The year Lou Reed gave up on music

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/22/nyregion/lou-reed-king-of-new-york.html

by benbreen • 3 years ago

56 105 3 years ago

And here I thought this was going to be about "Machine Metal Music," which is perversely listenable if you are a fan of tape hiss (no Dolby required). A nice, gauzy snapshot of a tumultuous time.

rufus_foreman2• 3 years ago

Machine Metal Music is great. I didn't listen to it for the longest time because I was told it was just white noise, but it is...not that.

Used to listen to it while studying to block out background noise.

rainonmoon5• 3 years ago

Seconding this. After a while you start to hear the rhythms in it. The apocryphal stories about its creation make it all the more fun to listen to and it invites challenging your own preconceived notions about what you like about music (i.e. does it really matter if he Actually Made It or if he just shoved a bunch of guitars up against amps and let the reverb play itself? And even if he did is that different to Actually Making It anyway?)

ramblerman• 3 years ago

I think Lou Reed is a "true artist" outside of the commercial realm, which is a quality to his credit but also to his detriment. Sometimes these artists also forget they are entertainers.

I saw him 15 years ago in Leuven, Belgium and he played a great concert with all his new songs, ofc at the end of the night the crowd was crying out for more, especially "perfect day" and "walk on the wild side". He conceded and did play them but with great disdain, and it was obvious that he loathed playing them. 15 years later that is really all I remember from the concert.

As a comparison, I also saw the rolling stones (7 years ago in edinburgh), who in contrast were more than happy to play their classic hits, with the original vigour and energy. And it is one of my best memories.

I understand both, but it seems the line between artist and entertainer is a fine one and I can't help but think that the artists who share in the joy of entertaining are probably happier in the process.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that Lou Reed is a bit of a tortured soul who probably makes his own path harder than it needs to be - and this article confirms that.

pixl97• 3 years ago

Being a victim of one's own success is a common fate for artists. We see this in edgy animated shows all the time where something shocking eventually turns into fan service.

disqard• 3 years ago

I learned the phrase "audience capture" recently:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31938353

kjkjadksj5• 3 years ago

What a poor attitude honestly. He’s lucky enough to come up with hit songs that have been known for decades, he should be smiling anytime someone asks him to play one because that means he made it in a way the vast majority of musicians never do.

popularrecluse• 3 years ago

Not everyone makes music for the consumption and enjoyment of other people. Sometimes it's just a side-effect.

jjulius9• 3 years ago

Respectfully, it's this take that is poor. Musicians don't owe people anything and aren't obligated to smile any time anyone asks them to perform something. Some musicians will enjoy playing the same song a million times, while others have a different relationship with that music that may necessitate them feeling the need to "move on" from it. Music will always mean different things to different people.

stcroixx• 3 years ago

I agree, but of course Lou would not have. He chose to be miserable most of his life. There’s no way his life could have turned out that he would have been satisfied with.

motohagiography• 3 years ago

If you do something impossibly difficult that you are the only person in the world who can do it (being Lou Reed), and if you grow or change or don't do it the way other people who can't do it expect, the whole world turns on you and hates you for failing to maintain their illusions and their belief that their memories have meaning in the present.

I sympathize w/ not wanting to play those songs. Imagine you had this huge multi-decade personal journey, and no matter what you build or become, nobody will let you be anything other than the guy you were for a few weeks as a kid when you first wrote that song long before most of them were even born.

JKCalhoun• 3 years ago

It seems that so many people my age mustered out of finding new music sometime in their college years. As they age they return to that music to, I imagine, remember that time in their life.

I asked a co-worker what he would listen to to remember this time of their life? Maybe I'm an idiot. Maybe no one wants to remember their 30's, their 40's, their 50's....

Anyway (off on a tangent) the point is that people go to Lou Reed concerts to remember when they were in college making a mix-tape including "A Perfect Day" for their boyfriend.

While I feel bad for the artist "artistically", plenty of artist are of course making bank by playing wineries to 50-somethings that now have deeper pockets and want their love shack, baby.

SanderNL• 3 years ago

I feel for the man becoming a millionaire doing that degrading hard work of being an entertainer/artist. Real frustrating that must have been. I feel deeply for those struggling millionaires that keep plowing on, for.. for.. humanity’s sake.

jancsika• 3 years ago

Imagine listening to an architect speak, finding out in the middle of his boring 2-hour lecture that he's 4000 years old, then at the end hearing him refuse to answer a question about how he designed Stonehenge because he's sick and tired of talking about that.

I can sympathize with the architect, same as you can. He is 4000 years old, after all.

But I can also sympathize with anyone who attended only to hear about Stonehenge and now wants their money back.

lordfrito2• 3 years ago

No one is forcing him to go on tour. Who is the tour for, Reed or his fans?

If he's touring because he needs the money, he should suck it up and give his paying customers what they want. Maybe he'd be able to make more money short term and so be able to quit touring sooner.

