How do you deal with an erratic, drug-addled loose cannon who’s arty appeal is getting decidedly more, umm, selective as time beats ever onwards?
RCA Records faced with this very conundrum decided to go for broke, upping the ante by providing Mr Reed with a decidedly kick ass rock band, getting them to play it loud, polished and simple and recorded them live at New York Palladium* around Christmas 1973.
Lou had became a Rock n Roll Animal. Velvet Underground purists wept. I think it’s all jolly amusing.
Rock n Roll Animal opens with the crunching lyrical melodic FM rock sound of ‘Intro/Sweet Jane’. It’s a fun game to play it to friends and watch the wonder on their faces when the riff comes in around 3:30-ish.
The band, snapped up wholesale by Alice Cooper, via Bob Ezrin** for Welcome To My Nightmare, are polished, pumped and primed throughout. Guitarists Dick Wagner and Steve Hunter are just full-on excellent, Prakash John on bass and Pentti ‘Whitey’ Glan on drums make for a formidably good rhythm section.
It is fascinating and simultaneously very funny to hear them grind off the jagged edges and shore up the shonky foundations of ‘Heroin’, even including some great Deep Purple/Atomic Rooster style organeering at one point as well as a blistering guitar solo. I have no idea how or why it works so well, it just does. This isn’t a version that I would have to pretend my mate Michael had put on the pub juke box. In fact, I would argue there’s even something far more subversive about this version’s big major key palatability over the original’s^*.
The rock out version of ‘White Light/White Heat’ that kicks down the doors on Side 2 sounds like Foghat live; which can only be an excellent thing. I love the way it takes the original’s wired angular nervousness and turns it into a sure-fire air guitar classic rocker. Lou sounds like he was enjoying the sheer ridiculousness of it too.
‘Lady Day’ from Berlin is up next and whilst I like the rock majesty of this version I can’t help wishing they’d attempted their FM magic on one of the more traumatic cuts from the LP, maybe ‘The Kids’?^
Inevitably Rock n Roll Animal finishes off with a 10-minute version of ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll’. Do I really need to tell you how well Wagner and Hunter nail this one down? Lou is having fun again on this one, I swear he changes ‘implications’ to ‘amputations’ once too^^. It all goes a bit Frampton Comes Alive! for a while, but only in a good way.
Perversely as the man is one of my very favourite lyricists, I think a good part of the joy of Rock n Roll Animal for me is that it is the only solo LP of his where the words take a back seat to the tunes; never mind Lou’s screed or Lou’s creed. With a band as good as Wagner, Hunter, John and Glan, as well as Ray Colcord on keys*^ that’s a rare pleasure indeed.
Ladies and gentlemen I commend Lou Reed Rock n Roll Animal to you all, without any hesitation.
1077 Down.
PS: Dig it!
*ok it was technically called Academy Of Music at the time, but I prefer Palladium and this is my world.
**who produced Lou’s 1973 chucklefest Berlin.
^*I did a similar thing with my recent bouncy Europop cover of ‘The Ballad Of Hollis Brown’, to vast acclaim.
^singalong everyone, ‘They’re taking her children away / Because they said she was not a good mother’. Yeah! Rock and roll!
^^as in, ‘Despite all the amputations you can dance to the rock ‘n’ roll stations‘, or maybe it’s just my cloth ears and his accent.
*^co-producer of Aerosmith’s Get Your Wings.
This record kicks ass. I did a review of it on Harrison’s site.
Bask when I was getting into Lou this album was certainly a curve that I liked just as much a you ( My worn out record jacket will prove it). Yes those guitars and the whole sound was a big draw. Good piece 1537.
Cheers CB, I always wanted a version of Heroin I could sing along too. Now if only they’d done a happy version of Sister Ray with lots of hand claps and a big drum solo.
Front row, you and me fella. I’ll put a flower in my hair.
(Have a take on Gabriel’s first solo. Hunter/ Wagner and Fripp kill it on that record also. Hunter with Jack Bruce on one of his solo records which is a fave)
I go back and forth on Reed’s stuff, but this one I like.
It’s a proper rocker.
Yessir!
I’ve seen this a few times in the wild and passed it by cause I don’t know too much of his stuff and the cover plays with my vision in the same way Nilsson’s Knnillssonn does. Anyhoo, I should really pick it up next time regardless of the fuzzy eyes, cause this sounds pretty magic.
Grab it next time, it’s a really fun record. Where else are you going to have a singalong version of Heroin?
I’ve never really looked into this record – I’m way more interested in VU and Cale than Reed’s solo stuff, but Ezrin producing just sounds so bizarre. It’s
It’s a more recent discovery for me and I didn’t expect to like it half as much as I do.
This a brilliant live record. Already the three-minute instrumental intro by Steve Hunter (and the excellent band), which flows seamlessly into the hard rocking version of “Sweet Jane”, makes the album interesting. The melodic and dynamic version of “Heroin” and the funky “Rock And Roll” are two more highlights.
I was so surprised this was as good as it is too, it took me years to give it a go.
Another interesting live album is „Take No Prisoners“ – part music and part comedy. Personally, I prefer „Rock N Roll Animal“, but there’s also some great music and Reed in Lenny Bruce styled rants.
I’ll see if I can find one, thanks.
Ok, I think I could like these since I am not a VU purist as you say.
Plus the Alice Cooper Welcome to my Nightmare band – brilliant!
There is that.
As this was my favourite album from the mid-70s to the mid-80s, I certainly can’t fault the choice. Nor (most of) the content! Hunter/Wagner are just, ahem, electric. Love the exercise of what ‘Berlin’ song I’d substitute (even though I wouldn’t). What about ‘Men of good fortune’ – room for a piercing solo or two there, I reckon.
Two lil’ factoids.
‘Lou Reed Live’ is in fact from the same recordings. The fact that it sounds flatter than R&RA says something about good shot selection, eh?
I’d often wondered about the instrumental section of ‘Rock and Roll’, the way it just kind of grooves along without much in the way of fireworks. When I say Mr Reed in Melbourne on the ‘Coney Island’ tour, I witnessed the answer: Lou is dancing.
Thank you Bruce, how nice to be back here in the ether again, eh?
RNR A is a recent discovery for me, I didn’t know that about the other Reed live LP, just that it was supposed to be dire.
Such a good band behind him here too, I’m so impressed you saw him back in Coney Island days. Funny, I always think of him being grouchy and serious, dancing Lou barely computes.
Friend of mine saw him in about ’92 when he used to read his lyrics out in a spoken word thing – the NME dubbed it ‘Lou Reads’ which still amuses me.
Lou Reads is absolutely brilliant. That’s your style too; clever puns.
I don’t think ‘live’ is a patch on R&RA but it’s not as bad as people made out. If Animal is the rush, then ‘Live’ is the comedown.