Lou Reed w/ Organized Meat

Running 5 to the six we be in the mix with that rare candy paint job on a whip. I need food for the kids, money for the rent. Fuck a lockdown baby. I can't do that shit. And I'll never vote because I'm fucking broke and either way I know the police ain't gonna leave me alone on a plane by the physical and rock me. Crypto told me I should be in the Glock with me, so I packed up my piece and I'm sliding slide because we might get caught up in a riot. Middle finger Trump, middle

finger biting fucker. Left fucking right as you riding where you let us see it. You know politics, baby, we just talked from the birds to the bricks. We be in the mix with the rare candy paint job on a whip we with. Okay, we are covering another

complicated man on here. I don't know, I didn't plan for it to be like this, but if you cover Roman Polanski and then the next, you know, usually the next week we do something kind of like politics or something like, well, I don't really want to talk about politics right now. And we did on the premium feed. So hop over rare candy.substack.com. The sales over you guys are bad shoppers, but that doesn't mean you can't get access. It's only 5 bucks a month. Anyways, we're covering Lou Reed

today. Lou Reed is somebody who has like the spectre of him has always haunted me and I've never given his catalog just a full dive. I'm very wary of like the William Burroughs glamorization of heroin because I find heroin disgusting and ugly. Like even even as somebody who enjoyed drugs back in the day, I've never thought the heroin thing was, was was all that cool. And and it just seemed gross and New York and rats and and just never, never my thing.

But I wanted to give his catalog a chance because I had was listening to Coney Island baby and I was like, wow, this is really good. Like, what else does this guy have? I know there's just a secret catalog of just a bunch of albums. Then I saw he was into Tai Chi and I was like, wow, this could

be a very fun. Now, when I was just teasing an idea of maybe covering one of his albums or something, I got suggested his autobiography on Audible just suggested to me, I think it came out last year, it's by Anthony de Curtis and we will be referencing that throughout the episode. And then I walked into a used bookstore for having lunch with my parents where when I was waiting for my parents, I checked Audible and saw that it was suggested to me. I walked into the used bookstore.

It's front faced at the front next to all the like, you know, my asexual vegetable child, you know, like it was like next to those type of books. And it was the Lou Reed by Anthony de Curtis. I'm like, it's telling me something like this is this means we have to cover it. Then I needed a guest. I needed a guest. I wasn't sure if Sai was going to be down to us. I've never heard Sai talk about Lou Reed, not once. And nor him me probably. I just had a feeling.

Our guest today goes by Twitter user organized meet. He's been on the show before. He's covered a wide range of things. We're going to also be he's kind of my my unofficial Thomas pension guy. There's a few, but he's there. And you're a huge fan of Velvet Underground and Lou Reed, right? Yeah, yeah, both of them. I've been into them since, like, you know, high school. Found Velvet Underground first, but then, yeah, delved into the Lou Reed catalog. Not not quite as deep as I did

for this show. I kind of stopped around the 70s. Just heard a few albums you know maybe one later 1 but didn't really get into his catalog past like Trans Transformer and a couple other albums. Yeah, and I'm just picturing you. I mean, is this around the time you had the Kurt Vonnegut tattoo? Yes, Yes, I see you here. Well, I love it. Yeah. I mean, I was still in. I got that, like, right out of high school. So it would have been like, yeah. I like Kurt Vonnegut.

I like Kurt Vonnegut. Yeah, I like Kurt Vonnegut. It's just it's just like there was a certain. And it's kind of repellent sometimes because you know, they have Velvet Underground has this like fan base of like South Park goth kid kind of thing happening a little bit. Like they're not Goths, but they just conformist. Like it's actually a commentary on this like postmodern. You can never guess what I like kind of thing. Don't laugh at anything except the most random thing in the

world that they laugh. Like I was always kind of off putting to me. Plus they were the anti Beatles kind of in a sense and anti Laurel Canyon. And I'm big fans of both of those music scenes. I, I, I think that's some of the best work the CIA has ever done. Play the hits guy guys go back to that. We need that again. But I was just thinking like, I, I get really mad and I still was on this, on this deep dive that

I somewhat conducted. You know, it's, it's very intimidating the amount of New York people talking about these two things that we're talking about. But sigh, you, I've never, we've never talked about this guy before you and you ever am I? I don't think there's any recorded conversation of or not even or unrecorded conversation of us ever talking about this. But you and I were kind of the same. You were like, Oh yeah, solo stuff's pretty cool. VU is kind of like, that's a

different thing where. You at now I think I got in yeah, IA little deeper dive mostly through the 70s stuff. I still need to check out the later stuff is yeah, I started with, you know, I like when I was a teen with Transformer and so, you know, loved it and all that. And I was definitely like, this is, you know, a little bit oddball, a little different, you know, and and then tried Velvet Underground, tried the first album. Didn't hate it, but wasn't. I was just like, what is this?

You know, and I, I just kind of got the vibe and forgive me that this is like, oh, this is for like the shirts to wear the shirt, you know, with the banana and stuff like the. That's how I viewed this, and back in the day was the same way, yeah. Yeah, and then I got in like the third VU album is is fantastic. I do love it. I don't hate the 1st 2:00, but by any means, but I I definitely they the third one should be the one that that gets pumped.

And then I remember hearing Kanye West talk, you know, he, like, picked every guy and he's like, Lou Reed's a genius, you know? And. And so I was like, that got me a little bit back into him, too. I was like, all right, let me check this out. You know, it's interesting. But yeah, we never talked about him, I don't think. And no. And then? Adam Lehrer would always bring him up on here. And I'm like, God, I gotta check him out, you know, Like, yeah, he's like, hey, check him out.

He's like, yeah, his music is, it's, I love it. It's it's so especially when you listen to it all like binge it like we've been doing. It's very warm, you know, probably because of the heroin, you know, it's just a very warm fuzzy feeling, you know, And yeah, I love it. I've I've definitely gained new respect for the man for sure. And he's cool. Ironically. He never like tried that hard. He was just kind of like, whatever, you know, I don't know. He throws off that vibe a little bit.

He's a, he's an enigma for sure, because he, he's one of those guys like how I was talking about earlier where he's like, like he's, he's like 3 layers of like insulation to where you'll just never get to the real him. But then somebody finds the real him and he's like, Oh, I'm something else now. You know, like he, he's like one of those guys. And it comes through in this biography, which is really, really well done by Anthony De Curtis.

They were, I don't know if you could ever really be his friend and Lou Reed, like you can definitely, he definitely had people he kept around. But like if you were, if you were like in the music business, whether as a journalist or anything, you he kept you at a distance. Like he kept you at a distance a little bit. He was always around and like people talk to him all the time, but you get the idea that he kind of couldn't really love

people in in the industry. His like friends were like Tai Chi people and like, you know, random stuff like those are the people like, Oh, this is like my friend or a guy that works at a restaurant. Like very much the you would never expect me to be friends with this guy and I sound like I'm hating on him. I'm not. This is just the people have like to be honest, a lot of people do hate him. Like people who are big fans of his music, like kind of don't like him.

If you go on Reddit, any Reddit post about the Velvet Underground, it's like anti him a lot of the time, Like, and I'm kind of like, well, OK, you know, and we'll get into that. Like cuz I, what I, my, my take of that was like, that was like kind of this Warhol construction of a band. Not the first iteration of it, but the, the one that was put out into the world with the banana cover and stuff.

That was like kind of a, not a fake band, not a fake band, but a novelty, like a little bit of a novelty in my opinion, like. It's an art project, like it's one of Warhol's art projects. And Lou Reed, I think, kind of learned from Warhol in a way. It's like you use people as much as you need them. So Lou Reed was able to be people's best friend for a short amount of time and then just never talk to them again? Like you're dead to him for no reason it appears sometimes.

It's crazy, you. Know And then like when he died, everyone's like, yeah, haven't talked to him in 35 years because we hate each other. But I really miss him, you know? What I mean, it's like, well, and that's. Life, I mean, that is life like there is like, you know, Prince and Michael Jackson had that type of relationship. Like it's just he was a competitor.

I mean, he loved sports, which is really cool for like a, the thing about Lou Reed and we'll get, we're going to start from the beginning here of his life just after this.

But my favorite thing about him is he's like this type of New York guy that I'm not sure ever existed, but it's like he's a combination of like 4 New York guys that kind of don't exist anymore where he's like gay, you know, like just going like wearing leather and just doing like almost like sociopathic, like William Friedkin cruising sex at night. And then also like, calling into like WFAN, like Willie Randolph's not a true clean up hitter.

Like, you know. Like like doing that in like 1976 and then like haichi in the park and I'm like that guy just like doesn't exist anymore. I mean, the combination maybe never did except for Lou Reed, but I just I I laugh about all of that. And he became more and more himself as he got older. He became just like a regular like love Israel Jewish guy like in the 90s and just far made kind of on the nose Democrat politics like whereas it's less

of an art project. Then he tried to go back to art projects right before he died and they're all bad. They're. All. The Edgar Allan Poe album and Metallica collaboration Things I've Ever Heard. OK, well. All right. Well, I agree about one of those you like. To roll into that. Oh, or the Metallica. I like the Metallica. Clan. I did. I wanted to. I didn't.

I wanted to too and or I didn't want to actually, but I ended up I was like, Oh my God. He worked with Metallica and I listened to it and I thought it was pretty good. Awful I. Just learned that today. I didn't know. I just saw in like the when I was researching. Yeah, I was like Metallica. That's cool. We're going to get you right back to the episode, but I just wanted to let you guys know of a few other things we offer at Rare Candy Industries.

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All right, enough of that. Let's get you back into the episode. So he's gone. I mean it, it is this audiobook. We I listen to the audio, but I do have a hard copy of it just because I like to, I like to

double up sometimes. And I had a the, the the book itself has has cool pictures in the middle of it and stuff like, I mean, the guy's one of the most like well photographed people of all time, extremely photogenic, but also had like Nick Rock and all these war weird, creepy Warhol smiling photographers taking pictures of like people laying in their own

shit at the factory. Like kind of like, yeah, yeah, it was always, he always had people with like skilled people with cameras around him at all times. So it's really cool to see like kind of, and I and he put out his own photography stuff. And even some photographers have said, like Mick Rock said that he took like the best pictures of him. Like actual Mick Rock was like this dude like didn't know shit about like cameras.

And, you know, I was like perfectly in focus, but also like kind of not in focus in an artful way. Like, this dude was just one of those guys that could pick something up and just be good at it. And even if it's not like good in the traditional sense, it's like, yeah. But I could never duplicate what he did. And that's why he constantly had, like, virtuosos working around him because he wasn't, he was a literary guy. He kind of is in a way.

I think he's a much more talented person than him, but he's he's he's kind of the response to Jim Morrison in a way where like, this is a guy that, like, should have been writing prose, you know what I mean? Like a guy that should have been writing fictions, writing literature, writing poetry and stuff. But he found like up until 1960 that straight up like doesn't exist the type of music that was happening.

And, and, but he has this tether to the Doo wop and like rock'n'roll thing that that saves him every time he's going too far. He has that like, just that ability to go into like, oh, I recognize what that could be. That's like a real song now. Like a tether? Yeah, It's like a yeah. Yeah, it's like a safeguard against like the avant-garde, to be honest. Like cuz sometimes when stuff goes too quote UN quote avant-garde, I just, I, I tune, I tune out a lot of times. It's just. He's weird.

He's weirdly has like a side of him that's not avant-garde too at all. That's the weird thing. It's it's very, you know, I think that maybe a lot of that transferred over from the Velvet Underground stuff, which, you know, like, and I'm not saying this with any hate it, it could be seen as kind of like a try hard kind of a thing. You know, it with it with not with loot. I mean, just that whole project, right.

And again, not hating. That's just like, that's just what you had to do back then, especially when you're coming out with when The Beatles are peaking and you got to like differentiate yourself from that. That's a big part of it, I think. And someone like him, you know, has to, you know, I don't know. You can't. I like that he. Yeah. He just kind of had this very flat line. The way I'm saying this sounds like a bad thing, but it's not. You know, like I know.

That's how this whole episode's going to be. Yeah. You know, like. Very even keel, kind of a artist, you know? Yeah, very straight and narrow. Like hitting straight down the fairway a lot of times. Which is. Weird. Yeah, yeah. I don't know. What do you what do? You think I mean, you know his lyrics? I mean, with the Velvets, it was a little bit more like he did try to make songs that were like, beautiful, like lyrics that had like a little more poetry to it.

And I think, you know, later on he kind of found that more like raw just, I'm just going to like, tell you a story, like just how an average normal person would tell you a story. And there wasn't a lot of that like, you know, avant-garde stuff in the Velvet Underground. Yeah, yeah.

So who the hell is he? Right? This is a very interesting childhood. Again, the you can't really do a puff piece on Lou Reed because you're lying if you do it. So I'm going to say a lot of it. You had to have to, you have to know a few junkies in your life to understand what's being said sometimes and what's actually happening versus what they're telling people. So he had a interesting childhood.

He's a Jewish guy from New York, you know, Coney Island, I think, I think it's the Coney Island area. And he working class Jewish family back then, probably even still to this day. There's like a few professions they want you to be doctor, lawyer, you know, stuff like that. And he's clearly not going to be either of those things. But he is smart enough to be. He's a very smart guy, very well read. And he's a talented guy. So his parents are just like,

yeah, but you're like gay. Like you're, you're doing, you're being gay right now. Like quite literally like he contracted hepatitis from intravenous drug use before he turned 18. Like this is like this dude was like a a straight up junkie from from like his teenage years to the 80s. And he it got to the point where his parents and I, they his mom deeply regrets and I get a feeling his dad did, though I'm not sure his dad ever actually said that he did they for being gay.

They put him in electric shop therapy and it like zapped his brain basically. And in his words, he was going to be writing novels, literature, which not super hard to believe that that would have been the case. And and but he's like, my memory is just not that good. Like I can't write like long form, long form, long form. He's like, I just I get short spurts of stuff now and again. Is it all from that? I don't know. Is it possibly because you're a junkie too?

I don't know, like you, you know, it's tough to like really find a root cause for a lot of stuff, but all I know is if my parents Clockwork Orange to me when I was a kid, I'd be pissed you. Know I would be pissed. But also like it kind of sounds like his parents were not that bad other than that and but like it, I don't know. I don't know how you how you felt about that organizing me because I was like kind of like they don't seem that bad except for that you. Know Yeah, yeah.

No, I mean, his dad seemed bad, but from what I gathered from the autobiography or the biography, it was like there was some other stuff wrong with him just besides being gay. So it mean Lou Reed pretty much says like, oh, he did this because I was gay, But I don't know, he could have just been pinning that on his father. That broke the camel's back. We'll say it's the straw that broke the camel's.

Back, Yeah, OK. And if it was OK, his father wasn't a good father, but his mother was just kind of blamed for going along with it. And back then, you know, I don't know, she was probably a little mentally disturbed. Also doesn't seem like he came from the most like well functioning family. So, I mean, but it really does seem like Lou just really can't get past that one point with his father, like for the rest of his life. Yeah, and it's again it's like again, it's like pretty

heartbreaking. However, like that again, am IA proponent of this. No, that was the party line back then, like was like yeah, electric shock therapy and lobotomies. That's like. What you did? That was, that was the thing, like they were, they, they had that thing out to, out to the ocean where they would say for the women, they would just get lobotomized and they'd just be staring at the ocean.

