I have always considered myself a Lou Reed fan — but maybe I’m not. Or at least not an indiscriminate one — especially when it comes to his solo output. After leaving The Velvet Underground, the late legend made 20 studio albums as a solo artist, along with two more collaborations. Of those albums, I was only familiar with five. So I decided to listen to and review the remaining 15. At times it was like torture.
In a nutshell, Reed has a big basket of bonafide classics. Unique, unmistakable and ground-breaking songs which combine poetry and prose with a variety of music styles. But he also recorded a fly-ridden heap of awful, awful songs featuring his distinctive but poor singing, along with excessive sax and fretless bass.
Here’s one of the entries in his uneven catalog:
Recording of Lou Reed’s debut album began in London in December 1971, with the help of Rick Wakeman and Steve Howe of Yes, who had just released their monster album Fragile a month earlier. Elton John’s pre-Davey Johnstone guitarist Caleb Quaye is also on it. Recording lasted through to January 1972. There was a lot of anticipation for the album among Velvet Underground fans — most of whom, like critics, were rather disappointed.
The album opens with a banger — I Can’t Stand It, which is actually a Velvet Underground track that Reed redid for this record. I really dig this. If it didn’t have the Mo Tuckeresque drums, it would be flat-out proto-punk. As it is, it’s pretty glam, thanks to the guitars and backing vocals.
Going Down is a cool, mid-tempo number with lots of drum fills. It’s mixed weirdly. The drums and piano are really loud. It almost sounds like a quad mix, played on stereo equipment. You keep waiting for the hook, but there isn’t one — which makes it kinda boring. It’s one of just two new songs on the album. The rest are all re-recordings of Velvet Underground-era tracks.
Walk And Talk It is one of those — initially from the debut album and again from Loaded. It’s great. Again, basically a glam track. It’s like mid-era T.Rex except that it kind of has the riff from Brown Sugar in it. The next track, Lisa Says, is yet another Velvets refugee — except longer, faster and with slightly different lyrics than the one on the compilation VU.
Next up is Berlin, the other new song. But it’s not new to me, since Reed went on to re-record it with producer Bob Ezrin as the title track of his 1973 album. I like this one better because it picks up for the chorus.
Side 2 opens with I Love You, a pseudo-country mid-tempo ballad. I can’t for the life of me imagine this on the debut Velvets album, which is the era it is from. Seems more at home here, or on a Graham Nash record. Oh, Wild Child is fantastic. This is top-notch accessible Reed right here. The Velvets performed this live in 1970, but no studio version — apart from this — has ever been found.
Love Makes You Feel can be found on the re-issue of Loaded, called Fully Loaded, but called Love Makes You Feel Ten Foot Tall. The songwriting here almost feels like a cross between Pete Townshend and R. Stevie Moore. It has a real indie feel and is easy to like. Ride Into The Sun is one the Velvets attempted on a number of occasions. This one isn’t great. Pretty amateurish.
The final track, Ocean, begins with a gong for some reason. There are actually a bunch of cymbal flourishes throughout, which I suspect are meant to sound like crashing waves. A neat idea, but this song needs drums — not just cymbal flourishes. Reed really belts it out at times, but it’s one of those instances where the vocalist seems way more into it than he should be. It clearly is the “closing track” of the lot, but it could have been a real effective stomper. The Velvet Underground’s demo is better.
3/5
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Area Resident is an Ottawa-based journalist, recording artist, music collector and re-seller. Hear (and buy) his music on Bandcamp, email him HERE, follow him on Instagram and check him out on Discogs.
