Featured Story May 2007
One Man's Noise, Another Man's Music
The Life of Musician and Artist Lou Reed
by Jill DeDominicis
What sounds like noise to one man's ears, might be music to another's. With a little attention and imagination, we find music everywhere. The cosmos, our bodies, even the sounds of a modern city can produce a rhythm valid in its own right. Is this very personal aspect of music what makes it so pervasive and everlasting? Perhaps its power also lies in the magnitude of ways it is delivered to our ears. From simple chanting to complex technologically produced arrangements, music can take infinite forms, and what better practice for a musician than to explore the vast world of acoustic possibilities?
For anyone who had any doubts, it became clear Reed's efforts could not be neatly categorized, and that one man's noise may be another man's music.
Perhaps Lou Reed's latest album, Hudson River Wind Meditations, should not come as a surprise then. Fresh from Sounds True, a multimedia company with an emphasis on spiritual awakening; Reed has put together 67 minutes of electronic meditation music. Devoid of lyrics and consistent melodies, it is not your typical New Age meditation compilation. Reed noted that the album was not so large a leap as it may seem.
"This is a very natural transition; I've been playing around with various forms of electronic music, particularly on The Raven. I truly got inspired by some of these programs that are out there and some of the machines that are so exciting these days," Reed said. "But music is music, it's not a stretch. It would really be a mistake to think that the only thing an artist is capable of creating is what you've already heard."
Lou Reed is an artist who has certainly done his share of sound experimentation. A celebrated musician now in his 60s, Reed contributed a rich legacy to American music. The New York native played with a number of bands in high school, recording his first song as a member of a doo-wop band called The Shades. After graduation, Reed attended Syracuse University, where a friendship with poet and professor Delmore Schwartz became a defining moment in the young artist's life. Their relationship furthered Reed's interest in writing, and when he left Syracuse he took a job as a songwriter at Pickwick Records.
Although Reed penned the modest hit "The Ostrich" there in 1964, the influential event at Pickwick was meeting coworker John Cale, a classically trained pianist and violinist. In 1965, Reed, together with Cale, drummer Maureen Tucker, and bass and guitar player Sterling Morrison created the seminal band The Velvet Underground. The band caught the attention of pop artist and icon Andy Warhol, who became their manager and producer, and who suggested the addition of German-born singer Nico. The band differed from the innocent pop sounds of the day, with its politically and socially charged lyrics tackling dark subjects of the underground city culture. Their debut album, The Velvet Underground and Nico, released in 1966, brought new aspects of free jazz and avant-garde music to rock and roll guitar. Reed's lyrics, influenced by modern art and literature, went where no other artists had so frankly gone before. Songs like "Venus in Furs," "Waiting for my Man" and "Candy Says" addressed realities of the New York underbelly such as sadomasochism, drug use and sexual identity with cool detachment and honest cynicism:
I'm waiting for my man
Twenty-six dollars in my hand
Up to Lexington, 125
Feel sick and dirty, more dead than alive
I'm waiting for my man
Up to a Brownstone, up three flights of stairs
Everybody's pinned you, but nobody cares
He's got the works, gives you sweet taste
Ah then you gotta split because you got no time to waste
I'm waiting for my man
Despite Warhol's involvement, the band existed in relative obscurity while together and much of their success occurred years after they split. However, they would eventually be credited as important pioneers in the punk, alternative and indie music movements. Everyone from David Bowie to Iggy Pop and the Stooges, and the New York Dolls to the Ramones found inspiration in The Velvet Underground's raw songs. After four albums of varying success with The Velvet Underground, and the come and go of band members, Reed went solo. However, one key aspect of their unique sound, the use of drones, would remain with Reed throughout his career. Rooted in the early days of 1960s minimalism, the use of drones was a musical style based on sustained notes and harmonic variations. Largely inaccessible to the average listener, drones were often dissonant, mind-numbing sounds more focused on the physical than aesthetical elements of the notes.
Both Reed and Cale held an interest in the style when they met. Cale previously spent time in composer La Monte Young's performance group, The Theater of Eternal Music. Young was noted for his long compositions heavily based on drones. When Cale arrived at Pickwick to record Reed's hit "The Ostrich," he discovered Reed had used an open-tuned drone for the track, similar to his work with Young. The technique was part of the defining Velvet Underground sound, and can be experienced in Cale's viola drone on their haunting track "Heroin." This sound would later morph and find its way into various genres, such as the ambient sounds of Brian Eno, Krautrock bands such as Kraftwerk, and the indie sounds of bands like My Bloody Valentine and Sonic Youth.
Perhaps it is this fascination with the minute details and possibilities of sound, along with a rejection of commercial success and conformity that shaped Lou Reed's diverse projects in the years following The Velvet Underground. His first solo album in 1972, Lou Reed, was a collection of mostly re-recorded versions of unreleased Velvet Underground songs, some of which had been recorded for the band's last effort together, Loaded, but had been shelved at the last minute. The album garnered little attention.
But later in 1972, Reed would shake up the scene again with Transformer. Produced by David Bowie and his guitarist Mick Ronson, the album cover featured a new, glammed-out look for Reed that, according to many critics, helped launch the gender-blurring "glam rock" movement. Transformer did not tread any lighter than Velvet Underground when it came to subject matter, and the most successful track on the album-and most recognized of Reed's solo career-was his ode to transvestites, "Walk on the Wild Side." The song and album finally created momentum for his career.