Basically. That was like the, the, the phrase for it. And then for if your son, like I said, it's not, it's definitely because he's gay, like definitely back then, like a, a traditional Jewish family back then is not going to want their gay son, you know, like not going to want their son to be gay in the what, 50s or something. Like that's not a not a good, not a good thing to them. But he's gay junkie pulling a

like just just like a spaz. Like they're kind of like this is very much in these communities where it's like it's kind of embarrassing on all fronts for your parents. And again, I'm not making an excuse for it. It's just like you can see why his parents were like, we have to do something because this is insane. Like this guy is insane. And and to be fair, I think he followed the best career path for a guy that's insane.

Like, like, and I don't know how insane he actually is, but his childhood, he was like probably showing signs of like pure insanity. What happens without the shock therapy? What kind of What do we get? Begs the question. Right. Yeah. Novels I honestly. Think novels, yeah. Yeah, well. He goes, he goes to Syracuse, University of Syracuse, good broadcast school, good. He does. He does college radio. Shout out. It's a fraternity, you know, you guys say. Brotherhood. College radio.

While he's at Syracuse, he meets some friends there. That is where they're, they're basically trying to create hit songs and they would like, you know, back in the 50s they'd be like do the ostrich. That would be like a. Dance song. Like, and I think that was one of the songs they came up with and he'd be like, again, heavy-handed iron, almost like heavy with the irony. But like, hey, what if it does pop off? You know, like what if we do just get a quick groove and like

everybody dance? Does the ostrich dance? Then I'm a star. Yeah. Just and then I'll pretend I hate that I made the ostrich song and then the anti ostrich song that I will then, you know, and this guy's constantly his brains going 1,000,000 directions. No electric pulse could take that out of him. And he, so he meets, he meets a few friends there, including Sterling Morrison at Syracuse.

And then Sterling Morrison is the, you know, lead guitarist for Velvet Underground. They later meet John Kale through that. But there's also another huge

person in his life named Delmore Schwartz at this time. I mean, you you want to talk about a guy that like every interview Lou Reed would do, he didn't want to talk about anything. But if you were able to bring up Delmore Schwartz, you were able to get a good interview out of him after that usually because it was just this, just this, it's like, you know, if you, if you talk to Norm MacDonald, he might not want to talk to you sometimes.

But if you start talking about random like sports stuff with Norm MacDonald, you would unlock him and then he would start talking about whatever and he'd be in kind of in earnesty in a sense, like kind of a that was your, your way in with him. But Dalmore Schwartz, I actually wanted to read. I know he had a lot of short stuff and I did read a couple of his or one of his short stories and it's, it's escaping me right now. Let me see if I it's it's his

most famous short work. If I'm not mistaken and I have it pulled up right here. It is called in dreams begin responsibility and this begin responsibilities, I should say by Dalmar Schwartz, who is his professor in literature at Syracuse after a while, but Dalmar Schwartz had a career, not a famous novel. It's kind of similar to read never got the actual fame that he probably was secretly looking for, but then made a career of like pretending he didn't want

the fame a lot of times. So Dalmore Schwartz, I'm going to read the first two paragraphs of his short story and I'm going to try to do it. And Reed's voice and it sounds like what you would see the seeds planted for, like Lou Reed's storytelling. So I think the year is 19 O 9. I feel as if I were in a motion picture theater. The long arm of the light crossing the darkness and spinning, my eyes fixed on the screen.

This is a silent picture, as if an old biograph, one in which the actors are dressed in ridiculous old fashioned clothes and one flash succeeds with another with sudden jumps. The actors too seem to jump out, jump about and walk too fast. The shots themselves are full of dots and rays, as if it were raining when the picture was photographed.

The light is bad. It is Sunday afternoon, June 12th, 19/09, and my father is walking down the quiet streets of Brooklyn on his way to visit my mother. His clothes are newly pressed and his ties too tight in his high collar. He jingles the coins in his pockets, thinking of the witty things he will say. I feel as if I had by now relaxed entirely in the soft darkness of the theater. The organist peels out of the obvious and approximate emotions on which the audience rocks.

Unknowingly. I am anonymous. I have forgotten myself. It is always so when one goes. It is always so when one goes to the movies. It is, as they say, a drug. So this is a guy is 1937 Delmar, Delmar Schwartz. And it's Reed's biggest literary influence along with Hubert Selby. But he had a personal relationship with Delmar Schwartz and he kind of had a more of a professional relationship as he interviewed Hubert Selby later. And you basically take that style of observation.

And this story is about a child watching who has a bad childhood, parents lives. We presume that we end poorly and stuff and the child is watching them meet and that's the ultimate horror to the child is watching his parents meet and fall in love rather than his parents divorce or his parents death. We don't know what happened to

his parents. The story ends with the man with the usher of the movie theater because they tell him he keeps trying to stop his parents from meeting, yelling at the screen. I think he's a white guy, but but he's yelling at the screen and then all that but. I don't know. But. Type of movie theater was. Yeah, it was 1937. Probably not. Yeah, but. He's yelling at the screen and that the usher is like you have your whole life ahead of you and

you want to spend it like this. You know, it's basically pull yourself up by your bootstraps kind of story, like stop wallowing in your misery. You're like, just because your parents ended this way doesn't mean you will, you know, and it's it's a very, very good story. But you take that first two paragraphs and then put it in with like his most famous song, like take a walk on the wild

side. And instead of talking about 219 O 9 Brooklyn people, you talking about like trannies, you know, it's just it's just you, you can use the same style, that observational style, kind of licking the pencil and writing the notepad while you're just watching, you know, and and partaking. He has like 100 S Thompson quality to him too, where he's like partaking in all of it, but also observing it. So I found the Delmar Schwartz thing pretty fascinating and kind of a a way in to that's.

Syracuse, too. That's it. That's again, we used to have cool schools, dude, like college just got sick, dude, like you just have like a drunk ass, like suicidal literature, failed literature professor that would just like party with you and stuff like animal House and and and all that. And and then like you could just bounce ideas off them and and amazing.

No, I mean, it seemed like just the way he was describing his relationship with them, where they'd go out drinking and go to parties and stuff like that, it was just like, it's yeah, I don't know how many people have that relationship with professors. Nowadays, not anymore, none. Nowadays with social media and stuff, I doubt that even exists at all. Yeah, I. Mean. It's so like Bourne, you have to do like Bourne Identity style meetups like with your students. Students. Probably so.

Those those videos where they like catch you hanging out with a 20 year old, you know, that's like. Was. Watching. Project Veritas. Yeah. So yeah, yeah, you're University of Syracuse professor Delmore Shorts. Yeah, they just drop out of a tree and land on you. Pfizer is yeah. Yeah. So you know, he, like I said, he

meets John Kale through along with Sterling, Sterling Morrison in this scene. The originally they have another drummer that I'm forgetting what his name is. That person ends up becoming Maureen MO Tucker, who had her own long career and all of this and they just start jamming.

They start jamming, playing around in the New York scene, doing drugs and stuff, and eventually when you're a good looking, strapping, drug addicted, desperate white rock guy who loves art, there's a guy named Andy Warhol that'll. Come find you. And Warhol finds a Warhol and he he said yeah, he dude, he dude. Andy Warhol is like. Perfect. When he sees Lou Reed like this is the best thing that's ever happened to me as a straight Catholic man, this. Is the greatest thing I've ever

seen. And I love that that Andy Warhol was just a straight Catholic. Guy he. Was he did go to church regularly and stuff and it's not to say he wasn't, but I just, I just laughed that that's how he like marketed himself. Yeah. But we go to like, you know, through the making of all the Velvet Underground albums to the insertion of Nico into the band, which is Warhol's first massive, massive thing. He tried to make it a multimedia stuff with like the project.

If you ever watch Midnight Cowboy, the movie where Jon Voight and Dustin Hoffman go to like this New York party and there's just like projection of like avant-garde stuff on the wall. During the day, dancers and everything. Yeah, all that stuff. You just picture all that happening, but with way more drugs and sex. Like way more. It was the anti Laurel Canyon, which I'll put it this way, I know a lot about Laurel Canyon. I know a lot about it.

I know all The Dirty stuff. Actually, I'd rather be there. Oh yeah, LA parties over New York parties. I'd rather be at Cielo Dr. Dude that night, that night. I I'd rather be there like I'll take on a couple chicks and a fucking Tex Watson dude. Like as. Opposed to like. You're either there or you're like passing out, like foaming out the mouth with God knows

what, laying next to you. What you did you, you see like a guy, a junkie laying in his own shit like a then like a naked weird wrestler next to you or something ironically, and then like some weird Knox Harrington guy, like taking pictures of you and stuff like Nope, I don't. Want it I? Don't want it? Laurel Canyon. You can at least look outside and be like, God look at those mountains dude. Even as Manson's coming in to murder you, you know it doesn't matter.

It. Would be funny to see him like there, you know, like if you could just transport Lou Reed into like Laurel Canyon because he would like kind of buy in, kind of not. He must. Have gone there at some point, just like to visit for I mean. You really didn't leave New York that much.

Like, I know he toured, he would, He went to San Francisco to record with like Metallica, but there was no other part of like that book talking about him going to like Sanford because I was thinking in the biography there was going to be some like, And then he went out West for the first time and I was like, oh, what happened up there? Nothing like. I knew he hated like Frank Zappa at first, so he had that. Me too. Frank Zappa was Laurel Canyon

based right? Like I. Hate Frank Zappa. I I I I fucking hate Frank. And not even for like the Moonbeam like memoirs either.

Like that's bad, but if your music was good, I'd be like, oh, wow, how crazy, you know, like that all that happened, but I'm just like, wait, you did that and you'd make like my penis hurts like music like and then shred like just like, I, I mean, it's all I get it. It's like if you know about music, if you're like super into like time signatures and stuff, he's just like, oh, Frank Zappa. I can't stand it. I. Was never, yeah, I was never

bought into the Zappa thing. But at the same time, I'm I'm never confident to fully discard it because the most insane musicians of all time were like, this is the like Jimi Hendrix was like, no dude, this is the guy, right? It's Bill Hader. I just watched Bill Hader on Amoeba Records, what's in my bag, and he's like Zappa, man. Yeah, it's like it's wildly misogynist. But I love. Like all that's not. Like. Until 2009 was highly misogynist and then now we don't have Steve Vai it's like.

Steve Vai, didn't he put Steve Vai on too? As like, yeah, yeah, that's yeah, that's cool. So yeah, there's something. He's load bearing, you know, he's like a load bearing figure for sure, you know, but much like Velvet Underground, but. Much like Lou Reed load bearing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. During during this time, during this time too, like like you know, during the Velvet Underground stuff like it's just constant like girls, guys, holes, just just just like arbitrary like JG Ballard sex

happening like that. You just figure like isn't necessarily like erotic in any way. It's just like an expression and stuff that all. Like Camille and Polly at at Yale or something. Yeah, I'm like next to you is drawing, drawing and you and you look and he's not even drawing you, but he's like watching you have sex, you know, like it's, it's just something's happening there. That's that's very off.

And I but you know, I will say I came back to listen to the Velvet Underground. And of course, what's funny is when when when Warhol puts Nico in the band, they're all like, dude, come on, like, and and she's a, you know, supermodel, kind of like the anti of what they wanted to do. But of course, Warhol be like, wouldn't it be so ironic if we had like a woman who sounded deaf and a deaf German woman and in this band? But she's beautiful.

He knows, like there's this, it's an artwork, you know, So he had to have, you know, there's the guy beauty he liked, but you need to have that feminine energy too. Yeah, it's it's classic straight Catholic guy thing to do when you do that to a rock band. Yeah, it's just, that's just, it's what you do. I mean, I have to stop myself from doing it all the time. And he he just, but Nico is in the band. I will say like I came back to it. I'm like, OK, this is pretty

good. Like this is this is pretty good. There's times they lose me. I don't like epic feedback songs at all. Like I don't even like when Jimi Hendrix does it, like when the guitar next to the like that shit does not do it for me. I don't like noise. I don't like any of that stuff. I know a lot, a lot of people that listen to this show love that stuff. So yeah, obviously they're probably all big Velvet Underground.

But when they just get in like a groove and it's a nice pocket and make like a rock song or like a super acided out, like in my opinion, sounding pretty Laurel Canyony at times, I really, really like it. And it's no shock that Reed's involved. Like heavy on the on the stuff I love for the Velvet Underground. So I mean, so I take it you're not a fan of heroin or Black Angel Death song on that?

Well, no, I mean, I am a fan. Heroin's good because I mean, look, I don't like glamorizing heroin and stuff, but that's a good Lou Reed song. I mean, it's good. I like that. Again, what I don't like is that really like, let's make this sound bad intentionally, like just that kind of like everything's crunched together. Like the second album is. Yeah, the yeah, the second White Light White Heat is the one where I'm like, what are we

doing here? And, and and there's a couple good songs on there too, but like where you like the drums don't punch and you're like, well, this doesn't really rock. And they're like, well, that's what you want it to do. Why would we do what you wanted it to do? I'm like, I don't, I don't know. It's just there's this like the problem with it. But I like, no, I like all the Normie Velvet Underground songs. I like all the like. I would. I'm the most basic bitch Velvet

Underground fan. Like I like femme fatale, I like heroin, I love Venus and Furs. Awesome. There's a lot of Roman Polanski. I don't. As far as I know, Lou Reed wasn't doing Roman Polanski stuff, but whatever. But he but he Venus and Furs was a Polanski movie, a very bad one starring his wife, Emmanuel Signet. It's based off a novel and

stuff. But then also when Berlin was repacked, it were kind of like redeployed in 2006 and Reid was performing it entirely in front of like massive crowds of celebrities. There was Andy Warhol multimedia projection screens of Emmanuel Signay, Roman Polanski's wife all over it. That was like, that's kind of interesting how that that type of stuff pops up. But I love all the I love like the normie Velvet Underground. So waiting for the man, waiting for the man's great.

I mean, it's just it's it's great. It's I like that he switches between like gay and straight all the time in in his songs and changes guys into girls. Like that's cool. If you do that now, I don't find it very impressive, but back then that's pretty cool to do. Yeah, it was. It was different. Had a different connotation back then, you know, it was a different scene. Yeah, so, well, what do you, I

mean, like, so when you. OK, take me back to when you first were in high school and you're just like, this, this shit blew my mind because I was not there. That's just not the type of person I was in high school. I was completely different. So I just mean, like to you, I feel like I'm, I'm just now able to appreciate it because I know so much about, you know, Lou Reed now and stuff. So like, where like, what was it when you turned on?

