Lou Reed: The Blue Mask / Legendary Hearts song by song review

"Growing Up In Public" is sort of an outlier. He'd been getting more adventurous musically, on "Street Hassle" and "The Bells", then, out of nowhere, he delivered an album of stodgy Michael Fonfara compositions, sounding like a Billy Joel album or something (caveat, I have never heard a Billy Joel album). Next thing he's working with Robert Quine.

 

I have, and it's doesn't.

 

I've never bothered listening to a Billy Joel album either!
I can't imagine one sounding like Lou Reed, though. At least not lyrically.
BTW, I enjoy Growing Up In Public.

 

Agreed. I know the album has defenders here but this is exactly the way I felt when it came out.

 

Some of the arrangements are definitely overwrought, but lyrically it's a fine album imho. As I understand it GUIP was seen as a low point at the time and The Blue Mask as a revitalisation. It is, but in hindsight it's easier to see a logical progression between the two albums...different bands, but there's a similarity as far as the songwriting goes.
I could never decide if the disco break in "So Alone" is sheer genius or just plain embarrassing.

 

keep away, my old man are great ....I always say it as Lou just churning out a quick one before going on tour, after all the binaural and guitar-synth sounds of street hassle and bells its probably the most billy joelesque to the ears

 

"Standing on Ceremony" is another great one for me. I can relate.

 

I love "Growing Up In Public", in a sort of guilty pleasure way, it is highly entertaining and the lyrics are brilliant but the arrangements are anonymous US rock ordinaire - if not Billy Joel then maybe Bob Seger (I've never heard one of his albums either though!)

 

Before there's an unnecessary dog pile on Billy Joel, here's a song that I will submit as a Lou Reed worthy lyric (with a bunch of hints of 1967 Beatles in the music). Kind of "Laura Says".

 

Legendary Hearts track 4

Martial Law

Another Lou does punk track...and another ho-hum track which is rescued by Robert Quine. This is possibly the nearest that Quine gets to his playing style with The Voidoids. Jagged and spiky with a brutal Stratocaster ice pick in the forehead tone. Again I would argue that Saunders style does not fit this type of song particularly well. I suppose I am a typical rock fan who on one hand wants artists to change things up and innovate but on the other grumbles when the boundaries of a certain genre are violated! However rock and roll is a basic form and like the blues a lot of the pleasure comes from the boundaries of the style and what it is not. To me once you add a bubbling fretless bass to a grinding garage rock song you are touching up a cave painting with a spray can. On it's own it is a great bass line but in the context of the song it jars with what Quine is playing. To Quine this style comes naturally, Saunders for all his virtuosity seems to be trying to make the song bend to his style rather than adapting his style for the song. I love his walking line at 3.23 but can't help wishing Fernando had swapped it up and played a fretted bass for this tune.

This is a pretty lyrically intensive song considering how stripped down many of the songs on The Blue Mask were and following the pared down menace of Make Up My Mind. I like individual images from the lyrics and it really conjures up a noisy New York night in an apartment with paper thin walls. I feel the song is less about marital discord (although that is a theme) than Lou's statement that he is "the marshall in the city", I think he is saying that his raison d'être is to chronicle everyday problems in the metropolis. While Joni Mitchell and The Eagles sing about being rich Lou is down and dirty amongst the crying babies, screaming couples and smelly garage in the street. As an aside I always wondered if his line about "Try not to take the garbage of the day, Any place but outside" is a reference to the great garbage man strike of 1968 in NYC.

Overall despite the mix controversy I find I enjoy Legendary Hearts due to Robert Quine. More than even The Blue Mask I think he always adds something unexpected. His playing feels more confident than on The Blue Mask and Reed is writing songs which I think showcase Quine's style to better effect in many ways. TBM feels like an interesting stylist detour for Quine compared to his other work as a session player and in the Voidoids. While TBM features delicate understatement, for the most part, LH gets him back to the raucous string bending he is known for. While the mix on TBM highlighted his playing more, in-fact was a much better mix for all the players, LH gives him some tasty showcases where after the song finishes you find yourself going "cool guitar" while not really caring for the song.

