Lou Reed: “I thought The Beatles were garbage”

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by bleachershane, Feb 17, 2015.

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  1. Stan

    Stan Forum Resident

    Location:
    Chicago
    I saw him once with Jim Morrison and a Donkey, somewhere in Argentina, recently.
     
  2. RayS

    RayS A Little Bit Older and a Little Bit Slower

    Location:
    Out of My Element
    I have to guess you might be alone in thinking that.

    If Nico sang it, it would have gone "Vatch out, ze vorld's behind you."
     
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  3. Stan

    Stan Forum Resident

    Location:
    Chicago
    like that's some sort of accomplishment around here.
    whereas this forum is a universe built around the Beatles and their accomplishments and influences,
    Lou will always orbit in another place, for all of time.
     
  4. bleachershane

    bleachershane Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Glasgow, Scotland
    ;) I assumed she was trying her very best not to turn the 'w's into 'v's!

    Well, my teenage self certainly picked up on the fact that Lou was singing it very differently to his usual singing voice (even if I didn't realise it was Lou...), it's extremely feminine in its tone. So it turns out Nico was there at the session and meant to sing the lead vocals but Lou defiantly proclaimed he was going to. I get the impression he mock sings the song as a 'chanteuse' and that's why I always assumed it was Nico...!

    You think you know something and then one day, boom... there's always something new to learn I guess!
     
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  5. Stan

    Stan Forum Resident

    Location:
    Chicago
    this is entirely backwards for me. Given the direct lineage between the Beatles to Black Sabbath to Metallica,
    i've always thought LuLu was Lou's way of doing a Beatles tribute album. it's much tighter and polished than anything he's put on the shelves solo wise.
     
  6. RayS

    RayS A Little Bit Older and a Little Bit Slower

    Location:
    Out of My Element
    I was lucky enough to teach a one week "mini-course" on the Velvets for high school students (I also got to do one on Berlin-NewYork-Magic & Loss). Their reaction to "Sunday Morning" really surprised me - they found it beautiful, peaceful and restful. I personally heard overwhelming paranoia from my first listen - and I think Lou tried to sing it in a paranoid, still-wasted-from-Saturday-night-and-now-it's-sunrise-on-Sunday way. :)
     
  7. bleachershane

    bleachershane Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Glasgow, Scotland
    I really should've made that 'wasted chanteuse'...! That was a my image, it was the antics and consequences of many Saturday nights creeping up on a woman each and every Sunday morning (and perhaps every day after that). It is of course a song that on the surface is beautiful (John Cale's use of the celeste brings a sense of serene to the proceedings) but has this egging sense of paranoia bubbling throughout "Watch out, the world's behind you"... Really, quite masterful songwriting and arranging when you consider it.
     
  8. avant-gardener

    avant-gardener Active Member

    Location:
    Maine, USA
    The thing I appreciate about metal is the melodic minor forms in that genre, and the way they relate to classical music. Kirk Hammett is an incredible player. I admire his playing very much. I generally can't stand the vocals in metal. I'd love it if Metallica did an instrumental album. I like Hetfield's rhythm playing well enough too; but the whole metal vibe with the darkly thematic lyrics -- I just can't get into it. Same with Van Halen, even though they do more major key arrangements, and the singers don't have the same 'gnarr' in their voices -- I just can't grasp their lyrical approaches and they don't move me. If Metallica and Van Halen did instrumental albums, I'd probably buy them on the day they were released.

    I've been listening to mostly music without vocals lately anyway, so maybe it's just a bias for me right now -- classical and jazz is what I've been into primarily. One cd I dig to no end is by Black Sun Ensemble, called "Sky Pilot." It's all instrumental and has a metal flavor to everything and it's incredible. As far as "LuLu" goes, isn't it essentially a horror movie set to metal music? That's the impression I got from the reviews I've read. Maybe I'll find it in a used bin somewhere. I'm not overjoyed by the prospect of that, but maybe I'll give it a listen eventually.

    Now with the Beatles influencing metal? I don't relate the Beatles to everything. I believe the sound of modern metal, from Black Sabbath to Metallica, is more related to a freak accident Tony Iommi suffered before he started playing guitar, where he lost the tips of his fingers on what would become his fretting hand. There's a definite, unique syncopation in metal rhythm guitar which developed from that one person and his chopped off fingers, IMO.
     
    Last edited: Mar 2, 2015
  9. dkmonroe

    dkmonroe A completely self-taught idiot

    Location:
    Atlanta
    I never thought it was Nico, but it surprised me to find out that it was Lou. He usually doesn't sound so sweet!
     
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  10. bleachershane

    bleachershane Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Glasgow, Scotland
    I quite genuinely thought it was Nico being forced by the rest of the band to sing without any traces of her Germanic accent! But yeah, I certainly would've instantly thought "That's Lou Reed". It's nothing like his usual voice, most certainly one of the sweetest vocals he ever committed to tape!
     
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  11. Evan L

    Evan L Beatologist

    Location:
    Vermont
    A lot of people thought The Velvet Underground were garbage! Not me though.
     
  12. jkauff

    jkauff Senior Member

    Location:
    Akron, OH
    Nico and Andy very much wanted Nico to sing "Sunday Morning", partly because it's the leadoff track. Lou wouldn't hear of it, and he and Andy got into an argument as a result. He never accepted Nico as a true member of "his" band.

    BTW, today is Lou's birthday. Happy BD wherever you are.
     
