Lou Reed
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Review by Mick Gold, Let It Rock, May 1974
AND IT CAME TO PASS in the 1970's that rock culture began to doubt whether it existed at all, and every time that two or ...
Lou Reed: Royal Albert Hall, London
Live Review by Ian Fortnam, bol.com, May 2000
THE PREMIER PARAGON OF subterranean New York cool’s post-Velvet Underground career has never been anything other than unpredictable. For every Berlin there’s been a Metal ...
AUDIO
Interview by Larry Jaffee, Rock's Backpages Audio, February 2003
On The Raven, the ups and, mostly, downs of CDs, mp3s and (re)mastering and more.
File format: mp3; file size: 24.9mb, interview length: 27' 11" sound quality: ***
ARTICLES IN LIBRARY
Profile and Interview by Steve Turner, Beat Instrumental, 1972
LOU REED looked out of his seventh floor window down onto six floors of other people’s windows. He asked what the weather was like outside. ...
Review by Greg Shaw, Phonograph Record, May 1972
THIS IS one of those albums you have to have spent at least a year waiting breathlessly for to appreciate the full import of. This ...
Lou Reed: A Voice From The Underground
Interview by Tony Stewart, NME, June 1972
ONCE HE wore black, tinselled clothes and was a human screen for movies. He sang and wrote about evil characters; sometimes happier ones. But always ...
Review by Charlie Gillett, Let It Rock, July 1972
IF I WERE thirteen, or Lou was, or better still if we both were, this would be great, everything I wanted to think about life, ...
Lou Reed, Brinsley Schwartz, Gnidrolog: King's Cross Cinema, London
Live Review by Charles Shaar Murray, NME, July 1972
THIS WAS one of the few gigs I can remember where all the acts deserved a full-length review to themselves. The teaming of Reed, Gnidrolog ...
Lou Reed: The Black Sheep of New York
Interview by Ray Fox-Cumming, Disc and Music Echo, October 1972
THE INTERVIEW is to take place in a pub just off London's Curzon Street at around lunch-time. Lou Reed arrives late, looking papery. He's not ...
Review by Ray Fox-Cumming, Disc and Music Echo, December 1972
THOSE OF you kind enough to read the idiocies I write to introduce the live gigs will know that, as far as I'm concerned, Lou ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, NME, December 1972
LOU REED WITH COLOURED GIRL DAVID BOWIE... ...
The Head Doll talks about Lou Reed's Berlin
Interview by Ron Ross, Phonograph Record, 1973
Note: Marty Cerf and I conceived of a series of these for Phonograph Record: I think Iggy may have done Aladdin Sane for PRM. I ...
Review by Nick Tosches, Rolling Stone, January 1973
A REAL COCKTEASER, this album. That great cover: Lou and those burned-out eyes staring out in grim black and white beneath a haze of gold ...
Review by Robot A. Hull, Creem, February 1973
Their faces drooping in disbelief, the fans shook their baffled, bewildered heads. "If we hadn't seen him with our own eyes we never would have ...
Lou Reed: The Sinatra Of The 70's
Report and Interview by Nick Kent, NME, April 1973
LOU REED SURE is a card. The day before this interview was supposed to take place, an associate of mine phoned up the Reed management ...
A Walk On The Wild Side Of Lou Reed
Comment by Nick Kent, NME, June 1973
"I HAVE ALWAYS thought it would be kinda fun to introduce people to characters they maybe hadn't met before, or hadn't wanted to meet, y'know. ...
Bob Ezrin: The Square And The Faggots
Report and Interview by Nick Kent, NME, August 1973
"DETACHMENT. Yes, that's it exactly. We were both talking about that. Lou said last night: 'This album is an exercise in detachment and apathy'. I ...
Review by Nick Kent, NME, October 1973
JUST WHEN you think your ex-idol has slumped into a pitiful display of gross terminal self-parody, Lou Reed comes back and hits you with something ...
Lou Reed: A Deaf Mute In A Telephone Booth
Interview by Lester Bangs, Let It Rock, November 1973
YOU WALK into the dining room of the Holiday Inn filled with expectation at finally getting to meet one of the musical and psychological frontiersmen ...
Lou Reed Stuns Listeners with the Horrifying Story of Berlin
Report and Interview by Stephen Demorest, Circus, December 1973
Confronted by the velvet shadow-master's terrifying movie without pictures, one employee ran from the studio in tears, Julie Christie stayed up all night talking about ...
Review by Michael Gross, Crawdaddy!, January 1974
LOU REED IS the grand ghoul of them all. He happens to scare people. He stands in the same relation to Bowie and Iggy and ...