Was it, what was the song? What was the song that you're like? Whoa. Oh, it was definitely the Velvet Underground and Nico album. And like heroin was like the big song. So that was like when I got the CDI, put that one on 1st, right? Like I just skipped to that and I remember I mean, I was into like a lot of like feedbacky, kind of like I was into Sonic Youth and like a lot of like sort of noise bands. So, you know, people are like, Oh yeah, Velvet Underground

should try this out. And again, like it just yeah, Heroine, like all those songs, Black Angel Death song, European Sun, like that was like that's what turned me on to the Velvet Underground. And then I got, I think Loaded was the next one I got, which is my second favorite Velvet Underground album. That's 731973. That's the. Earlier. Or no is. That yeah, no, it's the, it's the last one. Yeah, yeah. It's that's, yeah. OK. Interesting this. One was Sweet Jane. Sweet Jane. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And then I was into that and like I've always been to into classic rock. So the whole, you know, like kind of noise rock and classic rock, it kind of really like it was right there in the Velvet Underground. So that's what like really got me into them. Yeah. And what got me is honestly getting back into reading the last few years has really contextualize like what Reed's doing, what what Velvet Underground's doing, but particularly what Reed's doing.

Like waiting, waiting for the man. Like it's kind of like a it kind of has this like Beatles, like rubber sole quality to it, like drive my car kind of like like kind of silliness to like the groove to it. But also, you know, it's a guy sitting around feening like waiting for the guy to get there to sell him some heroin. He's at $26, which is such a junkie amount of money to have on you. Like I don't have 30. I know you. I know we agreed on 30, but I needed $4.00 for something, you know?

Well, it's like you do 25, but can you throw in just a dollar's worth more? Because I need more, you know. And that's the tower of Lou Reed, right where it's like, OK, I had $30.00, but I had the, I owe the guy $4.00 because I bought $4.00 of heroin when I was. Really cleaning. And then which is nothing usually probably fucked the guy and then and then and then I would I could give 25, but like let's see if I could get the extra 1 for 26 and it's. Like, oh, that's.

Yeah, but, but again, if you know anybody, I've never been like a true junkie before, thank God. But I, I know plenty of them. And it's, it's, that's the way they think. And he was talking about like, you wanted the, like the, the rhythm of the song to be like your heart pounding just like that, your heart just like palpitating really, really fast. I love that he stayed with that song forever. He never really liked to perform a lot of his old stuff, but he knew he kind of had to whenever

he had like a big venue. So if you watch him at like the Capitol Theatre in 84, he makes these really cool, like 80s funky versions of like Velvet Underground songs. I love them. I'm like, this is great, That's great. Yeah, yeah, it's 'cause he has his his bass player in the 80s. Oh gosh, what is that Prince for something Saunders, he is great. The the guy's, the guy's

awesome. He's always had great bass players in his whatever he's been doing, but there it's really fun to see him constantly just take that. David Bowie covered covered it around the transformer era when he would go on his super avant-garde like Bowie glam rock tours and stuff. And there I mean, you can you understand the influence and what I was getting out with, like the literary and film kind of stuff is I think he is that

medium truly, right? Because music, I think is kind of in between film and books a little bit like it's it's a secret third thing, but it's also kind of halfway in between the two. I don't really know how to explain that, but it just feels that way to me. And you can you can see this being the intro to like so many movies. I'm sure it is. To be honest, I don't know enough but if if it is or not. But you can see it like you can see it being the first paragraph

of a story, like the song. Like you can you can see it like, or you can see him writing short fiction as this is happening, you know, kind of auto fiction in a way, but still having fun. Like having these characters and writing with your female voice, you know, even if you don't dress up in wigs or like a girl and stuff, you definitely know people that do, but you kind of act like them a little bit and you you make characters out of them and stuff.

And all these weird people that you see at the factory. I mean, you might as well make something out of that. Whatever I appear to be as a hellhole. Yeah, no, there like that was also kind of one of the things that I liked about what Lou Reed Velvet Underground is like. There were lots of like characters in their songs, like, and it reminded me of like songs that like I was listening to

when I found out about them. There was like, you know, the Jim Carroll Band, like all my friends that died. And it's just like a list of like stories of how people died and that but whole surfer song Pepper that's kind of just this like, you know, these different verses about these characters, like gives them names where they're from. Like kind of this like very compact short story about like a brief scene that said something about their characters.

And so, yeah, it was like kind of novel like in that. So that was all that also attracted me, 'cause like anytime you do something like that, like I'm immediately more drawn in, like lyrically. Yeah, that's cool. And it's funny. Lou Reed when he performed at the White House in the 90s, I want to say when, when Clinton was in, Kurt Vonnegut in attendance, so. That's. You dude, like, I mean, I know

you're probably. Not, probably not a. Big Bill Clinton guy, but other than that, yeah, yeah, other. Than. That those two dudes were there. That's funny. It's funny how that happens. And but yeah, he so yeah, I was I I I do like it. Like I do like it. I like a few like sister Ray, I think is great. I think I think that's a great song. I think that's that's an epic. I think that's to me, I think he, I think Reed took all the bullshit out of that and perfected it on later work.

In my opinion. That's I, I, I think it's more of a starting phase. And I, I kind of, I kind of get frustrated that it wasn't really till he died that a lot of people really explored his like catalog the way they do the Velvet Underground catalog. But when I listen to it, I'm like, that's the best part is him. So wouldn't. Wouldn't you want I, I, I like John Kale and John Kale had a great career after after after

this. I think he was a lot of post punk, like he was a producer on a lot of like post punk stuff if I'm not mistaken. I think but amazing solo albums too so. Are they good? I haven't. Listened his and MO Tucker's out solo albums are very good. You like the MO Tucker stuff? Yes. I haven't tried. I know a lot of people do. I, my cousin loves her like I, I listened and I need to there's a few that I like.

I was like, oh, OK, there's something there like there's a couple I need to listen to some more. But I know a lot of people that like the MO Tucker solo solo work. So but I haven't listened to any John Cale. I haven't listened to any John

Cale solo stuff. But I would like to give it a I'd like to give it a go. Naturally you can tell this band is going to break up. This is not people they're they're the anti Beatles. But one thing The Beatles did was they stayed together for 10 years, and people said it was too soon. But it's hard to be at the top for 10 years and, like, not want to kill each other. And they did want to kill each other a few times.

But, you know, the Velvet Underground was five years of just, like, twisted, like heroin, sex dungeon parties. And you know, what's funny about this is people associate Reed with heroin because, well, he has a song called Heroin and his Voice nods off sometimes like like he's on heroin.

I from what I get is he shot heroin for sure, but he was typically into uppers and like methamphetamines and speed was kind of more of his drug of choice, which makes sense if you're trying to have be bisexual then like have sex all the time. That makes a lot more sense than heroin because that was in my opinion, I was like heroin. You can't be fucking the way he did if you're on heroin.

Like he I mean, maybe you can some people might be built different and if anyone could it be him, I guess. But for the most part, like you're if you're, I think his true, true, true addiction was was speed and alcohol, from from what I gathered from that biography. But everyone makes it like a big point to like say it was actually, it was this. It was that I think he did everything. I think he did literally what was in front of him. And why not at that point?

Because otherwise you're just in a dungeon sober. Like a weird Dungeon Factory Andy Warhol thing sober. Sounds terrible. Sounds awful. Designated driver for the Warhol Park. Yeah, exactly. Can you imagine? Yeah, exactly. And they probably wouldn't trust you. They probably think you were like a better thing. But they probably, like, made the driver do acid. But if he they, they. After a while, the Warhol. Warhol gets fired from the band, and he's shocked that they don't.

Want to deal with him anymore? You know, just a very masculine gasp. He lets out and and he. You could see the egos with Warhol and we really that's not going to work. Never. Never, never going to happen again. This is not a Velvet Underground podcast that you guys, if you want, there's a lot of Velvet Underground content out there. Everybody talks about them like anybody who loves the stuff. So it's out there. I think we need to give Lou his time. Any last thoughts about Velvet

Underground? No. No, yeah, I, I like it. It's fine. Like I do, I can, I can consider myself and say I like it. I, I'm, I'm glad I got into it now because I kind of had an aversion to it and I thought, you know, so challenge accepted. I do like more Velvet Underground than I don't. But now we start a great music catalog, which is Lou Reed's solo stuff. He really the first major thing

that that that comes out by Lou Reed now. He was not a commercial success. A lot of people retcon him is like this guy who was really famous, like Bruce Springsteen or like Mick Jagger or something. He was famous if you knew about him, but he was not a household name. It just wasn't and for good reason. I mean, what he made was not really mainstream music. A lot of times it was not meant for a wide audience, but it was meant for a die hard audience.

There's a quote from Brian Eno that I love about the Velvet Underground, especially the first Velvet Underground album, which didn't sell a lot at all. But Brian Eno said, yeah, it might not have sold a lot, but I bet everybody who bought a copy started a band. Yeah. It's probably true. Like, that's right, It's probably true. I mean he, I mean. Bowie, yeah. Load bearing, Yeah, it's like.

The Bowie, the influence on, it's funny, they this is an interesting dichotomy between Reed and Bowie because clearly he was there first. Reed, a Velvet Underground, was there 1st. And Bowie's never shy about like, praising somebody. He's never like, oh, I didn't know that. You think I listened to that? But I actually came up with that on myself, Yeah. Like Prince does. Like Prince does. Yeah, like. Every other artist does like,

it's, it's really annoying. Like sometimes when they do that, it's like, dude, nobody's going to like, nobody's going to get mad that you, you know, like, like the band that everybody likes, you know, like, that happened before you like. But Bowie comes into the picture here, and he is tapped on by Lou Reed to produce his album Transformer, which is funny because Bowie is just starting to see mainstream success himself. He was fledgling in the late

60s. You know, we've covered him a lot on here and on other shows, but he he was fledgling. But they kind of had a similar sound to each other. And Transformer absolutely sounds like a Bowie album.

Yeah, well, with Reed and and and Reed does things Bowie can't do, but he also his vocals sound oddly Bowie ish at times like he kind of like and the weird harmonizing and the Dun Dun Dun satellite of love that is like a Bowie song to me, like old school head in the Clouds Star Man's David Bowie song at the time. But Transformers an excellent album and they they were seen there.

There's always these, they were seen during the the recording of it and during these times, like walking around, like holding hands and like kissing each other all the time. And people were like, they're just performing. I'm like, no, they're having sex. I just want you guys to know that that they they're both high on methamphetamines. They're having sex like they might be doing, like they might be trolled in public a little bit about it, but they make no mistake, they are having sex

with each other. Yeah, no, I mean, it's known about Bowie and Mick Jagger, like it's publicly acknowledged. So I mean, I think it's safe to assume like, come on, there was. There was a documentary kind of like ABBC, kind of just a nice like hour long documentary remembering Reed where Boy George is in it a lot and Boy George at the you can imagine him at the time like liking a lot of this stuff probably.

And he, he's just like, oh, everybody came up with so many rumors about, about Mick Jagger and, and so and so having sex and stuff. And I'm like, well, you don't believe those like your Boy George. Yeah. Well, then what's your deal then? Yeah. But yeah, it's it's pretty funny. But the the album's great. The live versions of a lot of those songs are fantastic. Reads kind of like his live show at that time is some late Velvet stuff and Transformer basically

with an awesome band. There's a show from 1973. It's on YouTube and stuff, but vicious live Sweet Jane live from that era. It's just it's just incredible. I, I inside you, you said you. That was the first one you'd ever heard from him, right? Yeah, I definitely. And also they, you know, they, they play these on like Bay Area radio and stuff too, you know. And yeah, Perfect Day is one of my favorite, favorite songs. That's great, man, So good.

The Tai Chi. The Tai Chi performance with Master Ren, dude on Letterman, where, where? Where? Master Ren's on stage and he's playing Perfect Day when he's like, you know, reads probably like 63 years old. Yeah, so. Good. That's just such a nice like after all the stuff we're about to talk about happening, like that's such a great end is to just be doing Tai chi and like and jamming your old stuff without hating it. You know I love. It what makes sense?

I mean, you guys know I'm into this stuff and it's like not as nearly as much as I should be too, but you know, you fry your nervous system for several decades. There's like one option left and that's to do Tai chi when you're. Yeah, it's. Yeah, it's like. Yeah, there's like that's you have, you're like you're either doing that or you're dying. You know it's. What? What do Chinese do? Chinese people fry their nervous stir fry their nervousness. All that Costco seed oils, dude.

Yeah. 5 gallon drum. Can you imagine if somebody right now is like cool Lou Reed podcast like I love, I love, I want Lou Reed is a LGBTQ icon. I'll love to. Listen. Yeah, you. Hear about the stir fry We're. Nervous. We need to get mainland China under the avocado oil guy. It's like. The diabetes might go down the diabetes. Rates might go down. But but yeah, I love I I do love transformer. It is great. Silly title to Transformer.

Transvestite at the time, transexual at. The time. He always had songs about surgery, girls getting surgeries and stuff. And I don't get the idea it was breast augmentation. Maybe in a way. But But yeah, just there's a lot of a lot of that stuff. There's a lot of playing around. And what I find funny is like, make no mistake, Lou Reed was

like Democrat left. I mean, I'm not trying to paint him as this, but I have a feeling he would like, he's so much of A contrarian that it's kind of hard to see him like getting super into it now if he was around like, you know, like. Compare back then and now. Like he would hate, well, he would hate the opposition to it for sure. Like he would hate the opposition. He would like, hate like daily. Can you imagine? He'd be like right now if he was alive?

He'd be like trying to debate like Matt Walsh, Like he for sure would be like when. He would still be like. Find like Contra points. Cool, you know what I mean? Like 'cause. He. He. Tapped into like modern media. He he stayed like obsessed with like modern media. So I just like thinking about that. I just like thinking because I it's clearly something different. Back then the taboo nature of it made it cool to them because it was a it was crazy people.

Doing this stuff. Like it wasn't. Yeah. Would would they like this to be main? You know, some would say yes, some would say no. You know, it's just kind of, you can't, you can't deny that it loses its edge when you have like Kamala Harris talking about it or something, you know, in like the 2024 election or, you know, it's just exactly, I don't know. It's just, it's just different,

you know? Yeah. I mean, I think, I think Lou acknowledged that a little bit like later on in his career he sort of made a turn from that, but I don't. Know how so did that? Well, I guess we like, I mean, it's just once he I guess we get into his relationship with Rachel, with the trans. And after that he was like no more. I think he said no more of that junkie faggot shit and. It was. Like, I'm going to be a sober

straight guy. Yeah, there's there's a chapter in the in the biography called Faggot Junkie. Like. In the in the autobiography, like, and it's funny because like, yeah, he's got a lot of that Burrows, like kind of like self hate kind of situation happening. And and he he's he's he used to mark. He used to also say that he was like gay, but so did David Bowie at the time. It was a thing where I would just like shock factor.

It was like being like Limp Bizkit back then, you know, like it was just like, what are the kids doing? They're gay, You know, like it was just just I want to piss off the 53 year old person watching this, this show, right, Dick Cavett show right now or something. That's like that's was their goal there, but they also were having sex with men. Like that's just that's the way it was happening. It was any which way some would that is pansexual now is just doing all that stuff.

I don't think he'd want a term applied to it. He the whole idea to him was no terms. The whole the whole idea was just like, no, this is just what I do and and every and I just go off of vibes and do what I want to do and stuff like that Was the there was a freedom of the taboo for him, Like like the taboo gave him freedom. I think is kind of how he operated in his early years. I don't know, just tough to tough to say because, you know, he did mellow out once AIDS happened.