If he's touring for himself, then he has every right to do what he wants. He shouldn't be surprised that his fans are clamoring to hear his older works. If he doesn't want to play them, fine. But he shouldn't be dismayed if he finds himself playing smaller and smaller venues when his old fans start showing up in smaller number because he refuses to do so.

I mean, this is a guy who we all know by name because of his contributions to music. He's one of the lucky ones. Talk about your first world problems.

jncfhnb2• 3 years ago

The correct answer here is that the business layer in between Lou and his fans should be honest in what Lou intends to play.

jonstewart2• 3 years ago

Lou Reed died ten years ago.

coldtea12• 3 years ago

Sometimes these artists also forget they are entertainers.

That's exactly what I (and many others) expect from artists. We don't want sing-and-dance men and women to amuse us.

musicale2• 3 years ago

Without the performing part you're not really a performing artist anymore.

Performing artists are free to alienate their audiences if they wish, but the consequences aren't necessarily positive for anyone.

alpineidyll3• 3 years ago

People who create new things with real impact always end up paying a price. Directly or indirectly there is a thermodynamic necessity that work will emit heat. Some people prefer to live reversible lives and that's fine, but to irreversibly change the world you're going to pay.

Angostura• 3 years ago

That rather reminds me of this sketch from the old BBC comedy show Big Train https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p1YNEtaHbzA

whartung• 3 years ago

I remember when David Bowie essentially announced his "Greatest hits, and I'm not going to play them again" tour. Simply, he wanted to give the fans a last chance to see their old favorites, but not be hindered by them in the future. I don't know how that worked out for him, I imagine fine. It's not like he was needing the money.

But I think that was a fine response to this problem artists have with deep catalogs. I remember seeing a Van Morrison concert, and I didn't recognize a thing he performed. Not just the songs, the style of music.

If you want to hear the hits, there are a bunch of tribute and cover bands that will play those. Considering the composition of many modern incarnations of older bands may well not include any of the original performers, even the acts themselves are essentially cover artists, they just get to use the name and logo.

maxfurman• 3 years ago

Bowie's last major tour was in 2003 and he played plenty of his old hits. So it doesnt seem like it worked out for him.

namuol• 3 years ago

My dad’s first big rock concert was Lou Reed and he tells of the show exactly as you have.

Funnily enough he also was very disappointed by the Stones, and how they seemed so cocky on stage and that they didn’t care to sing half the lyrics aloud. Of course this was back in the late 70s/early 80s.

I’m under 40 but while we’re on the subject of rock “legends” on stage, no performance I’ve seen has matched Elvis Costello I saw in 2011 or so. He played acoustic guitar without a band backing him nor any kind of stage lighting to speak of, and it was mesmerizing.

lazyeye• 3 years ago

Lou Reed needs to understand that other people funded his life and he needs to meet them half-way.

eweise• 3 years ago

I guess I got lucky. I saw him on on his New York album tour. Great songs on that album so no need to hear prior hits although I think he did play walk on the wild side.

ciconia• 3 years ago

https://archive.ph/xetF0

jdblair• 3 years ago

I’m half-way through the article and Sweet Jane is stuck in my head. I listened to “The Very Best of the Velvet Underground” so much on my Walkman in the late 80’s that I wore the tape out.

rufus_foreman2• 3 years ago

"Reed clomped down the staircase and out onto the avenue. He stowed his guitar in the trunk of his parents’ car, and Sid Reed drove home to the old house in Freeport, where his son would be staying for a while."

Sounds like something out of a Wes Anderson movie. Guess it should be the mom not the dad though.

bwanab• 3 years ago

It's funny that they picked the relatively short time between VU and Walk on the Wild Side to focus on instead of the long period prior to New Sensations. I saw him at the Beacon in the early 90s. What a great show. As he famously said, "You can't beat two guitars, bass, and drums."

jonstewart2• 3 years ago

RIP. I loved reading this article last night. I don't understand the disdain expressed here in the comments, but there's much I don't understand about the HN comments. Here's a great video of Sweet Jane from a concert in Paris, 1974: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uc26EFI1_nw

baby• 3 years ago

Please stop sharing paywall articles

dang• 3 years ago

If there's a workaround, it's ok. Users usually post workarounds in the thread.

This is in the FAQ at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html and there's more explanation here:

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10178989

achairapart• 3 years ago

Fun fact: Lou Reed poems were published in a “Special Poetry Supplement” to The Harvard Advocate[0] (as Louis Reed!) around that time (1971).

There is a poem called "The Coach and Glory of Love" that is in fact the very song "Coney Island Baby" from the homonymous album released later in 1976[1].

[0] https://theadvocateblogdotnet.wordpress.com/2012/11/13/from-...

[1] https://theadvocateblogdotnet.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/pg...

raydiatian• 3 years ago

Why do people unironically like “Walk On The Wild Side”

Answer: “can I kick it? Yes you can.”

hackandthink• 3 years ago

So Lou Reed had written "Walk on the Wild Side" before he recorded his first solo album which did not feature this song.

Actually I like his first album more than "Transformer":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lou_Reed_(album)

The year Lou Reed gave up on music

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