio

totally, though i kind of imagine if he did it, it'd just be the same ol stories he's trotted out for decades now.
maybe this exists, but i haven't seen it -- is there like a "Lou Reed Reader" out there, collecting the best interviews/articles about Lou over the past five decades? Some of his best work.

from a fairly recent interview, man is this the ever-lovin truth:

It seems this country, in particular, is geared to turning people into nostalgia acts. Everything moves really quickly here. It’s really based around 14-year-olds, and that’s kind of that. People get older and they stop buying records, really. And it’s like a vicious circle. They stop making records because there’s nothing there for them. So they don’t buy any records. And it’s not on radio, so they can’t hear it. So it becomes this insulated little thing, out of an endless series of things aimed at 14-year-olds. I don’t have anything against 14-year-old people. I was 14. And I think that’s great. It’s just that music is so wonderful, it’s kind of extraordinary to gear it only to children.

I was 14 when I bought my first copy of The VU & Nico.

the Bockris book is so terrible. Shit smells better. If you enjoy the quotes in isolation (the Quine stuff, for example; the stuff with Lou's late seventies drummer) it's tolerable. He even takes Lou at face value re the bomb that was Berlin ("My heart died" -- no heart to die).

dubious assertions abound, no doubt about that. but Lou Reed bios are slim pickings.

oh that's why I read it cover to cover in the mid nineties

for years it was in the remaindered books section of every B&N in the country.

Bockris' shameless self-promotion doesn't really help things (for ex. including a photo of the cover of his book about the Velvet Underground, captioned as "the book that rekindled interest in VU in the 80s" uh yeah right bro)

Well, fair's fair, it did that for me, if you're meaning "Uptight"...

I gave away my copy of Uptight by accident eight years ago which still bugs me

trying to figure out what era Lou this is
https://sphotos.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/548115_409792479071179_1787511890_n.jpg
nice shoes.

also, the "is that lou in drag/is that lou" myth is addressed in the transformer classic album doc. not lou. also, lou claims a banana was stuffed in the guy's pants.

^^^important info, i know.

xxp Early 70's, the photo is by Mick Rock, IIRC it was taken in a London hotel.

yeah, the black fingernail polish suggests sometime around transformer. feel like i haven't actually seen that many color photos of lou from that period, looks kinda weird.

another photo from the same shoot...
http://www.ablogcuratedby.com/weblog/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/loureed.jpg

1972.
Also lol at Lou's Marlboro habit - that's probably two days supply there.

Possibly the shoot was for Rolling Stone magazine, because again IIRC it was from the period just before Rock stopped interviewing people and decided to concentrate on taking pictures. A choice Lou quote from the article was something like (from memory so it's probably not entirely right) "I'm so boring really. I never write about myself. I'm not interested in my problems or attitudes, 'cause other people's are so much funnier. I need New York City to feed off of. I'll go out and do things and build up new characters to write about."

oh lou, if we've learned anything over the years, you're never boring.

It's a real Warhol thing to say.

is there like a "Lou Reed Reader" out there

Not exhaustive, and only covers the three mid 70's interviews (as well as a whole load of other non-Lou stuff that nevertheless is still well worth read), but the Lester Bangs compilation book 'Psychotic Reactions & Carburettor Dung' is worth a read. I really got a sense of what LR was like, especially from the 'fight' interview. Whereas the Bockris bio is boring, just a bunch of disconnected names and dates plus some not-very-dirty dirt that pretty much could have been about any slightly sleazy 70's rock star.

And Bockris himself reminds me of the boring teacher from Ferris Bueller's Day Off.
His Warhol bio is almost as bad - the only thing that saves it from being a total zzz-fest is the sheer larger-than-life craziness of Warhol's entourage and followers.

wow great photo find there tyler

the Bockris book is poorly assembled but I wouldn't call it boring. it's been very informative on a number of points, at least for me

yeah i've read the bangs anthologies, very fun reed-ing. just thought there could be a more expanded book of interviews -- LOU SPEAKS or something.

There's the Velvet Underground Reader, but the big interviews in it are w/ Moe & Sterling.

yeah i just want all lou! should i be pitching this to a publisher? it'd sell dozens!

you guys have all seen this, right?

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

his assholishness is pretty forgiveable in situations like this (similar to Dylan) where it's just abundantly clear that he's dealing with morons who are baiting him/don't get what he's doing/don't take music seriously

it's so weird that he didn't play guitar for so much of the 70s and tried to do some kind of awkward "singer" thing instead. he's so awkward and semi-incompetent as a frontman.

(speaking of live performances there fwiw)

Sterling Morrison said he'd started doing that towards the end of the Velvets, indulging in lame Jaggerisms - under pressure from Steve Sesnick, according to Sterl

would love it if someone else tackled the life of lou

The Peter Doggett biography of Lou Reed has good things in it, tho he is kind of a boring writer and I vehemently disagree with some of his opinions (e.g. that "Loaded" is some sort of throwaway Ruben + the Jets tongue-in-cheek thing)

indulging in lame Jaggerisms - under pressure from Steve Sesnick, according to Sterl

viktor bockris is a hack but here's john cale in 1996:

Victor Bockris' biography of Reed, "Transformer", says that his parents tried to "cure" him of some of his personality traits by having him undergo electroshock therapy. Do you think that's true?

I know it's true. Some of that book, I don't know how he got it. No one in the band participated-- that was one of the terms of going out on tour. I think Lou has a certain problem with the truth. 90% of that book is true.

if lou shot up half the amount of speed that bockris attributes to him during 1974-75 it's a miracle he's still alive

you can listen to some episodes of lou's radio show w/ hal wilner on the bbc - http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01ngqgq
kind of fun.

http://doomandgloomfromthetomb.tumblr.com

This looks interesting, Lou DJ's on WPIX in 1979, with guest John Cale (who performs in studio, I think?)