Lou Reed and Metallica record an album together

[ChrisRawk]

I'd probably never actually want to meet Lou but if I did meet him I think there's a part of me that would be disappointed if he WASN'T kind of a dick.

[nec13]

\m/

[Kormod]

[vert]

you know, I hear the acetate version of "I'm waiting for the man" and just pretend that is a new thing

I am a bit scared to hear lulu, I love the velvet underground/lou reed. I think I will skip it

"I'll be your mirror" is my favorite song, I don't want to hear lou reed and metallica, thanks

[buffcoat]

I'd probably never actually want to meet Lou but if I did meet him I think there's a part of me that would be disappointed if he WASN'T kind of a dick.

Sometimes he's probably tired and feels like being a normal guy; do you think he feels pressure to be prickly?  Do you think he goes into the washroom, stares at himself, silently screams "YOU CAN DO THIS!! YOU'RE LOU REED!!" and then goes out and stiffs the wait staff?

I do.  I bet it's tough to be cretinous 24/7.

[cavorting with nudists]

I think that for a Lou Reed, just stiffing the wait staff is him on a good day.

Segue to another infamous rock asshole, for context: I know a guy, a brilliant double-bassist, who was touring Europe with his band (a Sun Ra tribute combo, as it happens) at the same time as the Lounge Lizards.  Although they weren't touring together, they kept crossing paths and playing on the same bills at various locales.  At one stop--I forget where, just think of it as some kunsthalle in someplace like Vienna--this guy's band arrives in the green room to find a scene of total negativity and discord--food flung all over the walls and floor, everyone uptight and miserable, a few female members of the catering staff broken down and weeping while friends try to comfort them.

Upon my friend's inquiry, the explanation came in one word "Lurie." Apparently he and the band had just come through, and the lead saxophonist was upset that the chicken was roasted rather than grilled, as he had requested.

So given that Lou Reed is probably at least in John Lurie's league as an asshole, my guess is that when he comes through a place, the wait staff count themselves lucky to have been merely stiffed.  (I still like the Lounge Lizards, though.)

[fonpr]

I know a guy, a brilliant double-bassist, who was touring Europe with his band a Sun Ra tribute combo

What's the name of the group, Nudie?

[cavorting with nudists]

Myth Science.  They're not in business any more, but they had one album out on the Knitting Factory label, titled Love in Outer Space. If it sounds like the kind of thing you'd like, I think you'd like it. They ain't the Arkestra, but each of the five members, especially Ruben the bassist and Anthony Coleman the keyboardist, is beyond fantastic.

Anyway: Lou Reed, what an asshole hah?  Laurie Anderson is apparently a saint.

[fonpr]

Thanks, I have some of their stuff on a Knitting Factory comp. 

[Steve of Bloomington]

Possibly has been posted here, from the wonderful 'Dangerous Minds' blog

http://www.dangerousminds.net/comments/lou_reed_and_metallicas_lulu_truth_in_advertising

[Smelodies]

Ha, I wonder how well that's selling.  It's seems more like a joint effort to alienate both their fanbases than for one to get cash and the other to get cred.

[Kormod]

According to some web site (link) it only sold about 13,000 copies the first week of its release.

[daveB from Oakland]

Upcoming events:

Wednesday, December 14th, 6pm - 7pm: Ken & Andy @ UCB Theatre 12/14 w/ Lou Reed, Suzanne Vega and Tao Lin
Seven Second Delay returns to the stage of NYC's UCB Theatre on Wednesday, December 14th from 6-7 pm for the last live broadcast of 2012. Joining Ken and Andy will be author and Rock and Roll legend Lou Reed, writer Tao Lin, and musical guest Suzanne Vega! The UCB Theatre is at 307 West 26th St in NYC, near 8th Avenue. Admission is $5.

FOR REAL? ? ? ? I'll believe it when I hear it, I guess. Does Andy even know what the Velvet Underground is? Or Metallica?

[Kormod]

Yeah, December 14th can't come fast enough.

In other news, this interview is fantastic:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/music/rockandpopfeatures/8941594/Lou-Reed-and-Metallica-interview.html

Metallica celebrate 30 years together, for most of which they have been the pre-eminent heavy metal band on the planet. In Paris, for a TV appearance promoting a controversial collaboration with Lou Reed, word comes through that a fan wants to meet them. But not just any fan – it is teen sensation Justin Bieber.

The only trouble is, he’s been visiting Disneyland and his car has broken down. Metallica singer and guitarist James Hetfield snorts with incredulity. “Justin Bieber can drive?”

There is much guffawing in the Metallica camp but drummer Lars Ulrich is genuinely disappointed. “Can you imagine that picture? Metallica, Lou Reed and Justin Bieber! We could have put it out that this is our next project. The fans would go f---ing crazy! People already accuse us of betraying metal by working with Lou. Wait till they hear what we can do with Bieber!”

It is fair to say that the Lou Reed/Metallica collaboration has divided fans and critics alike. Lulu is a 95-minute double album of droning, grinding, free-form improvised metal, with Reed intoning explicitly gruesome if psychologically acute lyrics written around the provocative themes of Frank Wedekind’s early 20th-century plays, Earth Spirit and Pandora’s Box.