Quine's riff carries the song and is the first proper riff driven tune we have encountered so far from the Quine years. Check out the funky riffing at 0.47 and the fingers down a blackboard string bending of 0.54. Every little fill between the riffs like the one at 1.17 are unexpected and effortlessly mix dissonant intervals with almost country licks (see at 1.48 and at 2.20 where a pedal steel lick is followed by some foil chewing chord substitution). A masterclass of mixing No Wave with James Burton and making the connection seem logical. Quine is one of the very few "guitar heroes" whose knowledge of the past does not freeze his style in amber. Don't get me wrong I love players like John Fogerty and Robbie Robertson who build a style of carefully replicating classic licks which otherwise may have been forgotten. Also at the time Eric Clapton was studiously mimicking blues solos no-one else was doing this to that standard and at the time it was amazingly exciting. It is difficult to reinvent a genre or an instrument without knowing the roots of it extremely well. Many great players once they develop a style stick with it, see the great blues gods like Albert King and Albert Collins. There is no pressing need to innovate if your style says so much already. However I think there are relatively few guitar players who have attempted to force the basic vocabulary of rock guitar into the future as well as Quine. There have certainly been players such as The Edge who have approached the guitar more like a synthesizer and had a great influence, but Quine managed to do something new and exciting with the most basic equipment, a Strat and a cranked amp. He also brought an unusual sensitivity to the song, and while he rarely played on a hit record (the nearest being Girlfriend and Cupid & Psyche 85) and did create some very avant-garde solo albums with Fred Maher, I never felt he was a purely noise artist like Henry Kaiser.

3.30 Saunders stops playing and it seems like he thought the song was going to end but everyone else keeps grinding on and he rejoins with a few well placed notes. We don't know if Quine possibly had a solo removed over this outro but I actually like how he just pounds away at his riff till the track fades out. Like many songs off LH Martial Law really takes off live and I much prefer the version on Live In Italy to the studio version.

 

This song is a lot of fun, amusing lyrics and Lou's vocal is extremely witty.

 

I love a good groove tune. "Martial Law" grooves righteously!

A unique look a a domestic disturbance from a cop's perspective.
"What's a girl like you doing with that lamp
you better drop it down on the floor
And son, that isn't very smart
kicking a hole in that door
Hey, Ace will you take a look at this place
and get those neighbors out of the hall"

While the lines read witty on the surface, they describe yet another sad Lou tale of suffering in America. The America that lies beneath. The America no one wants to talk about.
My brother-in-law, who is a police officer, says domestic violence calls are the calls that generally give cops the most anxiety, as they are so unpredictable due to the escalated emotions present. While that's not depicted in this song, I think of him and what he said whenever I hear it.

 

And Live in Italy, from the tour of this album, is topped only by Take No Prisoners among Lou's official live releases.

 

I love Martial Law. Lou is playing tough NY cop and having a hoot with it. I don't think there's that much more to it. Great riff and great playing by Quine.
I do prefer the version on Live In Italy, it's punchier in every aspect, especially Lou's vocal delivery and Quine's playing.

 

Only took me until today to get the little pun between "martial" and "marital". Bright boy.

 

"ace will you take a look at this place..." I love Lou as the annoyed cop and Ace as his silent partner. And agree: the Live in Italy was the version I picked for my Lou Reed 1981-1987 mx tape back when I made those.

 

Yeah to be honest that passed me by as well

 

Sorry guys had a mad one at work, hope to have next review soon! Anyone else what to start chatting about The Last Shot go ahead. This and Turn Out The Light are two of the best tunes on the album IMO.

 

Legendary Hearts - track 5

The Last Shot

Probabaly my favourite tune on the album. Just when you feel like Lou is going to water down the hard stuff he comes back with a song as gritty as The Last Shot. The great thing while Lou is that however grim the topic there is always an element of humour. I don't know how much of an influence Reed was on Goth or emo but I think what separates the hair pulling misery of these genres with even Lou's most depressive moments is the fact he sees the big picture. As Bill Hicks said "I've had good times on drugs, that's a fact. I've had bad times on drugs, too, ok? But I've had good and bad relationships...an I'm not giving up *****". Reed gives you a full picture of the party, the euphoria and then the next day hangover.