In the following year came the more theatrically-based release Berlin, a dark and dreary story of a drug addicted expatriate couple. Unsurprisingly, the album paled in success to Transformer. Then in 1975, Reed released Metal Machine Music, by far the boldest journey into unconventional forms. Released on RCA, the album was essentially an hour of guitar feedback, reverb and distortion. Rumors began that it was another demonstration of Reed's up yours attitude, or a clever way to break a contract. But Reed insisted it was a genuine effort, and still defends the album today. In a March 30, 2007 interview on the radio program Echoes (archives available at www.echoes.org), Reed said, "I've heard all the rumors about that, and none of it is true. I'm in love with it; was in love with it then, I'm in love with it now."
Not everyone thought Metal Machine Music was a joke or a bust. Lester Bangs, music journalist for Creem and Rolling Stone, fan and frequent interviewer of Reed, wrote that it was "The greatest album ever made in the history of the human eardrum." Like it or not, MMM had clear allusions to drones—Reed even credited Young in the liner notes—and it also reflected Reed's interest in Ornette Colman and other free jazz artists.
Perhaps, like many artists and geniuses of our day, the general public has never been quite ready for what Lou Reed dealt us each time he entered the studio. Either way, it is certain that his is a legacy that only grows with time, as culture and critics catch up with his unique aesthetic, and begin to recognize its importance and place in musical development. In fact, a few years ago, Metal Machine Music was resurrected and transcribed by Zeitkratzer, a ten-piece German orchestra ensemble, for a live performance at the Berlin Opera House, and Reed was invited for a guitar solo. There is talk of a CD release scheduled sometime this year.
Today, Reed prepares for the European tour premier of his 1973 album Berlin, complete with a 30-piece ensemble. The tour features dates across Europe and follows the premier of Berlin at St. Ann's Warehouse in New York in December of 2006, and Australia's Sydney Festival in January of this year.
And if you think Lou Reed and meditation sounds like an oxymoron, you will be surprised to know Reed has studied meditation and Tai Chi since the 80s, under noted teacher Master Ren GuangYi. GuangYi teaches Chen Style Taijiquan, a form of Tai Chi that includes fluid movements, but integrates quick bursts of energy.
"[Master Ren Guang Yi] combines the very beautiful form, the great control, the focus, and a really, truly remarkable fajing [explosive power]. When I saw that combination of grace and power, the fast and the soft, the yin and the yang, that's what I'd been looking for. When I started studying with him I realized how much he could teach me, to say the least," Reed said in a Kungfu Magazine interview with Martha Burr (May/June 2003).
Reed and GuangYi collaborated on Chen Taijiquan: Lao Jia Yi Lu & Straight Sword, a martial arts DVD release featuring narration and music from Reed. The two have even performed together live onstage.
When questioned about his interest in Tai Chi, Reed mentions its health benefits, and many a reporter has commented on his apparent good health, especially given the unhealthy habits and hard living of his past. Reed appears as dedicated to his practice as he does to exploring music, and it seems fitting he would combine the two. But Hudson River Wind Meditations was not originally intended as a public release at all. Reed created the music for himself, to support his meditation and Tai Chi practice, but scoffs when questioned whether this CD offer listeners a more "healing" experience than his past efforts.
"That's a really really unfair question," he answered. "Every music does whatever it does; this music I made for myself to work out to. It has an odd ability to absorb the sounds that are going on around you in the city, which is kind of great, so I have it on all the time. And other people would say, 'Can I have a copy of that? What is that?' It's great for yoga, meditation, body work, or just to make a cohesive sound out of the chaos going on inside."
The first two tracks of the four-track album clock in at roughly 30 minutes each and feature sounds more rooted in drones than the soft instrumentals and ethereal vocals of the typical meditation sounds now saturating the market.
Reed touched on the influence of drones in Hudson River Wind Meditations in the Echoes interview: "I've been listening to certain kinds of music like that for a very long time. You know it's in my guitar playing also; I've spent my life playing around with the harmonics from a note. I've always been aware and fascinated by the fact [that] if you generate these two harmonics when they hit each other, they make a third that wasn't played, and that that generates more. But, that idea was going side by side with ideas other composers were doing where they're playing around with harmonics in a different format. That leads me right into now [and] the kind of guitar solos I'm doing. When I was trying to put this music together, I wanted to have that kind of activity in it."
The final two tracks are much shorter, and the third features actual recordings of the Hudson River wind. "It's a sound that's inspiring, it's very musicalä It's supposed to take you out of the electronic sound into organic earth, dare I say it," Reed told Vision with perhaps a hint of that mocking tone he's famous for.
So what can we next expect from Lou Reed? Only Reed himself knows, but we can be sure of one thing, leave your preconceived notions at the door. Rest assured Reed likely won't be retiring anytime soon.
"Can you imagine how bad it would be not to have music, period?" he asked in his interview with Vision. "It would be unthinkable right? So even the lowest kind of music is better than no music, and the higher up the ladder we go, the more effective music is in every conceivable way. What is it, music soothes the savage beast, is that the quote?"
Indeed.
For information on Hudson River Wind Meditations go to www.SoundsTrue.com or www.LouReed.org.