He was like, oh, I'm not gay anymore. But he was like, I actually I love, I love women with short haircuts instead. Actually, it's my favorite thing. Always been my favorite. And but he he, yeah, Transformer is an awesome album. Love pretty much every song on there. Satellite of Love is one of my favorite. And Vicious, those are probably my 2 two favorite on there. But it's Mick Ronson deserves a shout out for that too. That was Bowie's kind of right hand man at the time.

Great guitar player, great musical arranger, great composer. But then what's funny about it was that Reed develops this, he sees it as like an alpha thing. And you see this with a lot of people online right now, like and stuff where they don't want to be seen loving something or drawing inspiration from something because that's a sign

of weakness a lot of times. And they, he would, a lot of people would be praising David Bowie's for his work on transformer and Lou Reed would go, well, he didn't. I mean, it's, you know, it's did he do everything? Like, I, I mean, I did so much of it. And they're like, well, no one's saying you didn't. It's just, it's a really well produced album by Bowie and, and, and Nick Ronson. And he's like, well, yeah, but like, you don't know, like what I was in there doing.

It's like, yeah, but you sought out David Bowie to produce your album. You knew he was going to do something good for your album. And then after that. But at the time, he's developing A reputation as a really interesting guy who Andy Warhol made famous. Again, this is not my words. This is just how he's probably viewed. Andy Warhol made him famous and then David Bowie produces for a solo album. So can this guy do anything on his own?

And he develops kind of a kind of an inferiority complex about that. And luckily he does do some stuff not on his own, but without the household name producer after that. And I think the Berlin album,

unfortunately, it's a horrible time for him personally and. Commercially. Because it's, it's about your relationship spiralling. He's marries his first wife at the time. I, I get a kick out of his, his first wife acting like she was some like staying home knitting all night. Like she was like the biography. It's all like, oh, and he would just come home just black out drunk. Like you weren't doing anything like you're you're with Lou Reed.

Like, yeah, you're like, like, and and a lot of the album divulge, the Berlin album divulges all these personal details about her, but apparently she's not like, but it's so untrue. I'm like, maybe some of it is, but like you guys had a junky relationship. Like it's just, it is what it is. I mean, no, I mean there is definitely like he wasn't the only one doing things like it sounds like, you know, I'm. Going to stay with this guy for five years.

Hopefully he changes like. It's just like. This. This junky asshole, like, I mean, he's like an asshole to everyone. He's. Who he's Are they ever single though? Have you ever met a single junkie asshole? No, they always have a girlfriend. They. Always fucking do you. Did you said it on one of your last episodes about Lou Reed? Like, yeah, he's like, totally, like strung out on drugs the entire time. He's he's total asshole like with. Hepatitis with hepatitis. C It's really.

Transmittable and the women are like I can't wait. Yeah, I can't. Wait, can't wait. And then, yeah. And then and then and then, you know, men too are like, yeah, me too. When, when you're done with her. Me too, yeah. Like. Like I can't get enough of it.

And it's, it's just like, you know, that's, it's kind of like that meme of like, I think it's like the animated black people meme where like, it's like, it's the guy with the, the, the, that's that cartoon where it's like the jock walking with the girl and the nerds, like, you know what I mean? And it's like with Lou Reed. But the, you know, I mean, I just picture like Lou Reed being in there and stuff. It's. Like the? Guy, the guy was just never short of options whatsoever.

I mean, he's and he's a good looking guy, talented guy, charismatic. So I get it, you know, I get it, but it's just, it's just funny. It's like the guy can like pause load you at any time and then he hit you and they're like, yeah, sounds good. So Berlin, in my opinion, is a masterpiece of an album. I think it is I the problem it suffers from, you understand why it's not commercially viable. There's no single you're going to play. What are you going to play on the radio?

I mean, maybe a couple songs, something like independent college radio station, like maybe you could play some stuff. But for the most part it's just like, it's just a big concept album. It's kind of the downward Spiral before the downward spiral. I would, I would say like, and I think it's immaculately produced. I think the piano sections on it really carry the album and keep you tethered to like the world. The Tethers very important for

me when I enjoy Lou Reed music. And what does everybody think of this? I I think it's great. I, I love, I love this album. I mean, I think if they're going to be singles, I think Lady Day. That's a great song. Yeah, you're right. And the kids, even the kids, is one of the most heartbreaking. Songs. He's like, they're taking the kids away is the first line. And it's just like, that's a story in itself. And then 3 minutes of kids screaming for their mother, like

3, just three. And it's the producers kids. The producer brought the kids in and like. Tried to get. Them really sad so they would record and and like and he's like honey like the and it's like it's so. Sad. It's. Like, I mean, yeah, that's those. So I love those two. And I guess like Caroline says, in the bed are other standouts. But yeah, just a great album. And you know, I like the way it sounds. But you know what? There was a version he did a 2006.

It was from that 2006 tour live he released a album of that, like the Complete album and that to me it sounds better on that recording. I'd like. To hear that, I wouldn't know. I wouldn't. Disagree with you because you know, he kind of reimagines like the songs a little bit or kind of like has there's something different about him. He makes him sound different, especially later on in his career when he learned a little bit more about, like, actually how to play the guitar right.

Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. So I mean that for recording, I would suggest to anyone who like also like wants to get into Berlin because yeah, it's just the sound of this album. I mean, it doesn't sound like Transformer at all. Transformer was straight up Bowie Mark Ronson guitar. Like you can totally tell it was like a Bowie style album. And this for anyone who is expecting something like that. I can imagine why it didn't hit from the. 5 to the six. I need food for the kids. Oh yeah.

I mean, it's one of those things where unfortunately, So what happened was, is he's coming off a relatively speaking for what he was doing, Transformer was a hit. I don't want to say it's like platinum, platinum, platinum. I don't think it was. I just think it sold pretty well. And, and the labels like pretty happy. They're like, hey, we took a risk on this, this read kid like this, that's pretty good.

What do you got next? And he's like the most depressing thing you've ever heard, you know, like, oh, OK. And I loved it. I, I don't know, I, I just like there's some depressing work that I'm like, doesn't make me sad. I think it's actually kind of First off, it's only sad if you're a junkie and think it's going to last forever. By the way, like like if you're, it's obviously it's sad. I'm just saying like, you, you the only the, the true nihilism part of it is like, oh, I can't

do drugs forever. What's this even worth? Like? It's no, you can't do drugs forever. This is what happens. Like if you have a relationship based on drugs, you will lose the kids and she will slit her wrists in bed or you will, you know, one of the two. And I love, I think one thing artistically that he does and he doesn't get enough credit for. And I don't even know if it's intentional or not, but he has

talked about this at length. How he does this is he sounds pretty upbeat at the beginning of the album. Like sounds pretty upbeat. The same like, hey, oh, you know, like the same Lou Reed kind of like chipper kind of thing that he has going on. And then, and then inside too, he's way more detached, cold as hell. And it just gets slow. It's almost seems like he's like backing away, like Homer Simpson into the Bush a little bit. Like it's just, it's like, oh God, what happened?

Like I, I just, I love the the flow of it. And it's like it's, and like I said, it's just every arrangement is like really interesting and it switches back and forth between like grooves and tempos, like you're never quite ready for what's next. And I think at the time, I think somebody like, it would have been nice if somebody like, God, why can't I remember Nicholas Rogue made like a movie out of it. I would have loved that.

Like it would have been, I think that would have been a really cool like odd Nicholas Rogue gross like drug sex movie. And I think that was the opportunity he missed. I think that was maybe the only way to make this quote UN quote a hit. I doubt it ever becomes a hit, but it might have become more of it might have become like this multimedia thing that, like film students would love. At least so. Yeah, I think it's as it's one of his most interesting. It's new to me.

I didn't really know about it, but it's it. It was. I instantly clocked it. I was like, this is a special one. And then you read and it's like, oh, everyone hated it and I don't know. Yeah, it's, it's it's definitely, it's sad, but it's the most emotionally, like, available and textural. You know, there's movement throughout it and everything and it's weird. Also there's song Berlin on his first album, which is, you know, that's it. That's interesting. Yeah. Oh yeah.

I'm going to keep revisiting this one because it's. Yeah. I think this is a hidden gem. And he and he said Berlin, they always asked him that because they're like, have you been to Berlin? He's like, no. Yeah, and then there's the Bowie thing too. Yeah. Yeah, Bowie, the Berlin, which is later, later in my career after, after he has his, you know, insane drug moment in LA where he said he saw Satan and but then but Reed, what Reed does is he, he says Berlin because he's like Berlin.

There was the Berlin Wall. It was to a city divided. And that's what the album's supposed to be is like just literally two people who have the same affliction, but they just like couldn't be more different from each other, or at least the only thing they have in common is the thing that's

killing them. You know, and and and you know, I'm sure he made the woman, you know, the communist side, but you know, just one way or another, you know, I'm sure he sure he just was like, well, hers was the the bad one of. Course. Yeah, Gorbachev turned. On. The later Lou Reed would later,

as we go on later Lou Reed would get credit for like partially tearing down communism in Czechoslovakia. Which so I know that that's called the Velvet Revolution. Yeah, it's insane. Which is apparently that's not related to Vaclav Havel, the leader of the revolution, being a huge Velvet Underground fan and Lou Reed interviewing him.

Like I, I just, you know, when I heard like, it was the Velvet Revolution and like, oh, Vaclav Havel, like Lou Reed, like sounds like Velvet Underground. I. Wouldn't be surprised if our government deployed Velvet Underground to stop calm, but no I. Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised. They claimed it was like Velvet Revolution was 'cause it was a soft revolution, and that's what was, that's what it was supposed to be, but had nothing to do with the fact that Pavel was a Velvet Underground fan.

But you know, I have my doubts. I I have my supreme doubts. I'm yeah, like if I was a parapolitical leftist, which I'm not, but if I was, I would be like, oh, that's why what Lou Reed was a CIA agent for. Ending yes. In there, Rolling Stone deploys him over there. Yeah. I mean, yeah, it's as like, and again, I don't like communism, so whatever. Like it's just. It's. Just I'm good with it. I'm. Good. Yeah, yeah, definitely.

Whatever. Yeah. I mean, like, because when you read those weird scenes at the Canyon, like I'm going to do an episode on weird scenes of the Canyon and they're like, there's a few things where you're like, wow, yeah, that is crazy shit, dude, what the hell? And then they're like, yeah, and then his dad helped stop communism in Cuba and you're just like, well, all right, okay, yeah, okay, I don't care. But yeah, it's just funny to me. So you get Rock'n'roll animal? You.

When we were talking, didn't you say you liked this? Organization I was talking about the take no prisoners, Take no Prisoners but I But I do love Rock'n'roll Animal. It's there's a. Great version of heroin on there. Yes, notes here. Yeah, there's, there's some great stuff on there. Yeah. Let me see. Yeah, yeah. Rock'n'roll Animal is. Oh, yeah, yeah. Great version of Lady Day, which

is, Yeah, he had just. Yeah, it's on the tour right after he recorded Berlin and good white light, white heat and yeah, good. Oh, the really good long intro to Sweet Jane. Yeah. Oh, the best, which is really nice that Yeah. That's the only that's the literally the only version I will listen to of Sweet Jane. Like because. I don't really like the album version. It's doesn't like it that the tempo that it's at.

I don't think it works. And then when you get that like crazy, like almost pro like proto, like frog rock, like intro to it on there. I'm like this is insane. And then it just has that like it just it, it just has like a little bit more like douche, like low IQ douche rock to it on the groove that I love. That like as opposed to. Like the other one, we were like, no, well, that's too easy. We can't do that. And like, no, it rocks though.

Like so do it. That's that's kind of I like this version of that so much better. Plus the live performance where he has the blonde hair, like the classic blonde hair. He looks so cool on there and he looks like a like a he looks like a punk rock like Nosferatu. But he he just looks. Insane. Yeah, he looks insane, so strung out like and but he's OK.

I, Anna Kacchian posts about this a lot, how she'll say she'll see like a homeless chick that's obviously like at her wit's end and like not doing so hot. She's like, but damn, she's skinny, you know what I mean? Like like. Damn I. Like I wish, like whatever affliction, she's not like it's shit. Like it's on point. And I feel that way about Lou Reed where I'm like, fuck, he's fucking like jacked though, dude like like he like looks incredible. I like, dude, like, is that what

I have to do? Like watch a. Meth and then like dance around on stage like this is. Yeah, you have to be like a leathered out homo like drug addict. I don't think they're going to kill. A bag of kettle chips. So like that, like what? Who really is afflicted? You know what I mean like I don't think you drink 6 I no, you probably could, but he I could drink 6 Ipas. I don't even know. But I just mean, he he's like one of those guys. You're like, damn it, dude.

Like all the like, all the junkies I know don't look like that. They don't. Yeah, they. Don't like? Shit, absolute shit. Like distended stomach and like just absolute. Shit so. He's he's a working junkie, so it's like, you know, he's got a yeah, it's a little different. Yeah, absolutely. Dueling guitars on on on on that album on that live show are

great. Shout out to Steve Hunter and Dick Wagner on there and Prakash John on bass, because all the bass grooves, especially on on I think Sweet Jane, like the bass groove on there is just it's so much. It just gives it a new life. And yeah, that's that's a great live album. And there's not a lot of good recorded live Velvet Underground, like, not that I can find, at least if there is send it my way, I guess. But there I haven't seen that much.

So that's a pretty good way into like what it sounded like back then. More or less. Yeah. So yeah, Sally Can't Dance I think is his first dud in my opinion. I don't know how you guys feel. It's all right, you know. It's yeah, it's just, it's just they always make those like I'm just going to make my, you know, go down to the sock hop rock'n'roll album. Like they all do this, all these guys that were famous around that time. It's. Classic like mid 70s you know.

Yeah, David Bowie had, it's not Diamond Dogs, but he had a similar album like that where it was just like, you're like, all right. It's like kind of like Jerry Lee Lewis, great balls of Fire, like taking it back to the roots, you know, like it does. It's just not that good to me. It's OK Kill Your Sons is a great song though, I'll say that much. That's that's what I would listen to. And then, yeah, I guess covers of Ride, Sally Ride, you know, it's just they all got to do

their tribute album. You just let them get it out of the way. It means more to them than it does to you, for the most part. Then we get to his.

He just, he just can't fucking be normal. He does Metal Machine music. This shit is so stupid. I, I it's like I look at people like it. People like it, but I doubt I don't think anyone I can. He made it to where you can't listen to it all the way the the side 4 of it is Infinity. It loops back every time when you try to finish it and it's literally just noise. It's just like feedback and noise. The whole album. It's it's almost an hour long.

I think it is an hour long and it just loops over and over again. And there were people and, and obviously his label's just like, what? Like, come on, this is what you were working on. He's like, yeah, it's the next thing. And he's kind of trolling a little bit. And but then also a bunch of people who would later create like, like Trent Reznor thinks this album's incredible and like, all these people. So like, it actually did get a

fan base. And it's just like it became a joke on Mystery Science Theater. I remember when I was a kid, they would say, they would say like, this movie is so bad, it's like listening to two hours of Metal Machine music. My like they would say that I was a big Ms. MST3K guy. So was that I it's. Red, it's red hell, but I, I loved it. I didn't know what red it was at the time. My mom had all of the VHS.