TLS features a great grinding riff which both guitars get their teeth into. It is strangely circular and it almost sounds like the monkey on his back pulling his back for his "last shot". The guitar tones are razor sharp, tinny and clanging while Saunders bass winds between finding melody in the misery. Maher really kills on this one, his hammering drums really driving the riff along. I am not a fan of his drum sound, is he using tuned toms? These and the snare have that precise 80's sound while I like a Levon Helm or Charlie Watts tone. However they are what the track needs.

For me this is one of Reed's top 5 vocals. The blasé tone he uses while covering all these horrors is brilliant. However the way he lets the bravado slip on several lines, to reveal the world weariness underneath is fantastic. The first line is full of a strange resolve, I maybe nearly dead but pore me another! One can image Dylan Thomas singing this song as he staggers off his bare stool to an early grave. Also the way the music follows the line "I broke the mirror with my fall, with my- fall-fall-fall". Again the picture is so vivid of being so drunk you can fall into a glass table and wake up the next day unharmed but in an apartment strewn in debris.

He slips into some classic Reed "movie dialogue" on the line " Gimme a double, give yourself one two Gimme a short beer, one for you too". He could be speaking to the listener, as if to say "hey you guys like living this life vicariously through my music, so how about joining me for real?". I never understood the line "And a toast to everything that doesn't move, that doesn't move" and I stopped trying to analyse it as it is so strange but perfect.

At 2.21 he hesitates and mumbles the line "quit pretty good" and follows at 2.24 by seemingly putting his finger under his lip as he sings the line "this here is where I chipped my tooth". I wonder if this was planned or a cool little improv? Either way it is brilliant and makes me think of the scene in the killer western The Missouri Breaks where Marlon Brandon improvises having a tooth ache and then takes some ice from a preserved body in a coffin to cool it.

One of Reed's greatest tracks and one of the few tunes that is up with the best of The Blue Mask while having it's own distinct sound.

 

For my money, one of the absolute crown jewels in the Reed canon. There is a complex mix of emotions both in the written lyric and in Lou's vocal performance. He is parts sad, blase, boastful about his self abuse, comicly detached, and finally (apparently) sincere when he says he's going to give it all up.

Potentially irrelevant and self-indulgent tangent: I love this song so much I co-opted for my own "use". I have been a weekend warrior sports competitor (volleyball - indoor and beach tournaments) for the past almost 30 years. For the first 25 or so of those years, I had a ritual of listening to Led Zeppelin's "Kashmir" right before or during warm-ups to focus my mind for competition. About 5 years ago, with my age creeping towards 50 and many of my competitors being half my age, I switched over to "The Last Shot". Nothing to do with drink or drugs - but all about the realization that every time I compete now could very well be my last. So I should play like it IS my last chance (that way I won't WISH that I knew it was my last shot). A innocent act of song co-opting in the name of existentialism (and volleyball).

Great song!

For what it's worth, I interpret the toast to everything that doesn't move as a way of saying that he's already drunk enough that objects appear to be moving by themselves - and he's going to keep drinking until the rest join in.

 

i will take live in italy over take no prisoners any day of the week

 

i will say legendary hearts is one of my favorite lou reeds albums.surely one of the best sounding one's and most likely the one i have listened to the most.(and trust me that is saying something!)

 

@RayS
Cool story, keep up the volleyball, I hope you have a good few more years of it! Also good theory about the lyric.

 

I always thought so too.

Lou commented on this song that when he wrote it he believed it was his last shot. Which indicates that his struggles weren't over by '83. Or I guess they never are for anyone with an addictive personality.

Great posts on this song from everyone. I can only agree; it certainly is one of Lou's most successful songs.

 

Thought i'd post these as I haven't seen these pics of Lou before - his band at Studio March 1983 probably doing a LH promo/concert..