  13. bleachershane

    bleachershane Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Glasgow, Scotland
    Just noticed our host's signature is made up of the following:

    "The Beatles are the foundation of everything we all do."
    - The Foo Fighters' Dave Grohl

    “I say in speeches that a plausible mission of artists is to make people appreciate being alive at least a little bit. I am then asked if I know of any artists who pulled that off. I reply, 'The Beatles did'.”
    - Kurt Vonnegut, Timequake

    “I thought The Beatles were garbage."
    - Lou Reed

    ;)
     
  14. Zeki

    Zeki Forum Resident

    And we have come full circle...right back to the starting line!

    :D
     
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  15. sirwallacerock

    sirwallacerock The Gun Went Off In My Hand, Officer

    Location:
    salem, or
  16. bleachershane

    bleachershane Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Glasgow, Scotland
    That should've been 'wouldn't have thought'... missed the edit! And I have man-flu... :disgust:
     
  17. Zeki

    Zeki Forum Resident

    Side thought-- and I don't want to start a new thread because the negative folks will have a field day (if I can come up with a good tabloid headline, naturally!)...but I have been following a number of the Rolling Stones threads and have noticed how they are remarkably civil and "guerilla troll" free. None of these "drop in just to say I hate the Rolling Stones" nonsense posts that seem to always, and I mean ALWAYS, be an embarrassment to a Beatles thread.

    Well, I know this has nothing to do with the topic so apologies! :D
     
  18. LandHorses

    LandHorses I contain multitudes

    Location:
    New Joisey
    Happy Birthday Lou!
     
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  19. lschwart

    lschwart Senior Member

    Location:
    Richmond, VA
    That's actually relevant and interesting, I think. Maybe it has to do with the nature of people's attachment to the Rolling Stones, which I've always felt is different for most people from the attachment people have to the Beatles. I know I came to both at exactly the same moment, and fell in love with both, but there's always been something like a distance with the Stones, a kind of irony or a standing at a remove from the music, even when I'm totally into it.

    Listening to and enjoying the Stones has always been something like a really engaging and serious (and seriously fun) game, while my attention to the Beatles has always had something to so with sorting through real questions about who and how I wanted to be. I don't know if that makes sense to anyone, but I really felt my way through questions like whether or not I was or wanted to be a man like Paul or a man like John, George, or Ringo. And those personalities (or the personae that the songs seemed to palpably present) always seemed part and parcel of the music, which also seemed to tell a powerful story about friendship and growing up, etc. I've never felt that way about the Stones music or about any of the Stones, as much fun as it has always been to imagine being Mick Jagger (or to be who Mick Jagger was so good at pretending to be) or to not give a f**k as much as it seemed Keith Richards did not give a f**k. And FWIW, my engagement with Lou Reed's work is very much like my engagement with the Beatles' work, part of my own process of sorting out how to deal with the predicament of being human, how to be a human being (true of Dylan's and Leonard Cohen's work, too). The power of the Stones is something different from that. Something about play and celebration, fantasy, maybe testing limits in certain ways--true of the Doors, too.

    And this isn't a judgment about relative quality--although it can lead to that--but about the nature of the engagements these different works invite--for me, at least, although I imagine I'm not entirely alone in having these feelings or thoughts about these artists--and that's why I thought it might be part of the explanation for the different tones in the threads. When we argue about certain artists, things very close to us, close to our core sense of identity, feel like they're at stake. Not true of other artists.

    L.
     
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  20. 007james

    007james Forum Resident

    Location:
    nyc
    Probably said it but did not mean it, looking to draw attention. Just like a member of the Sex Pistols saying Pink Floyd was garbage as well but later admitted to being a fan........
     
  21. Tristero

    Tristero In possession of the future tense

    Location:
    MI
    Well, I think Lydon admitted to liking Syd era Floyd but not so much the late 70s incarnation (though after meeting Gilmour, Johnny had nothing but nice things to say about him as a person).
     
  22. Summer of Malcontent

    Summer of Malcontent Forum Resident

    That would be a great name for a paint colour. "We're going to do the entire living room in Wasted Chanteuse, except for a feature wall in Pale Junkie."
     
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  23. notesfrom

    notesfrom Forum Resident

    Location:
    NC USA
    I think this was one of the tragedies of the VU's stab at commerciality. Nico should have sang or co-sang a duet on that song. Lou was being a control freak. Not only would a Nic0-sung version have had a shot at getting airplay in somewhere like California (it's not too different sounding than 'San Francisco'), but I would like to have heard a Nico version. She was made for that song, as her ghostly backing vocals give some evidence of. You blew that one, Lou! Just another event in the VU's strange but true history, I guess.
     
  24. Zeki

    Zeki Forum Resident

    You've taken this to a deeper level than I had thought out. Very interesting...but, I have noticed that even The Stones have their different clan allegiances: Brian; Jagger-Richards; Mick Taylor; Jagger alone; Richards alone, etc etc. So in that respect it mirrors the various factions of The Beatles or Pink Floyd or....

    There's currently three Stones' threads (with Altamont starting to heat up, so maybe not QUITE as civil as I suggested earlier! :D ), but I still don't see anyone jumping in to declare their Stones hatred....or declare that Zeppelin is better, or some other flippant trollistic remark. In a Beatles thread you can put good money down that it'll attract several guerilla trolls who are attracted to the thread, like moths to a candle, declaring their contempt. Or what is a McCartney thread without The Usual Suspects sniffing the wind to jump in and declare that Lennon's Superiority is a Given. Both type of these posts will even gather several "likes"!, meaning there's even silent lookers who delight in this type of trolling. More often than not, in another truly baffling aspect of this type of poster, the Troll indicates quite an extensive knowledge of the Beatles catalog! Masochistic?!

    But it doesn't happen with The Stones. Again, curious.
     
  25. mikek82

    mikek82 Forum Resident

    "Would it be right to call your music Gutter Rock?"
    "Gutter Rock? Oh yeah!"
    Happy Birthday, Lou!

    Page 3, here we come!
     
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