They had a really colorful VHS like kind of box set thing and we would watch them all the time. It was great. Yeah, it came out with Comedy Central. It was so good. I remember the theme song like, like, oh gosh, it was the best. So. But yeah, Metal Machine Music, it's like, I you if you listen to this the whole time, then guess who's a big fan? Brian Eno, by the way, Massive. He yeah, they're just people. Like it's it's like kind of a

epic fail. But I don't get the idea that he thought he was going to do anything that crazy with it. I think he was just kind of like, it's kind of to fulfill a contract kind of thing. And he just can't, he can't not do this. The the like the the fake album. It's it's the Velvet Underground.

It's the Warhol. It's, it's, it's the Warhol thing that always stuck with him, even when he after he was done with Warhol. It's just kind of like, give them the thing that they probably don't even want. But leaving, catching them off guard is better than giving them something they want, you know, even if they hate it. And it's just, yeah, this is I defy anyone to listen to the full album of this. I think you're lying if you've said you have. Yeah, I mean, I, I didn't, I

didn't listen to full album. I, you know, I just listened to like a couple minutes of each track just to get like make sure it was how it was. And, you know, as, and as a fan of like, you know, a lot of Japanese like noise stuff like Merce Bo, like, you know, a lot of power noise like this is just like it's a little boring. It's best it's, it's kind of meditative if you want to put it on low in the background, but

really it's nothing innovative. Well, I guess maybe back then it was, but now just listening to it, it's boring. But I would, I, I think this album does. It just really characterizes Lou Reed's personality. Yes, it. Does like it's it was an album that he released after which was I think Sally Can't Dance. It actually charted it actually did well. Like I think it was one of his albums that. That's. Crazy.

It was charting and he was feeling confident and all his fans were like, he's saying that oh, they want more guitar in my music and he was saying that oh, Sally can't dance. I hated that album because I just went in there and I did whatever they told me to do. I don't even remember recording it, so I might as well not even be on the album next time. And so this combination of, oh, they want more guitar and they don't want me to be on the album, fine, I'll give them this. Like, fuck them.

And it's just kind of that, like, he's going to contradict everyone and try to, like, turn against anyone who's expecting something out of him immediately. And yeah, he's just going to give him like, you want to talk? Here it is. The worst thing you can do in Lou Reed's mind is think you know what he's going to do. Yeah. And, and if you think if for a minute he sniffs out that you think you know something about him or you think you know where he's at, he will, to his own

fault, go the other way. Like, it's just, it's a kind, it's a, he's a natural contrarian, right. Like, and an important one, right. And an important contrarian, like the word contrarian gets a bad connotation, but you need them to find out if what you're, if what you believe is actually true, you know? So it's just, and in my opinion, I think I'm right. This album sucks. So yeah, I've tested it. I've tested it. Yeah.

But but anyways, it, like you said, it's actually really fun when you go back and look at the discography where you're like, wow, he really just did. Yeah. And he tried to reprise it again around the same time Berlin got the reprisal. There was a metal machine Rio that came out in like 2006 and it's with some like, I don't know, some guy from Brooklyn with like long hair that knows computers and it's like, and they're like, we will do it again with like some symphonies and stuff.

And I get, you know, in New York in 2006, it had a crowd and people went and saw it. So, you know, it is what it is. And it's kind of like the, the it's kind of like those art galleries where it's a banana taped to a wall, you know, like it's kind of what that reminds me of like when the show where they're like, oh, and everybody's just like looking at the banana tape to the wall. Like it. Just. Reminds me of that a little bit.

But Reid is well aware of that. So he has a new girlfriend at

the time named Rachel or Richard, depending on the biography. Goes back and forth between Rachel and Richard in 2024. Kind of insane. It's the. The book itself is not trying to be, like, based in red pilled at all. OK. Just. It's kind of how it was where they'd be like, yeah, there'd be days where you'd be like, hey, Lou, where was that chick you were dating? Where was that cute chick you were dating? They're like, oh, he's in the kitchen. Richard's in the kitchen right

now. And then they're like, oh, and it's just like a Puerto Rican guy. Yeah. And, and who apparently Rachel had done like a three-year bid in jail for theft and stuff or like two or three years. And that I would imagine we saw the the seeds planted in the transgenderism during a hard jail sentence. I could imagine what that was.

You could probably read between the lines of where that started and so. But then after a while when Reid liked to do this thing where he knew he was around bad people, but he was content brained and he was like, this is perfect. This is like what I want to be. It's like a total author kind of thing. Like I want Hunter S Thompson, like gonzo journalism kind of thing where he liked it and he was very much a part of what he did. But like, I don't think he had a bad judge of character.

I think he was just like, no, I need to be around this type of person. And and obviously he had his proclivities. He probably genuinely loved Richard slash Rachel and the Rachel would still, like, go out from the biography. It's really funny. They're like, yeah. And then like, nobody would see Rachel for a while. And then they'd come back with like a bunch of stuff that they stole, clearly stole from people. So. Like, like concept. And they would, like, break into

people's houses. And not Lou, not Lou himself, but like, Rachel would have like a team of people that would just break into people's houses. And he's like, yeah. And it was so fucking punk, man. Not punk, but, you know, it was so cool. You know, it was just such a cool time. And I was like, again, Laurel Canyon any day or whatever, Studio 50. Four, I don't give a. Shit, anything other than that.

But he's in love at this time and he makes, in my opinion, his best album, which is Coney Island baby. I love it. I love it. It's the reason we're doing this episode right now is because I

couldn't stop playing this album. 35 minutes long, it's quick, has my favorite Lou Reed song, which is Charlie's girl. It's got like this, like it's got this, this, like, I don't know. It's very grounded to me. And that's what happens when you when somebody's has an earnest feeling in there. And I truly believe Lou was feeling pretty good at this time. He was still doing a bunch of drugs and stuff, but I think he was just like in a good headspace.

And all these songs are just like they're well written, they're tight, the grooves are perfect. There's this like metronomal cowbell that's happening in Charlie's Girl That's really fun. She's my best friend is a great jam. I mean that's a jam to me. Kicks has some of the best drumming I've ever heard personally, and that's shout out to I think it's Michael Sikorsky is that is on there or I could be. No, no, it's not actually it's Bob midday. I think one of the one of the

ways or another. It's nobody I know personally like from a lot of other bands, but man, he's jam these. One of those two guys were jamming on that. Yeah, no Kicks is a great song. I love that one. Charlie's girl, of course I the only one I didn't like it just drags it down is the Oh Baby song. That's not a good song. You're right. Yeah, that was the only one that didn't hit it. Could be on Sally can Dance. That should be on Sally Can Dance. Exactly.

Yeah, you're right. And it's just like it's sort of it's kind of in the middle like, and it's just kind of but yeah, nobody's business is great. And then Coney Island baby, just what a great like the tempo and those lyrics. Guitar John for Shanti John for Shanti core guitar that like eventually would become like what John for Shanti was really good at was those really tight, like just tight playing, you

know what I mean? Really like grounded playing, but like going places you don't expect them to go like fitting so much in such a small area. And Reid's really cool because again, if you're a virtuoso, which he was constantly around like really good virtuoso musicians, he was able to he does a thing they could never do. They could never learn how to beat Lou Reed. So they're like, cool, I've got that. I can do everything else that he needs, though, you know, I can

do everything else. And he you, his style is like almost rap at this point, Like especially in Coney Island, babies just spoken word essentially. And he just constantly just wants to play football for the coach, man. He does make a weird like club reference about that. Just doesn't make sense about linebacker and defensive end, but like, whatever, whatever it is. I mean, it's obviously kind of this illusion. Like when he was growing up, he

played sports. Yeah. He wanted to be what his dad wanted. He wanted to be. He actually secretly does wanna be what his dad wanted to be. Struggling with that, Yeah. And yeah, the coach was the dad or that figure, yes. Yeah, he he, he wants to be like, you know, he's saying like, I'm glad I'm doing what I'm doing.

But every time, you know, like you have those times where you wind down or maybe like smoke a little weed and it's like you hit too much, you start thinking about like, I should have fucking just done that thing back in the day, dude. I should have just done it, you know, and like, maybe my life

would be different, you know? And he's, but he's he's toggling back and forth where he's like, yeah, but I can't, you know, and and this is this is what I am and that I mean, shout out Scout Dixon W. She's got a fragrance. Coney Island baby. Nice fragrance, yeah. Do you have it? I was I need to.

Get I do need to get a bottle. Of it yeah yeah, shout out so I mean that's I to be honest didn't even know that's what it was from until we started doing this like I was just like oh Coney Island yeah sure yeah, but it was yeah I love I but on kicks I just a couple more things about that is like that is a straight up like sci. Do you get like, some idea that there's like, like Madlib listens to Lou Reed? Yeah, for sure. Definitely. Like especially this album. Kicks.

There's a part where he's like when the blood come down his his neck and it just cuts into like like that. Yeah. Like that's such a mad Lib. Like Quasimodo? Yeah, J. Zillow like mad Lib weird like like you you you put the fader on the turntable wrong or something like oh. I love that. Oh my gosh. Yeah, definitely. Just totally. I mean even like. Definitely Stones. It's like a stones throw album. I feel the idiots.

Right, you're right. And like Venus, Venus in furs like from Velvet Underground is totally like beat conductor in India. Like it's just it's I totally get a lot of that, but this is this is my still my favorite Lou Reed album bar none. I mean, like I, I love Berlin, but I could, I, I could put this on anytime and listen to it. So, and it's I, to be honest, I, I always like to, my parents are not big Lou Reed fans, but they're big 70's pop culture people and are well aware of what he is.

And I asked like if I was like, have you ever listened to this? I sent it to my mom. She's like, no, I didn't even like, no, like I didn't know what the hell he was doing in the 70s. Like, I just like got. And to be fair, they don't have YouTube and like streaming. Like you went and you had a certain amount of money and you bought albums that you wanted to buy.

You didn't. And if you didn't hear on the radio, which you didn't hear a lot of Lou Reed on the radio, like it wasn't, you know, it wasn't just this constant. It wasn't like the Eagles at this time or. Anything. Yeah, he, you know, or, you know, people are so people who weren't alive in the 70s don't understand, understand what was actually popular about it. And I'm like, Ed, what is it? All right now, like by Free, that's like the biggest song of the 70s.

Like, you know, it's not Stairway to Heaven, you know? You had to be tuned in to to like actually catch walk on the wild side on the radio, right, which probably would have been his biggest radio hit at the time. And then like actually be into that enough to buy an album that has no singles like, you know, or barely any like years later, especially after he released Metal Machine Music and all the stores were sending it back like because they couldn't sell any

right like. That's incredible. I I just the whole, the whole idea of a record store just be like, no what's. Like. Like I like, well, you see, you signed up like you signed up for for like, you know, this many copies. Oh, God, yeah. It's so funny. Yeah. So like, during this time, like I said, he's in love with his transgender girlfriend that likes to rob people. Album covers. Great. It's one of the first ones. Like, it's one of the first ones of its kind.

Like for him, I should say. Like, you know, the classic Lou Reed thing is like a close up of his face with his sunglasses on or with the Nosferatu look or something. But he's just got like that little Charlie Chaplin hat. Yeah. Cocked to the side kind of over his face, kind of a kind of a little, just a little tasteful. It's very tasteful. Love it. Love everything about this album except for, like you said, that one song. But you know, it's 3 minutes and

45 seconds at least. It's not like 10 minutes. Yeah, you can just you can skip it. It's Yeah, it totally. You're right. It does totally take the like you're like, what is this? I I don't know why he included it. You're right, Sally would have been better. Yeah, just I launder. I'll put all of the songs like that on that one. Album so nobody can. Listen to it. Yeah, yeah. So next we have Rock'n'roll Heart Pretty good. I think it's pretty good. I I pretty good to to very good,

but but mostly pretty good. Kind of just I like you wear it so well. That's one of my favorite songs of this era of Lou Reed. Ladies Pay is pretty funny. He's a little sassy gay guy song and but yeah, it doesn't it doesn't hit me the way a Coney Island baby does, but it is a solid follow up. Again, it's only 37 minutes long. Most of the songs are two minutes long. Right now.

You're starting to see the advent of punk rock, which it's funny about Lou Reed is he was not part of the punk era because he was already did all that. I love that. Like Bowie and him, we're both like, yeah, we were doing that in like 1971. Like we're like, I know you kids want to do that thing that that you guys can do that. That's fine. And they talk about it in the in the biography, like, yeah, I know I got to compete with these young kids. He's like, they're doing the

shit we were doing. But I get it. They're young kids. They're you know, they're jumping around the stage. People like it and stuff. It's just you, you when you get into punk or like start liking punk or something, I'm not the biggest fan, but like you kind of think he's part of that a little bit. And he's just like totally on to something else. By that time. I. Love it. Oh, yeah, no, they're like, yeah, we did it. We did it better you. Know, and I'm I'm inclined, I'm inclined to agree.

I like like Queen Bitch by David Bowie is like a punk song. It's from 1970, like it's just like, and it's a total like sex Pistol song. And I'm like, I like this more than that. Proto punk's always better than punk. And post punk and post punk in my opinion, like proto and post in my opinion. And I, you know, look, there's a lot of people that love punk, but punk was never meant to be this like long going like thing, you know, like this, this like, oh, for 20-30 years.

Like you have to make it into something else after a while because it's really captures one energy at one time. And then after that you kind of have to make iterations of it. That I mean. It's like what? Like why I like, you know, even though I'm not the biggest Ian McKay fan, but it's why I like Minor Threat. I also like Fugazi. Like he went, he's like, yeah, yeah, you're right, we're not doing that. We're going to do something more melodic and actually like, you

know, something different. Like that whole thing can't last. And yeah, that's why it's just like punk is very silly nowadays most of the time. And the next album I I I actually really like this one

and I love the album cover. I love the I love the like anime glint like on the sunglasses, the little anime sparkle St. hassle I'm a fan. It doesn't sound like a lot of people love this album, but. I love this. Album I I don't know I just like when you hear like people talk about it, they don't really like mention this album and it's I think it's great I I am a huge fan of it and I love the story behind it where Arista records Clive Davis guy was around

forever. I didn't even realize he was around during this time, but he he was around all through the 90s and everything. And he he liked Lou Reed and he kind of liked the like scene that was happening. You find out Clive Davis was like kind of bisexual. So it's kind of you understand why he likes the scene. And this is, you know, kind of around the time you have William

Freakins cruising and stuff. And you can see the influence aesthetically that movie where they're get the meatpacking district in, in New York. Reed takes Clive Davis, you know, record exec guy, out to the Meatpacking District where you can just see like, Crisco fisting happening like you. Just know there's. Some disgusting shit happening.

I remember Lou Reed claiming that he saw a guy that like looked just like Freddie Mercury and then Freddie Mercury like got a mustache like like in short hair right after with like tank tops and he's. Like, Oh yeah. Freddie Mercury got that from us, man. Like the gay? Like. The like gay mustache kind of like leather guy thing from that. So this album is definitely sweat. It's like, I think the next one, I don't know if it's the next one after this.

