Lou Reed Live - Peter Laughner

Possibly not the Lou Reed album you need most. Here it is reviewed at the time of its release by Peter Laughner for Creem. Laugner is one of the great lost figures of Rock and Roll, guitarist and songwriter for Rocket From the Crypts and Pere Ubu, and no mean journalist.as this attests.

LOU REED LIVE

Peter Laughner, Creem, 6/75 

Lou Reed reminds me of Jack Kerouac near the end, dozing in an arm-chair with a beer, a flask of bourbon and a script for Obetrols, mumbling the same old stories at anyone within range, "Hey, ya wanna hear me make up a complete Shakespearean sonnet right outta my head?" 

 

Like Kerouac, Reed was mostly responsible for a movement that he didn't want much to do with. Kerouac in his Catholic guilt didn't want to be aligned with a whole generation of screwed-up young Americans. He claimed he wanted to write like Thomas Wolfe. Likewise Reed shied away from, and virtually spit on, the whole gay-flash-rock'n'roll-decadence scene; "Hey, why don't they listen to the ballads?" You can tell the guy would have really liked to be a poet, but the Sixties beat him to it. 

All of this and more has been kicked around at length in the pages of many a rock publication. It's a subject I call The Lou Reed Dilemma, or What Do We Do With A Wasted Artist Early In The Seventies. Finally you just want to throw your hands up in the air, quit looking at pictures of new hairstyles and listening to tired old con like "I was better'n Hendrix," and listen to the music. Which I guess is what Lou Reed Live is all about. You might not want to put it up against the third MGM Velvets LP, but... On Rock 'n' Roll Animal, which Live is simply an addendum to, Reed and his band Johnny Winterized four Velvet Underground classics. They sublimated the vocals to a sort of flashoid Saturday Night Les Paul Rave Rock, substituting manic "straight" lead playing and rhythm feel for the feedback-drone-power-chord menace of the original versions. A lot of people like Rock 'n' Roll Animal...a lot of kids who couldn't've cared less about the Velvet Underground, a lot of kids who picked up on Lou Reed because he was new and hip, and basically the same sort of people who make up the vast majority of the rock audience. People who could give a flying fuck whether something is approved by the Academy or whatever, as long as it does something to relieve the boredom, etc. that they're sunk in. As long as it sounds good at a party or on the eight-track. 

 

Lou Reed Live avoids the material that has become fixed in the Classic Tradition of Velvet Underground maniacs. There's more harmonically complex material from Transformer and Berlin which fares better on stage than in the studio. At least you've never heard it done with John Cale, so you don't miss him that much. 

 

"Vicious," the only hard rocker of the set, comes off as a cross between "Louie Louie" and the Allman Brothers. Prakash John sets up a bitchin' undertow on the bass, while Steve Hunter and Dick Wagner wail away with the kind of screaming standard licks they're best at. It's ironic that this entire band, except the keyboard player, now belongs to Alice Cooper, who Reed once called "the worst, most disgusting aspect of rock 'n' roll." 

 

The rest of it's OK. In "Satellite Of Love" we're reminded again that Reed is "just like everybody else" and likes to watch things on TV. "Oh Jim" starts to sound promising in the middle (at least there's no horn section), but finally just gets irritating when you realize that Hunter and Wagner must know every lick ever conceived on the Les Paul. 

 

The only real turkey is "Waiting For The Man." I just don't believe that people waiting to cop junk shuffle their feet to this kind of disco tripe beat. And the vocal totally avoids the hip aloofness that made the song so sleazy before. 

 

So there ya go...put it on, turn it up, pull another pop-top off. I'll bet the kids that take Elliott Murphy's Advanced Rock 101 at Harvard in '86 will think Lou Reed was pretty incredible. Maybe a couple of them can hitchhike down to Florida and visit him. "Hey kid, ya wanna hear some ballads?" 

 

Peter Laughner 1975