music friday: lou reed, 1974

We saw Lou Reed many times over the years, the first being on this date in 1974, at Winterland. Earlier in 1974, he released the still-classic live album, Rock 'n' Roll Animal, which eventually went gold. Of course, he had an actual hit in late 1972 with "Walk on the Wild Side", so his record company must have been happy to have this artist, who famously never sold any records as a member of the great Velvet Underground. The audiences for Lou's 1974 concerts understandably hoped for more of the Rock 'n' Roll Animal fireworks, but Lou now had a different band. In September of 1974, he released Sally Can't Dance. Critics weren't exactly overwhelmed, but the album became Lou's first top-ten success.

This didn't impress Lou ... as Wikipedia notes, "While the record was a hit and elevated Reed's status as a star, he reportedly was disappointed in its production (in which he took a largely passive role) and the treatment of the songs. Reed remarked, 'It seems like the less I'm involved with a record, the bigger a hit it becomes. If I weren't on the record at all next time around, it might go to Number One.' In a 1976 interview, Reed stated that Sally Can't Dance was 'a piece of shit from beginning to end.'" Hoping to keep the hot streak going, the label released another live album taken from the same Rock 'n' Roll Animal concert. At that point, I guess Lou took a more active part in his career, releasing a double-record set, Metal Machine Music, which mostly pissed off people who bought it and played it, while critics mostly dismissed it. Here is a brief excerpt ... the entire thing totaled 64 minutes and 11 seconds, and it all sounded like this:

Here's an example of Lou in 1974 ... this is similar to what we heard at Winterland:

Here is Lou being interviewed that year:

Here is a favorite of mine ... he explained this one of the times we saw him in a club:

Comments

[Tomás]

Took me until my twenties to start to "get" Lou Reed but I knew of him pretty well, from this show or that documentary or whatever. I found him interesting, but I didn't know how or why. This is such a good taste of that.

[Steven Rubio]

His solo career was hit or miss for most of the 70s. He had to deal with the expectations that came from being part of a great band. He had some early successes, but it's safe to say he was a disappointment, as anyone would be with such comparisons ... some of us think of the Velvet Underground as the greatest of all bands. We saw him several times in clubs in the mid-late 70s ... he had a strong band, you can hear them on the live album Take No Prisoners, but the album itself is ruined because Lou for some reason turned it into a comedy album. Coney Island Baby in 1976 was my favorite from that period, esp. the title track, and the title song from Street Hassle ranks with the best he's even done, inc. the Velvets.

But then when he was 40, in 1982, came The Blue Mask, a masterpiece, and for the rest of his career, he still had ups and downs, but he had earned respect for his solo career so he was no longer a joke. That band on The Blue Mask was the best post-Velvets band he ever had ... Robert Quine and Lou on guitar, Fernando Saunders on bass ... you can hear them on the live album Live in Italy.

I listened to Sally Can't Dance this morning, and it's not as bad as I remembered. Well, back then I loved it, but later it stood out as being crappy. It's real problem at the time was likely that it actually sold well, as I said above, his top-ten hit, and Lou wasn't the only person to wonder how that record sold but the entire Velvet Underground catalog died on the vine (first album made it to #171, the last two didn't even chart). Of course, over the years, as the band and its billion followers grew older, the catalog finally began to sell.