Lou Reed…As His Music Was Meant to Sound: For Once, Lou Was Right?

As frequent visitors to the Halls of Rock will agree, we’ve gotten our share of mileage out of this Lou Reed…As His Music Was Meant to Sound feature. I find something especially gripping about Lou Reed, warts and all. He’s both an icon of rock cool and one of rock’s most pathetic wannabes. He’s most middle class guys who’ve strapped on a guitar and tried to rock: completely lacking in fluidity, seamlessness, grace, and all the other things real rock stars have in spades. I could go on, but those of you who know what I’m talking about can say it better than I can, and those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about are probably living in a house with no mirrors.

For those of you who don’t know the meaning behind this feature, its based on another endearing trait of Lou Reed: read almost any interview of the guy at the release of a new album, and he’s sure to launch into ill-informed technical reasons why his new album captures the sound of his music the way he’d always intended it to sound. In fact, as he’ll get around to telling anyone who’ll listen, this new album is so true to the sound he’s heard in his head all these years, that it makes his previous albums sound like shit.

As a result of these interviews, it’s with good reason that we often provide examples of Lou’s latest and greatest moments, such as the one that kicked off today’s feature.

Surely, a tongue is planted firmly in cheek. On behalf of the Rock Gods, Lou is getting his comeuppance from us. All but those who live in houses without mirrors know this.

In fairness, however, we also try to mix in some performances of Lou and his band at the time that capture what we feel, on many levels, is truly great about the man’s music. Here’s one of my favorite live performance clips of one of my favorite songs from his solo career. Robert Quine’s solo is always a turn-on!


“Waves of Fear” is from The Blue Mask, the one Lou Reed solo album I love pretty much from start to finish, without reservations, with a minimum of needle lifting (eg, “Average Guy” outright sucks), and with a bare minimum of uncomfortable sniggering at the guy’s eccentricities and overreaching ambitions. Check out this track-by-track interview with Lou from the time of the release of The Blue Mask. He’s really high on this release, with good reason. Side 2’s interview segment is key to understanding this guy! Get away from your responsibilites for a half hour and give this thing a solid listen.

I’ve had such a soft spot for The Blue Mask since its release that I’ve come to think of it as the high point in Reed’s career, Velvet Underground included. Sure, there are a hundred good arguments for possibly any of the VU’s studio releases to be higher points in terms of Lou Reed…The Way His Music Was Meant to Sound, but the overall mystique of that band – as well as its underground and relatively underdocumented career – covered up a lot of his shortcomings, robbing us of his sur-humanity. Do we have a VU-era document of Reed’s pursed lips, jutting jaw, and awkward, self-conscious bunny hop during especially rocking parts in songs? No. Do we have the overconfident, critically aware interviews from that era? Few. Do we have the speed-fueled, guitar-free dances of the Rock ‘n Roll Animal era? Nope. Do we have the jazzbo aspirations that would begin with Transformer? Not close!

The Lou Reed of Velvet Underground, for all of the band’s dirty, taboo legacy, is a pretty cleaned up Lou Reed. Solo Lou would let it all hang out. Accompanied by his band for The Blue Mask, guitarist Robert Quine, bassist Fernando Saunders, and gleeful drummer/producer Fred Maher (Doane Perry on the album), Reed not only let his freak flag fly, but he got rock solid, fat-free, flexible backing. How rare it was, after a musically obese stretch of mid-70s records, to hear Reed’s music devoid of fusion-laden fat! Check out this live version of “Sister Ray” for the special mix of the good, the bad, and the ugly, and see if you don’t agree that this Reed era may have, indeed, been the way his music was meant to sound!

It’s all here, Townspeople: the bunny hops, the porn-solo face-offs, the shiny black axe (like new sneaks on a boy in school that you just have to step on!). This is the real deal, sans cool-guy shades and the distraction of the Germanic Ice Princess. Savor this era, folks.