Yeah, the like the Bells becomes a mess and I think this album is like the Bells if it's not a mess. I think it's very focused and good. Love the title track. St. Hassle. I want to be Black is hilarious. Because it's. Woke, but nobody nowadays would ever classify it as such. Like who is actually woke? They'd be like, oh, you can't say that. Yeah. No, he was just saying, yeah, he was just saying everything he might about black people, even

though you're, you know. Yeah, I love all of you for all of your qualities. I love all of your. Qualities. Because you remember, like, OK, you guys remember. I've talked about this a lot.

Like if you had a teacher in the 90s that was like woke and you know, like with a rain stick to like quiet the class or something like like if you were, if you had a teacher like that, they would like say the N word like, and I mean it like not like they wouldn't like call the black kid that like in class, but they would just like read it out of a book. Like they wouldn't like skip over the word and they would like say it. They'd be like, and we need to say it. We need to be reminded of

slavery and stuff. And you're like, oh, that's crazy. How different like those those king of the hill like acoustic guitar teacher like that was like they used to do that back in the day. They were like, you don't want to ignore these people. Yeah, Patti. Smith. Patti Smith, Yeah. Patti Smith definitely was like a middle school teacher just telling your kids like, you know, Jimi Hendrix was a, you know. That's the bet. That is one of the artist songs

ever they took on streaming. They're such cowards. It's not on streaming like you. It's literally black like grayed out on the streaming. I'm like dude, that song rules. You can find the Marilyn Manson version. Yeah, that's right. Why can he say it? I I have no idea it's my English teacher has right for different reasons. I know. Yeah, I know. Right. Yeah. Can you imagine that?

If you're like, someone's like you, you're at a bar like, you're at some like, you know, hipster bar where they're all like, woke and you're just like, I hate Marilyn Manson. And you're like, yeah, he's like, yeah, such a pig. He's like, yeah. And he said the N word and they're like, what? Oh, I was talking about his. I was talking about all of those burlesque girls that he kidnapped against their will. Yeah. But anyways, the yeah, I Want to Be Black is a great song.

I love it. It's it's hilarious. And I I this is a really good album and I love the cover too. It's probably, it's tough to say because all his album covers are pretty sick. So it's it's pretty tough to he, he I, I do love that from like the Warhol days, he always just had like he always had good album covers. I even like the banana album cover for Velvet Underground. I know how cringe that can be now to people, but it's I love it. The bells is a mess.

In fact, the guy who put there's a really funny thing I'll tell at the end of this about the box set, that part of the biography where the guy was trying to put together the Lou Reed box set with during the box set craze of the 90s. And the the guy who is putting it together, unless he was Bowman put like a lot of albums except for this one on which I'm like, this isn't his worst album.

Like it's just not that good. But he was like, they're like, well, dude put the bells on there and he's like, no, I hate the bells. And then they got into it over that. But I'm like, but then they asked Lou Reed like, well, if you have a copy of it, put it on like, let's listen to it and I'll reappraise it. And Lou Reed's like, oh, I don't have a copy of that. He's like, well, do you even fucking like it? You know, it's so funny. It's just like, but it's just

like disco. It's like disco punk. It kind of doesn't work, but I it was a good attempt I think. Yeah, no, I mean, it's, I mean coming after St. Hassle, which is like, like, I mean, either my number one or two favorite of his albums. Like it just is a little disappointing. Like City Lights is kind of a nice, like kind of tells a story about Charlie Chaplin. All through the night is good. I hate disco Mystic.

It's not good, yeah. Disco Mystic is disco Mystic, and like without you is or sorry with you is like a very kind of Bowie bad imitation of Bowie. He never quite left it right, even though he pretends he didn't. Yeah. Yeah, no, I mean, you can even hear it on like Berlin, the album right after Transformer Lady Day is very good. It's always like there's he's trying to have that sound, but he doesn't want to hire Bowie again because Bowie gets too much.

And then Bowie's like. I would love to work I. Even though they fought, he literally punched that the Bowie got. Apparently they got in like fist fight one time which that had to have been the funniest thing if you ever saw that happen. Like if you were like at a club or like a baby girl like. A you're like, are those two late? One of those two ladies? One, what's that? What is that? What is that? Lesbian in a leather jacket and that girl with the red mullet fighting.

On her. Is there a slap fighting match going on? Well, you 2 ladies settle down and then you know that that happens. And then I remember like Bowie was just like, you got to get your shit together. And it's like we're talking about David Bowie in the 70s telling you, you have to get your shit together. This guy's like, this guy's like hallucinating off of like not eating anything and like doing just eating Peppers. And. And milk and cocaine. And he's like blue.

You are a mess like you. Have a pepper chill. I know he's like, I have the perfect diet. Yeah, you can be 110 lbs. There's always someone worse off than you. There's always another level you can. That's hilarious. Yeah. It's like had to have been bad. And I think that's one thing the biography does is it's a pretty, it's a pretty good picture of Lou Reed because I have a feeling it's way worse than what was telling what they're telling

you in the in the biography. Because it's just like, like the guy's a mess. And and the part of it is like David Bowie is probably just as much of a drug addict, but he was nice. Like he was a nice guy. Like, people just were like, yeah, but he's cool as fuck, you know, like Reed, It's like, damn it.

Like he yelled at me again. He threw a fucking bottle with Jim Beam at my head, you know, for, for not putting the mic close enough to his acoustic guitar, You know, like, it's just, it's your actions, not necessarily what you consume a lot of times. And he was a big, big Johnnie Walker Black fan, by the way. He loves being black and growing up in Publix. Another one that I think it's OK. I don't. I kind of like forgot about it already, like I don't.

I'm looking at the tracks. Nothing really pops out to me, but it's about to make a really good album in my opinion. My opinion probably is last masterpiece. It's called the Blue mask. And at this time, Lou Reed's starting to look like Diddy Kong, by the way. Like if you look at him, he has this, like curly hair and he almost looks kind of simian as he's starting to get older. And he kind of looks if you put him in a Red Hat and a red shirt, he would look like Diddy Kong.

And then, yeah, these guys keeping it high and tide, he's starting to become more like Jewish at this time. And then in the 90s, he'd get the full like Jeff Lynne, like Howard Stern perm, Like that would happen. Or I don't know if it's a perm. It's probably just it was natural hair, but. He's do fro. He's got. He really started to. Be playing. I always forget he's Jewish like. Yeah, and then the biography reminds you through the entire back half of the water.

And I just love being Jewish, man. Jesse Jackson, I don't like your comments about Jews, man. Yeah, it was funny. So Reed, somewhere along the line, picks up a a guitarist named Robert Klein, who I think is fantastic. Robert Klein is a great guitar player and he definitely, it's funny, they used to mix his guitar. They used to mix it left and right. So, so Reed, I think Reed was on the left and Klein was on the right. And guess which one they would argue about?

Who should be turned up higher, Lou? Reed or Robert? Klein Yeah, yeah, I've lot dude a lot of times and I'm not trying to hate on him. Nobody listens to Lou Reed for like great guitar playing by him. That's not what you're there

for. But like a lot of like big shows that he would do, especially in the 80s during like Farm Aid and things, they would just like straight up turn his amp off to the to like, 'cause they're just like we like, there's plenty of guys that'll play this show with you that can just play the stuff you do. And eventually towards the end, you can tell like in the 2000s he was actually kind of jamming

a little bit. Like he actually started taking it really seriously and became kind of a gearhead and and really wanted to wanted to do that. And I think maybe his marriage to Laurie Anderson, because she was kind of a virtuoso musician, maybe that kind of played into it a little bit. But the blue mask is great,

especially the title track if fucking rules. That's like the good frequency like feedback stuff that I like because it's still rooted in that awesome bass line of just like and the lyrics are cool. They don't fit kind of, but they do. And that's what Lou Reed does is he's like, you would never write this song this way only I can and I love that song. I love underneath the bottle. He's flirting with quitting drinking at this point, if he hasn't already. He also has a song called I Love

Women, which, yeah, it's a song. Yeah. Yeah, that's a that's a great one, right? He's like talking about feeling guilty. He's like, I looked at like dirty magazines, but that's sexist. I know that like. Well, he's with a woman named Sylvia Morales at this point who is a feminist, like author, right? Or something like she's, she's like that. They had a house in the 80s together.

They've they've Rach, you'll be shocked to find out Rachel was begging on the streets for money after Lou Reed left left. Her. Eventually died of AIDS. Yeah, Lou got out at the right time and. He shorted it well. Yeah, he shorted, he shorted, he shorted Rachel Richard Coyne and he he best definitely started with the Sylvia Morales girl. They, they talked about the house that they bought together and they had a, a Oh God, what

was it? Yeah, they had an earth toilet in their house that turned waste into compost using no water, which, you know, he's like, Oh yeah. Like I lived in the fucking factory where that's, we had that at the factory too, where you just shit on the ground probably. Yeah, leave it there. That's the compost and. Then someone's like, oh, is that a piece that you're working on, like, or something? Oh my God, that's so great. Yeah, yeah. So that's that's the that's pretty funny.

And but yeah, the blue mask is great. I love most of the songs on this album. I mean, we should point out, yeah, at this time. So he's left Rachel and like, he's already like, I'm done with the junkie faggot shit. Like, I'm going to be like a different type of guy. And this album, like actually is the first one to really show it. It is. I mean, the women won, but I love women. Maybe he's broadcasting stuff a little bit too loudly there, but

but it is a good song. My House is just a great ode to Delmar Schwartz because. Yeah, the blue mask title I believe is a Delmar Schwartz thing, right? Oh, OK. Yeah, I. Think I think. That make that makes sense 'cause it yeah, what I. The gun. So the gun, the first time I listened to that, it was like, OK, this is a little corny, it's a little cheesy about it's about this guy who feels this power of the gun. And then I listen to it and I'm like, actually, Louie makes it

work. Like it is kind of a little bit more of a Clint Eastwood ask. Like he's been inspired by this sort of vigilantism. Like this is what, 82? So like, you know, comes in like the gritty New York. He's kind of changing his attitude about what New York has become. And I think also there was a story in the biography about, I don't know, someone was, I heard like Lou Reed owned a firearm, like he owned a, some sort of a

revolver. And they couldn't like think and imagine like him having a revolver cause like they would never want to be around him. And it turns out they were like, they went to his house and there was a hole in the floor and they're like, what happened? He's like, I don't know, the revolver went off. I'm. Like. He just accidentally like, yeah. Through the floor, through the floor, which you know he's on like the fifth floor too. Like it's like. Oh man. I didn't even think about that

like. Yeah. Shit, man. Charge it to the game dude. Dead 3 year old. Damn, Republicans out there, some conservative Christians down there. So they know, they understand. They, they put this in my hand, man. But yeah, that's hilarious. Yeah, I know there's so many good stories of him in the 80s. Like he like he had more antics when he got sober because like, I feel like that was how he, how he got his kicks right. Was was was like trolling people hard.

I like legendary hearts too. I think it's fine. I think it's a fine album. It's it's like not nearly as good as blue mask, but there's some good ones. And he starts getting really heavy-handed politically around this time, like where it's like, OK, it's Peter Gabriel used to suffer from the same problem where it's like I it's implied in your music that you are a, you know, clean up Captain planet, clean up the trash lived hard like it's implied.

And when I get it, and I'm not against that, especially during the 80s and stuff, because there was trash everywhere after the 70s and, and stuff like I, I, I'm, I'm for that. It's just, you don't need to make a song that says that explicitly, you know, And then sometimes that happens in the 80s with, with Lou Reed, whereas he was just the good part about it is he was able to be really artful in the 70s when he was talking about something and it all these things had double

meanings and stuff. And the 80s is just such a decade of like earnesty, I feel like. And we're starting to hop into like Reaganomics, like big, big massive, like commercial try to get a commercial hit Reaganomics, which Lou definitely tried to get a part of. Make no mistake, he wanted to hit Clive Davis showed him in 1978, Bruce Springsteen.

And he tried to like he saw Bruce Springsteen live, which again, I'm not a massive Springsteen guy, but if you see him live like there's just a a part of that where it's objectively like great, I'm sure. And especially in those like it's amazing club shows that he would do in the 70s that like boomers all pretend they were at and and they all pretend they were there.

They all, they like you all, went to the same bar and saw a. Bridge in 1970. Eight, they all went there with the bottom line or wherever that was, yeah. CBGB's dude, he was at Clr just like, I'm like, you live in Arkansas. Like what are you like like. That my dad was, he was a victim of that and it's bummers. Like I knew he would be embellishing some shit, but I knew a lot of the shit he was saying was true. So I'm like, you know, it's very, it's hard to.

Yeah, they're taking like second hand information, which is like, again, I kind of long for that time period cuz now you can't lie about that stuff. And I'm like, you're in this hyper, like the transparent part where like everybody knows what you did and stuff and you're like, I kind of like these people to have like a, a, a fable to tell. You know. But it is funny like, cuz you're like, you were not at that show until before. And he performed until 7:30 AM and I went to work after that.

You're like, no, you didn't. Yeah. It's like, it's like grandpa's war stories, you know what I mean? Like, you know, you could let let him embellish, you know, like, let him, yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's just, it's totally fine. It's just it's funny. They all pretend to have seen Bruce Springsteen at the. Bar. And not like I would agree if you were like, oh, I went saw him at like where the Red Wings play like, yeah, OK, sure, yeah,

maybe it did. But like when they pretend they've seen him in his like early days, like born to Run, you know, like all that. And I just it cracks me up. But he saw he was. Drinking. Beers with everyone after the show and yeah. I've Clive. He's like, I'm not gonna stop playing until this bar runs out of beer. And then. And yeah, so it's just, yeah, just one of those, like, movie moments that they do.

I love it, but he's he Clive Davis went to see him and you know, Lou Reed will just go, yeah, it's, it's fine, not really my thing. And then clearly he tries to make like a Bruce Springsteen album like 4 times in a row afterwards. Classic, classic. I don't like the guy, but I could do that and shit, why didn't I think of that? Let me do that now thing. I everybody who's listening to this right now, if you're like

whatever, I'm not going to listen to this stuff. Just look up the cover of this next album. It's amazing. New sensations. Lou Reed he is playing and that what it looks like in Atari of himself. He's like a baby like size playing it and he's just stoically like the thinker, like on the on the screen and he's like playing a video game, which he did have an Atari at the time.

He was like one of the like he bought the Atari like right when it came out and he was like, he was like a Miles Davis guy, like he loved like whatever was new. And but I this album's funny because Robert Klein and him have a falling out and Robert Klein was on the blue mask and was really proud of his work on there and he showed it to God. What is that guy from Rolling Stone that died? He killed or? Like killed himself. Lester Bangs, right?

And him and Lou Reed kind of had like a ornery, kind of like outlaw. Yeah, Lester Dane said some pretty wild shit about Rachel. About right, Yeah. Oh, that's right. Oh my God, I don't know if you have the quote, but it's pretty wild. I I will try my best to find it because it is just insane like. It it. Is it is like, it is like, dude, it is like RuPaul's Drag Race, like level like shit.

Like it's just like like like the old school iterations where they're like, like I to even to me, somebody who I like, I don't make my, you know, opinions vague about what I think about stuff like that, especially nowadays. But I'm like, damn, even to me, I was like, dude, fuck. Like, I was like, dude, chill out, Yeah. But this this album cover was great. Like it's one of the, I have 4 Lou Reed albums on record, Transformer, St. Hassle New York and this one, New Sensations. Yeah.