Rock magazine Uncut hailed it as “extraordinary, passionate and just plain brilliant” while music website Quietus probably caught the flavour of most reviews by dismissing it as “a candidate for one of the worst albums ever made”. Writing in The Daily Telegraph, Andrew Perry conceded that Lulu was “gruelling” work, yet was impressed with “the sheer sense of unrestrained folly” on “a record that wilfully defies all in the name of artistic purity”.

“Who cares?” snaps Reed when I mention the critics. “I never wrote for them then, I don’t write for them now. I have no interest in what they have to say about anything. I’m interested in whether I like it. I write for me.”

Reed is a notoriously difficult interviewee, with a reputation for being uncommunicative, insulting, evasive, dour, bad-tempered and sometimes just monosyllabic and boring. Journalists approach with trepidation, sharing war stories about times he has walked out or refused to speak at all. Still, we return for more punishment. The man is a genius, after all, founder of the hugely influential Velvet Underground, a collaborator with Andy Warhol and among the most innovative lyricists and artistically adventurous musicians of the rock era. So what if he’s also obnoxious and weirdly insecure?

“You know a lot of time these guys that interview us, they think they’re more literate than I am. That would be a real bad mistake,” he snarls, having misinterpreted a question to locate offence where none was intended. “Don’t kid yourself about me, you know what I’m saying? I’m not a good guy to f---- with.”

“No, Neil’s cool,” interjects Ulrich, calming the situation. Perennially upbeat, energetic, friendly, loquacious and enthusiastic, Ulrich is the diametric opposite of Reed. Metallica view Reed with amused affection, overlooking his contrariness and taking pride that such an iconic writer should want to collaborate with them.

“I think we’re the band he has always heard in his head but never been able to play with,” Ulrich says. “He’s a fascinating human being, he’s brilliant musically, intellectually, but I think he feels misunderstood. Most people have a tendency to start a conversation in a neutral position and then see where it goes. He starts in a negative position, then you’ve got to go to neutral and then to positive. When he feels comfortable and trusts people, he opens up, and incredible things can happen.”

It is not hard to detect the vulnerability underpinning Reed’s surliness. “Are you gonna savage this when you leave the room?” he asks, out of the blue. “I think we did a sensual thing. Music is magical, it can make you feel good, it can make you feel bad, and then you put some serious words to it, not just 'I got released from rehab this week, yay.’ Let’s say you go a little bit past there. In my conceit, I thought what if Tennessee Williams had got a crack at this? Can’t it be A Streetcar Named Desire that’s a rock record? Why isn’t anyone doing it? Instead of writing the trash that is out there. I wanted to do something on that level, always. I came close on Berlin. Pretty close. But this one, for me, from beginning to end, this is it.”

So what is it, exactly? “I don’t like the word rock opera, but I’m trying to write on that level that’s reserved for plays still, or novels,” says Reed. “I was trying to escape the simplistic form, and find a different kind of melodic form, but still rock. I didn’t want to traipse off into the land of jazz. All this stuff is about emotion, I mean, why else do it?” Reed starts quoting Shakespeare, “Out, out, brief candle”, dramatically reciting Lady Macbeth’s monologue. “Hey, if I could get there, climb that particular ladder. You have to pass through blood to get there, wherever it is.”

There is, to be fair, a lot of blood in these particular tracks. It had its origins in 10 monologues written for avant-garde director Robert Wilson’s Lulu, staged in Berlin earlier this year. It is the story (filmed as Pandora’s Box in 1929, starring Louise Brooks) of an alluring femme fatale who cuts a sexual swath through society before meeting her nemesis in Jack the Ripper.

Musically, the original setting was a kind of vague electronic ambience. “In my mind, it was missing something, I didn’t know what.” Reed had the idea of giving the lyrics to Metallica, whom he had previously performed with in 2009 at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. “I thought that they could put a long, sinewy muscle in it.”

For Metallica, this has been a revelatory project, where they have been free to experiment outside the confines of their genre. “There was a kind of spontaneous and impulsive energy,” says Ulrich.

Indeed, the key to the band’s longevity seems to come from their attempts to find new directions for their heavy guitar sound, as hilariously portrayed in the 2004 documentary Some Kind of Monster, in which they employed a therapist to unblock their creativity.

Ulrich says: “Turning your back on structure, you are opening up a world of possibilities. For Metallica, to have the luxury of that kind of impulsiveness with somebody who speaks our own language was the reward in itself.”

Although Metallica will headline the Download festival in the UK in June (as part of their European Summer Vacation tour), there are no plans to tour Lulu. “We haven’t actually figured out a way to present this live,” admits Ulrich.

“Holy s---­­­, you perform it at your own risk,” says Reed. “The first thing is, can you get through it emotionally? You have to go for broke, the jugular. That can really get to you.”

As much as Reed asserts disdain for criticism, I suspect he has been upset by the reaction to Lulu. “I think this thing needs a champion. This is for people who are literate. This isn’t 'I cry in my beer cos you f---ed him and ran your truck through my bar.’

“You can write 30 of those and move to Nashville. These words – every time I see them I get thrilled because it does it to me. It may do it to no one else, I don’t care. I can’t try any harder. I can’t do any better. And my heart was pure and my soul was pure, too. I went in there to make music with the best guys I could find. And we did.”

[cavorting with nudists]

I'm trying to imagine Andy Breckman talking and acting in a way that won't make Lou drip with surly contempt, and am coming up blank.