So I love, I love the artwork on this. It's just, it's, I mean, it's the first time where it's not like his face just front and center. So I thought that was interesting about the artwork. Yeah, exactly. It's it's like, yeah, I man, I can't find the, I can't find the let me see if I, I have to go to like I, I definitely won't find it in the book because I listen to it on audio. That is the one downside of not being able to do that. But Oh yeah.

Because with Rachel, it was like Rachel was like considering actual like a, a surgery because God, what was the surgery like in 1977? Oh yeah, I know. Like where? Like it was a doctor Nick or something. Like Oh my gosh. Like I was like, I don't even want. I don't even mean it's bad now. Like, I don't even want it. I don't even want to know. Like.

So. Yeah. Noted rock critic Lester Bangs, who was friend of Reed's then guitarist Robert Klein, often wrote negatively about Rachel during his tenure as editor of Cream shortly after Bang's death in the spring. Yeah. Basically he was just like, oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Here we go. In notes from in Notes from the Velvet Underground. Oh no, not, that's not the that's not the quote. Anyways, Basically like one guy saw Rachel begging on the

streets. But like Lester, Lester Bangs was just like, I can't believe people think this is a chick. Basically like I what the fuck? Like what world are we living in right now? Like why are we calling? Like it was just like, you know what a lot of people would have thought to be honest, if you weren't, but Lester Bangs also was like, he was like in the scene and stuff too. I'm like, that's weird that you like you've never seen, like you've probably seen this type of shit before.

So it was kind of kind of interesting. Lester Bangs lost, though. He killed himself, right? So he's, you know, or something. He died of drug overdose. Or. Something like that, Yeah, I think he overdosed on like cold medicine or something. Like that beta? Yeah. So, you know, Reed wins. Rachel did not win. Reed wins, though. Well. OK, so I do have I have a little bit of the quote.

In 1980, following the release of Londie, Lester Baines was interviewing for a radio program called News Blimp. A copy of the tape sent to me anonymously. Hang on. No, wait. No, All right, Never mind. That's not it. OK. And. It's like, it's like a fucking like diatribe too. It's crazy. I remember when it happened. He's just like spazzing out on, on, on Rachel and it's like, wow, crazy. But yeah, anyways, the Robert Quine had a falling out with Reed because he had shown Lester

Bangs the blue mask. And you know, I think Lester Bangs was like, this is good and then made kind of like a backhanded compliment about it. But Robert Klein was like, hey, Lester Bangs liked your album. And he said like this, he had a couple quips qualms with it. And like Reed was like, fuck that guy, what are you doing? What do you need his approval for, you fucking loser? Get out of my. Band. Reed as a lead guitarist is not the best option on your album, but on News Sensations, what he

does I think is really cool. And any, you know, smart producer knows this is kind of like, OK, we need to play to our strengths here. Let's bring in some synths, Let's bring in some drum machines and let's let read just kind of like like be. He's really catchy on this album. I love endlessly jealous. I think that's a great song. And the title track, New sensations. Great. My my red joystick. I mean, look, a lot of people aren't going to like it. If you're.

If you're from these albums, like, if you're, if you're, if you're just like, you know, Velvet Underground, like, yeah, you're not going to like this album. But I, I liked it. I found it very fun. And I was ready to be like, oh, we're hitting a lull here. This isn't going to be good. I was surprised that I liked it.

Yeah, I mean, so my red joystick, the thing like it's kind of a fun like tune melody, but just like the lyrics where he's trying to be obviously like like his red joystick, everyone knows what it is. He's like trying to do a sexual play on words. Of course. Yeah. But I mean, yeah, the song New Sensations was great. Was it? I love you Suzanne on this. Yeah, that's the. Oh yeah, that's the first song. Yeah, yeah, I know. That's another great one that I that I really love.

But yeah, no, this is like a great album and kind of is just like a little bit more fun than like it's a little bit more fun than the Blue mask and his previous ones. Like because I think a lot of the Blue mask and previous one, what was it called growing up in public and and the bells like this one just he was kind of out of that. I'm getting over heroin and alcoholism phase like that early 80s. He was still like kind of recovering from that, trying to adjust to life, I think.

And he finally really got sober around these sensations. And yeah, leading up to the next album, Mistrial. Mistrial sucks dude. I. Mistrial sucks. I. Sucks because the album cover's cool. I wish it was good. Like, I was like I was looking at it. I like it. Like such a sick 80s vibe is just the the thing. And it's just, it's just not good. Like I, I just, yeah, unfortunately, I really, really wanted to like that album. It's not good.

And to be honest, I grew up with his album New York in the House. It's kind of embarrassing now when you listen to it. I don't know if you feel that way. I I look his lyrics may be a little embarrassing because. It's yeah. It's very dated. Like, you know, when you start mentioning Giuliani and like, you know, like start referencing Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton

and stuff. The Jesse Jackson story is the Jesse Jackson cause. Jesse Jackson ran for president in the 80s. He was kind of a Bernie Sanders style, albeit Bernie Sanders heritage and Jesse Jackson's views not not quite the same. Jesse Jackson was running kind of like, you know, workers rights, you know, big time, like, like leftist populist kind of thing that was happening. He was getting some traction too. Like it was definitely happening.

Problem is he went to New York and he called it Hymytown, which is a Jewish slur. And you know, he's got like Louis Farrakhan. That's probably that's probably the diet version of what he actually thinks and and. Lou be like. Hey, man, what? He's like, like supporting Jesse Jackson. He's like, he doesn't like the Jews, man. What so funny. He's like, oh man, no thanks, Jesse, like. It just. Cracks me up. Yeah, he just pretty much starts

calling him a race hustler like. He did, no, he was like, he was like, sorry. He's like, he's like, look, he's like, I'm sorry, that's a bridge too far. I cannot, I cannot support you anymore. But it's, it's so funny 'cause you could tell he was like #1 proponent of like that style of like, you know, Bernie Sanders, like leftist populism kind of thing. That was, that was apparent there. And but yeah, I, you know, New York is, I don't know it.

I, I want, I remember as a kid thinking it was kind of interesting, like my mom would play it and she really liked it. And like I said, not, not, she's not a massive Lou Reed fan, but I think, you know, she liked some of the stuff he was saying on there. And at the time. It's a little different making that than making it now. It's important to, it's important to say that. And it just, it just doesn't hold up that well to me.

I don't know, like, and I just even some of the musical arrangements are just OK to me. And it's 14 songs, you know, and, and I just don't think it needs to be. There's that really the line of like the Statue of Liberty, like peeing on you. And you're just like, oh boy, like. Like you mean the statue of bigotry? Statue of bigotry, not the statue of right. Alcohol to the left, Lou. Yeah. Not the statue of bigotry. Yeah. No, it's not great. Warhol's dead at this point. He died in 1986.

Andy Warhol, him and Lou Reed had a falling out, as you know, most people do with him, but he it's quite clear that he was still kind of a looming presence in Lou's life. Definitely influential to him, whether he wants to admit it or not. But in 1986, Warhol died. I didn't realize Warhol died from medical malpractice, though. I did not know that. Like from the gunshot? Well, he got shot, right. One time he got shot and I think he had been having complications

from gallbladder. He had to get his gallbladder removed and they pumped in the hospital. They never had anybody monitoring him the whole time. Like literally nobody. Like nobody visited Warhol. Like no nurses or? Anything and they. Pumped. They pumped double the fluids into his body. So they just like fucking like blimped him, turned him into a blimp and then he just like died

and like, yeah, it's crazy. So I just like, and they're like, I guess they, they got $3,000,000 from the hospital in a lawsuit. So it's like, OK, there's got to be something there, you know, like, it's wild. So anyways, trust doctors. They're the best guys. And the, the, he, they're just so good. They're fucking amazing. And he, you know, he makes an album with John Kale. They decide to get together and make this. I, I think this is an awful album. A lot of people like it.

I don't like it. It's called Songs for Drella. And I don't I, I, I fucking fall asleep to this thing, dude. Like I, I just, it just does nothing for me. I don't know. I people got great reviews. All these places love it, you know, Rolling Stone, 4 out of five, you know, LA Times, 3 out of five, Chicago Tribune 4. There's a lot but I I can't listen to it. I mean, I'll give I'll give Lou his due as far as just being a

great songwriter on this album. If you read the lyrics, like it is really just a very like touching eulogy to Mindy Warhol. And it's very well written. Like if you just read it, like poetically, it's really good. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The musics Boring. That's the problem. It's like. And it was frustrating because I love John Kale too. And I'm like, oh, these guys. And it's just like, yeah, you get together and I don't know, maybe you disagreed about so much.

It all just kind of like washed into something in very average musically. Yeah, and they start trying to flirt around with a velvet reunion. Sounds like people are running out of money and they want to do like, a little thing. They the Velvets getting cut when grunge comes out, Grunge comes out every. You know, Kurt Cobain's looks like a Warhol junkie, basically.

So everybody's just kind of going back to the roots and finding Velvet Underground, finding, you know, Lou Reed or Transformer, a lot of these like things that inspire what's really popular in the 90s. So they want to capitalize on that and it doesn't last long. Everybody's like, hey, makes. It's kind of like when Oasis reunites. You definitely don't want to buy tickets for the third Oasis reunion show on. The date.

Make sure you get tickets to the first one, so 'cause you if the first one goes bad, there will not be a third one. They only perform in Europe at the time. They don't even make it back to the States. They're just they're just not meant to be a long term band. Jon Kale's had a very successful career. MO Tucker's had a successful career. Sterling Morrison died unfortunately, but he was a very good guitar player. I think he did a lot of session

work, if I'm not mistaken. And then at this time, Lou Reed is starting to date Lori Anderson and fade away from Sylvia, who was his manager and wife. You don't want to do that. She's like negotiate. I just almost pictured like Stevie's wife from eastbound and

down, like you know what I mean? Like it is so uncomfortable like that, like them describing like, Oh yeah, I'd bring Sylvia, who I was separated from at the time, but she was my manager on dates with like, you know, other women that he was seeing. Like he would do this like in other relationships too. It'd just be like, Oh yeah, she's my ex and this is the new one I'm seeing and like flirt with other women in front front of like the. It was a little wild, even.

It. Was way after the factory scene like. I mean, he must have something to him though 'cause like that is like straight up the biggest humiliation ritual for a woman of all time. Like, and she was like there for like years after and you're just like, what is it? Money, 'cause he's not. I can't imagine he's making that much money. Well. She's a strong woman. She's a strong businesswoman. And you know what she can like, tolerate do it going through that, you know?

Put her. Hair in a bite I do with being her ex-boyfriend put. Yeah, put on her hair, put, put on her hair, put on some gangster rap and fuck shit up, that's what. She. Did Yeah. It's just yeah. It doesn't doesn't seem to be doesn't seem to be working out very well. But he finds a androgynous short haired art hoe named Laurie Anderson and they are happily ever after. It's the best of both worlds. Lou Reed's like, great. AIDS is rampant everywhere.

I need a woman because gay is not for me anymore. And she's kind of I, I tried listening to her music. My Lord, she's very talented, but it's just not for me. I, it's, it's just not for me. But she, she's, you know, plays violin, does all this crazy stuff. And I do think she, Lou Reed became like a more skilled guitar player after being with her. Tough to attribute it to anything else because I I just didn't learn anything otherwise. But he starts dating her.

There's some very forgettable 90s albums in my opinion, set the Twilight reading the anthology comes out in 1992, which that has a great story. Like I was saying about him putting together the anthology, he, you know, he was all for like his old stuff getting getting pushed out again. Like that's that was a big part of the CD era was these guys were able to kind of get reprisals on their on their work

that they knew was good. So yeah, that a guy, last name of Bowman who was, who was putting together this thing and he was a huge Reed fan. He they said it was like impossible to get him to like do any interviews. And that's always been the case with him. And they wanted to have an interview in the box set that made it worth buying. That was like kind of transparent, kind of earnest Reid wanted creative control.

He Reid actually took fewer royalties from it if he could have final say in what was put in the interview. And basically he struck all the good, like good stuff out of there. And it's all just like kind of slop apparent, according according to the person putting it together. I do not have this anthology, but the he apparently they weren't very happy with that. But it did sell well, especially in 1992 when you see bands like Nirvana popping out and stuff and gave it was a really good

time to do that. And I they have it available on on Apple, the anthology. And you can and it does have it is a pretty good way to get into Lou Reed. There's a lot of really good stuff on there. He didn't really like the idea of his B sides being put out, which I get that. It's like, I I would have put them out if I wanted them out. Especially while you're alive. Well, if you're dead, I'm like, just release them, who cares?

But like, I wouldn't want that. Yeah, before I just want to mention on set, the Twilight Reeling. Not a great album, but there are two really good songs on there, I think. Hang on to Your Emotions and Sex with Your parents. Yeah, really. Those are really good songs. If anyone wants to check it. Those are great. And you just some live versions of sex with your parents and you know, if you don't want to listen to the set, the Tri light reeling.

But yeah, the the box set, that guy had some great stories about Lou Reed. Just trying to arrange that interview for the box set and what happened. My favorite story of his about that was when I think it was like, after the interview. Yeah, I think it was after the interview. He went with Lou Reed to go to, like, an ATM or something at a bank, and Lou Reed sees a homeless person sleeping in the vestibule of the bank.

And he just said he turns to, like, the guy who's doing the liner notes for the box set, just like he says. That's look at that. That's disgusting. And he gets so angry that he goes over, he goes in, walks to the bank manager and demands that the bank manager throw the homeless person out. And it was like cold. It was like a cold, like New York winter. It's a lot. And and he and he literally had just come out with the album about how New York just tosses

homeless people away and like. Yeah. Giuliani has no compassion. Many such cases, by the way. Yeah, I mean, look, he's not wrong, but I'm just saying like he's, it's like, it's very much weird how like he's kind of. Wrong. Yeah, no, he's not right. He's not wrong at. All I just wish he would. There's a cognitive dissonance a little. Bit if I would. Say between that, which is kind of funny because, yeah, it's just, it's just like, oh, that's ridiculous. Very funny anecdote from John

Cougar Mellencamp, 1990. Farm Aid. So Reed gets tapped on to do Farm Aid. You know, he's one of those guys like, you know, save the environment, like take care of the farmers, you know, all that stuff. But he's also not quite exactly what it's Bill that farm aid usually Willie Nelson, you know, kind of like some outlaw country people and and and folksy and stuff. But and Reed just being the city guy, New York City and stuff. But he played it like a lot of

years. But in 1990, this is another Lou Reed hypocrisy moment. I'll I'll read it from here for the 1990 Farm Aid concert in Indianapolis. Mellencamp. That's John Cougar Mellencamp invited Guns and Roses to headline, which proved to be a

controversial decision. Guns and Roses was the biggest band in the world at the time, and the band's lead singer, Axl Rose and rhythm guitarist Izzy Stradlin had grown up in Indiana. But the band's song, One in a Million included a line complaining about immigrants and faggots and claimed that gay people spread disease, a clear reference to AIDS, which was ravaging the gay community at

the time. Many people did not want Guns and Roses to play the show, but Mellencamp would not back down. Quote, Everybody was so mad about it, Even at Farm Aid, Mellencamp said. Quote. It pissed me off. I was like, are you kidding me? This is the biggest band in the country right now, and you don't want them to come? It's their song.

It made no difference to me. Everything I like doesn't have to be politically correct, and every band that plays here doesn't have to be politically correct. But Lou came into my dressing room and jumped my shit. He was worked up about it. I said, Lou, this is a funny conversation coming from a guy who wrote a song called Heroin. He just walked out. He just walked out and I don't think I ever spoke to him again. That's a that's a ultimate comeback. That's a great.

I know it's like, dude, you literally have like songs about like girls killing themselves and like, like, well, and what's funny about Lou Reed is like he was never popular enough to actually be banned. And I noticed he kind of struggles with that a little bit where he's like fights for artists, like free speech, but like there's never his stuff is like so niche at the time that like, it's just not like it's not Darling Nikki, you know what I mean?

It's not, it's not these like crazy songs that are everywhere. So like, it's like, dude, no one's ever banned your stuff. Like, because it's just kind of the people who like it, they seek it out and it's, it's, it's fine, you know? So it's just, it's just funny to me. Yeah, no, I yeah. So yeah, you're familiar with the The Guns and Roses song. I to be honest, it's been was that off that's not off. Appetite for destruction? No, it's on lies and I, I the lies.

I don't know it, but I I was like, whoa, jeez. It's yeah, no, he says the N word in it too. It's there's more than just immigrants and faggots. It's there's a whole like, I mean, it's a screed and talk about one of the songs that has not been taken off of Spotify and like looking every day like, you know, like hasn't been taken. Thank God. Yeah, no, that's one of the ones you can find on there. So what does Welcome to the Jungle mean? Yeah. I know, I know is.

That about something else? I thought that was about Skid Row. Yeah, well. Probably not. Well, at least maybe a part of. Skid Row. Yeah, Yeah, that's right. Yeah. I know. That's why. Yeah, it's, that's hilarious. I know. I will say there's one. There's a couple things worth talking about as we widen down

here. You mentioned to me that Ecstasy from 2000 by Lou Reed's good and you were correct. It's a good album. That's a good album. I, I, it's a bit overproduced for me, like like at times. But that was the time that was, that was what they did with these guys. These kind of older artists was they would get this like new production and it would kind of, you know, you'd get like violins and like orchestral. But I really like a lot like the title track. Ecstasy Mad is a great song. I like it.

It's a very good effort for at a time for a guy who really doesn't. This is a bad era of Lou Reed. Oh yeah, no, like I I think yeah, turning around rock minuet is great. Big Sky the final song. I mean, it's just a really good rock'n'roll album, something I did not expect from him. Given like as magic and lost. It was fine, set the Twilight reeling, bland for the most part. And then it was just, you know,

a lot of years in between. He released a live album called Perfect Night Live in London, which is like, it's a beautiful live album. It's he plays acoustic, I think, and then someone else plays electric. So it's like you get kind of like it's a different sound than some of his other live albums. But yeah, that was like, really the last good. Yeah, Studio. I mean, if you want to count Hudson River when I kind of do, which is great, is great. Yeah.

Yeah, I love it. No, it's it's not the same though. It's not a it's not an album. So HUD size gotta bump this album because it rules. Yeah, I didn't have time. Yeah, you'd love it. Hudson River Wind Meditations is exactly what you would think it was. It's like, I mean, I just picture RFK cleaning up the Hudson River while Lou Reed's doing Tai chi. Yeah, what a wonderful time of New York. It reminds me of. Like some of those like a little bit. Riverkeeper Yeah, just sorry, go ahead.

Yeah, it reminds me of like some of the Brian Eno Ambien albums. Like you use it for airports. It's tight, No. And and he, he said he's like, this is not me, like putting out an album hoping it sells. He's like, I put this out because people want to meditate and he's like, people like shit like this to meditate to. And he goes, anytime I would put it on, he goes, I would have like, you know, meditation things at my house or like, you know, like Tai Chi sessions or

something. And people would go, Hey, can I like get a copy of that? And he goes, Oh, I made it. And they're like, can I have that? And he's like, well, I'll just see if like somebody wants to put it out and like people can, if, if you know, you know, and you go buy it. And I'm like, that's a great idea. And, and to be honest, I, there's a time and a place for it. I, I, I could, I could see myself really, you know, just chill, just just Max into it, dude.

Like it's great. I'm a big fan. I might use some of it for readings and stuff. Like I, I really, I really like it. No, I was, I read to it, Yeah, a couple nights ago. I just put it on. Like I was putting it on just like when I was like cleaning my apartment and stuff. And just like, it's nice music. It's good music to listen to just in the background. Yeah, obviously we have the dreaded Lulu that we're split on here should. We do. Should we mention the Raven

before then? Yeah, that's true. Yeah. So at least you mentioned what went into it because? Go ahead, Go ahead. Yeah. So this was Lou Reed's interpretation of some Edgar Allan Poe stories, stuff, songs that were inspired by Edgar Allan Poe that he wrote. But he had a lot of guest musicians on, I mean, great ones, David Bowie or Net Coleman, Lori Anderson. He had Willem Dafoe and Steve Buscemi. Like a lot of like, I think it wasn't Helen Mirren or someone

on there. Like, I mean, just actors like reading these lines and even like he really wants to be considered a poet and a great, you know, a great writer. This just isn't it. Like everything, it's very he's trying too hard on all of it. It's really bad. And all the stars that he brings in just can't save it. Like, and that's which is really sad about it. It's because it's just he tries so hard on this.

He just gets all this, you know, all his actor friends and his musician friends together and he can't make anything do. And he had to release like, one that was like a shortened version and one that was like an expanded edition if you wanted to listen to even more bullshit. Like, no, it was it was pretty bad. But she just mentioned that at least he, you know. Yeah, that was a a time in his life that he really, that was a passion project for him.

I, I think there was a really, so it's like sad but also happy kind of thing where the biography says at this time, Reid is much more appreciated than he is liked for what he's putting out there. People are just happy to see him doing things and and which is like another way of saying you put out straight ass juice music like it just it is what it is. It's it's fine. Look, that's a great run. What he what he has It was a great run.

I mean, we're talking more or less more more good than bad. Some stellar, some elite for 20 years. Really we're talking if you're not including Velvet Underground, that's it's pretty damn good. So he, he's feeling sick during a lot of this time. I mean, again, this guys had hepatitis since like, like the Kennedy administration, if not less than that. He's he's, he's, he's not well, his liver, he needs a liver transplant. He gets one.

It doesn't take he's working with Metallica during this time. Metallic Lars Ulrich is like super into Lou Reed because he was raised in like that. Wasn't Lars Ulrich raised on like some like Swedish sex compound or something? Like I thought he was like his dad was one of those like weird. Like we do not wear clothes, you know? Like, I wouldn't surprise me, but I think he was. I think he's from like a Swedish like art family, like kind of

like the scars guards. And they were like in to Lou Reed. So he was like, oh, this is bucket list stuff. And they basically they were all like Metallica guys were like, we'll, we'll do whatever you want. Like you wear your backing band, you tell us what to do. So then Reed tells him what to do because he's working with this Brooklyn computer, you know, Calhoun guy something something Calhoun is doing all

these weird computer things. And he's like, oh, we wrote some songs and Metallica is like, Oh, yeah, OK, yeah, that'll, that'll, that'll work, I guess. And then they make the album and it, they spend a long time working on it. It's like, you can tell there was like a lot put into this. It was definitely Metallica had money to burn and they could always tour if they want to, to make money. So and their their fans didn't like it. And then Lou Reed just didn't have enough of a fan base to

make it sell. And yeah, I, I couldn't get into it. I maybe somebody can. It's it's definitely for the spectacle worth turning on because it's it sounds like how you'd think, because there's even a cover of Sweet Jane at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. With Metallica and it doesn't. Work. It doesn't work in my opinion. It's slow. Like they're slow. They need to play faster. And. But Reid probably can't play that fast at that point. Like that's kind of the problem.

Or like at least sing that fast because he's not healthy. But this album does isn't like melodic like that. It's much more noisier from Metallica and that's why I think it lends itself well. Like I think reads lyrics on this are actually pretty good. Yeah. I mean, I like Brandenburg Gate, Mr. Stred, Cheat on me, Frustration, Dragon Junior Dad. Like, yeah, I I liked all those songs. Look, I I understand. Like, I understand why they did it.

The collaboration seemed like unique and Lou Reed probably felt like, oh, if Metallica works with me, I'm accepted into the mainstream. And if Metallica is like other like, well, if Lou Reed works with us, then we're accepted into that like punk type of like, you know, like alternative industry. So, but like it just didn't really work out as far as like their sales. But. You know who really did like this album? David Bowie. We. Called it Lou Reed's best work.

Dude, he wanted to be friends with Lou Reed so bad for like and like, Yeah. And he's just like. He's fucking. Phil dude, can we hang out like I'll say, I like the Metallica album. No, he probably did. He probably did like the Metallica album. I'm not saying he wasn't earnest, but he was like, dude, I nobody likes this album. I love it. Luke, can we be friends? And like. That's the type of guy David Bowie is like he's just like, really.

Like for a guy that went through as many eras as he did, like most people are like, yeah, he's pretty fucking cool though. Like he was just, he was just really cool. And by the way, I found that one of the a short version of the Lester Bangs Rachel quote, where he refers to Rachel as that creature a million times during the side. He says this is one of the yeah, it's one of the most twisted pieces of art I've ever seen about Rachel. Like he's like, this is this is what are you doing, Reid?

Is this a statement? Like, Oh my gosh. Oh yeah, he said something about she looked like if the album Berlin had been melted down and reformed into a human. And he's like, it depends what you think about the album Berlin, how you would think about that statement. But yeah, it was it was like, yeah, something like, yeah, Berlin she's which is yeah, it's a very sad, depressing album. So I don't know. I mean, it's not a great

compliment. I. Was gonna say, I was gonna say the album, the album itself is I I can't, I can't agree with you there, Lester, because I like that album too much. Yeah, it's a good album. But yeah, I don't know if he's referring to the lyrics or how you know what I mean, The content you. Need to feel the the the same you get at the end of Berlin. Yes, exactly. Yeah. So that's. All right, you know what? RIP Rachel. And that's just and RIP Lester Banks. I mean, she outlived him a

little bit, you know? So that's that's the way to go. So, I mean, guys, any anymore I got I don't know, he died. He died and it sucks, but yeah, I mean. I. Did want to cover the does that live album take no prisoners? Oh yes, 78 So this was a wild live album. Like he just kind of it was his band was like in a very like rock'n'roll like happy mood.

He was in a good mood. He was talking to the crowd and he would just like start these monologues in the middle of songs and, you know, the band would just be like, you know, going along with the with the, with the melody, with the riff. And he would just like walk on the wild side. He would throw lines out like like he'd like light a cigarette and he'd be like, I have no attitude without a cigarette. I'd rather have cancer than be a faggot.

Like just lines like that. And like it's like having it's like going to bed with a brontosaurus. It's out of style, man. And like he would just like throw those like lines that you know, in the way that he only he could say that with that like man, dude. But there's one at one point. What song is it? Oh, yeah. I think it's still maybe during Walk on the Wild Side where he's just starts going after this music reviewer Robert Christo. Right.

And he just says, what does Robert Christo do in bed? Is he a toe fucker? And then he just starts going after this guy and starts making fun of him like, oh, he wrote the Consumer's Guide to rock. What a moron. Like baroque rock. He studied it in in the Ivy League. He's like, fuck you. I don't need to. I don't need you to tell me I'm good. Like and he just starts making fun of the critics, going after them.

And then when it gets to the part where he's talking about Candy and Little Joe and Sugar Plum Fairy, he's just like, says Candy. Like I really miss Candy. And I didn't even get to know her that well. Like I'm such a scam artist. She got leukemia from a plastic tit and I'm supposed to feel sorry for her Then don't fucking do that, man. We have health education. Don't fucking do that shit. And then he just stopped talks

to some. Person in the crowd like you look like a Democrat, you want to go to bed. And then he just says talks about Little Joe, who was Joe's Dalessandro from the Factory starred in a lot of Warhol films and he said Little Joe was an idiot. He had an IQ of 12 probably. True. I ain't even probably. True, like he went to Italy to become a star. Wouldn't fuck anyone. And like Sugar Plum Fairy like she just makes her living writing for Encyclopedia Britannica.

She wouldn't come to see me if I was dying. Like he just like talk shit about all these people and walk on the wild side. So I mean the whole album, the whole live album is great and he's got some riffing like that the whole way through. But man, that live walk on the wild side from techno prisoners is is great. Like, I mean, it's, it's great peak live Lou Reed. I mean, he's just having a good time. Doesn't give a fuck up there. And.

The other thing is on St. Hassle, we kind of skipped over the part like the song St. Hassle, it's beautiful, like one of his most beautiful songs. He describes it as he he wanted to write a song that was a combination of Hubert Selby Junior, William S Burroughs and Raymond Chandler. And he get he gets it perfectly. And I think that's just like one of his most poetic, beautiful songs. Like the the musical changes within the song are great. Like he goes in a few different directions.

And even Bruce Springsteen is on the song in one part. He sings the last part and I think it's he does like a paraphrasing of like the tramps like us. We were born to run that he the previous year. It's like tramps like us. I forget what the rest of the lyric was, but it's just a it's a really great song. So anyone who wants to get the Lou Reed, I really think like St. Hassle's a really good way to go. Yeah, no, definitely.

It's it's no, it's it's great. I mean, I I I think St. hassle is probably the the one that nobody's talks about. Like, I mean, the blue mask has its own fanbait, but like the street ass will have its own like kind of like that's the GOAT fanbase. Like I don't I don't think so. So it's it's definitely it's definitely, definitely worth it. So well, guys, yeah, I mean, I highly recommend the biography too. It's it's really, really a fun, fun read. It's it's a lot there's a lot of

lot. The Rachel stuff is unreal in there. It's, it's, it's out of control. It's, it's definitely a life of, of insane rock'n'roll with like heroin and and meth and, and drinking and bites and bridges being burned constantly. And it's, it's great and I'm glad, I'm glad because I, I added a lot more to my phone, a lot more Lou Reed to my phone than I had before. So it was that's, that's that's what this is all about usually. So well, you know, make sure you follow our guy organized meet.

He's a great poster. He's been on the show a few times. We've covered a number of things and we will be covering some Thomas Pynchon in the coming months, especially once once that new Vineland adaptation. Yeah, excited for that. I know. Everybody's scared of it, but I'm like, dude, trust the plan. Yeah, they're like it has a black person in it. Like is it gonna? Be good and like, well, and it's

like, yeah, you guys. You don't know what you guys are talking, people just love reacting to like. Matt Anderson, Like, yeah, he's Dei now. He's. Married to Maya Rudolph. Yeah. I mean, it's not. It's just dumb, man. I'm excited for that because again, it's Thomas pinching for everybody. No. So maybe the story will repel some people, but I think he's Paul Thomas Anderson, the adapted inherent Vice and did it wonderfully well. And I think you can do it by and land.

So we'll be covering that on the Gainer Fix lab at some point later this year. So on that note, guys, everybody have a safe week. We will catch you guys next time.