Interview by Chris Charlesworth, Melody Maker, March 1974
UP ON THE 37th floor of a Park Avenue office block which faces north and thus commands an extensive view of New York's Central Park ...
Review by Bud Scoppa, Phonograph Record, April 1974
LOU REED'S LAST album, Berlin, vividly demonstrated how his talent can be misrepresented and abused. Berlin failed not because of its theme or its viewpoint, ...
Lou Reed: Rock N Roll Animal (RCA)
Review by Wayne Robins, Zoo World, April 1974
IT'S JUST like Lou Reed to follow the worst album by a major artist in 1973 (Berlin), with what might be his best album since ...
Overview by Mick Gold, Let It Rock, July 1974
YOU COULD hardly miss him on the first album: his rubber-stamped signature was the only wording on the front cover, while on the back his ...
Review by Richard Cromelin, Phonograph Record, September 1974
LINES. A LINE here, a line there. Sometimes it seems that the best songwriters are the ones who are sure to pop up with a ...
Lou Reed: Sally Can't Dance (RCA Import)
Review by Nick Kent, NME, September 1974
"Life is such monotony/Without a good lobotomy" – Roy Harper ...
Lou Reed: Felt Theater, New York
Live Review by Wayne Robins, Village Voice, October 1974
LOU REED stepped out on the Felt Forum stage Friday night looking like something out of a Casey Donovan movie. ...
Lou Reed Does Not Want Anyone To Know How He Writes His Songs
Interview by Bruce Pollock, Modern Hi-Fi and Music, 1975
LOU REED THINKS he's gone as deep as he wants to go for his own mental health. If he got any deeper, he'd wind up ...
Nick Kent – A Limey in LA #1: Hey Man, You With A Gwoop?
Report and Interview by Nick Kent, NME, March 1975
Speech impediments are the thing in Los Angeles this year. There are quite a lot of naked men jumping out of bushes – whereas more ...
Lou Reed: Hammersmith Odeon, London
Live Review by Philip Norman, Times, The, March 1975
IN THE case of Lou Reed I must confess – why shouldn't I – a prejudice. ...
Lou Reed at the Hammersmith Odeon
Live Review by Max Bell, NME, April 1975
THERE'S AN ILLUMINATED sign outside the Hammersmith Odeon that says: "It's all too much. Lou Reed in Concert." Wry humour or someone taking a subtle ...
An Afternoon With Lou Reed And Metal Machine Music
Report and Interview by Anthony O'Grady, RAM, August 1975
Quite simply – there were no survivors ...
Discography by Andy Childs, ZigZag, September 1975
THERE WAS once a time when I thought that Lou Reed was the single most important person working in contemporary American rock 'n' roll. I ...
Review by Vivien Goldman, Sounds, January 1976
Coney Island Baby finds Lou Reed in buoyant mood, the feeling that lilted through his first solo album, Lou Reed, and flashed intermittently in Sally ...
Review by Charles Shaar Murray, NME, January 1976
ARGUABLY, THERE IS no more exciting rock artist to listen to than one whose time has come; one whose art (not to mention attitude, appearance, ...
Interview by Lenny Kaye, NME, January 1976
HIS HAIR IS short, coloured black and closely cropped, though not unnaturally so. He wears a red T-shirt and his body, which has fluctuated from ...
Review by Lester Bangs, Creem, March 1976
IT HAS BEEN suggested that in my annual regress report to the stockholders, published here last month, I neglected in all five thousand words to ...
Interview by John Morthland, Creem, December 1976
LOU REED should have a new album out by the time you read this, and unless Lou has had a change of Rock and Roll ...
Lou Reed: How Lou Saw The White Light
Interview by Caroline Coon, Melody Maker, December 1976
LOU REED, the crafty old rock 'n' roll fox, is alive and kicking. In fact, he's standing in the lobby of the Los Angeles Hyatt ...
Review by Jon Savage, Sounds, March 1978
WHAT DO you expect from someone who's been playing rock'n'roll for nearly 15 years, in a business where age is to be feared rather than ...
Lou Reed In Cloning Sensation!
Interview by Peter Silverton, Sounds, May 1978
PETE SILVERTON goes to Philadelphia to borrow a book from Lou Reed (That's not what it said on his expenses — Ed.) ...
Lou Reed: Live – Take No Prisoners (Arista Import)
Review by Nick Kent, NME, November 1978
AH, LOU, we meet again. How long it's been. Ah, of course, don't tell me – Rock 'n' Roll Heart, wasn't it? A right piece ...
Lou Reed: Live – Take No Prisoners
Review by Jon Young, Trouser Press, January 1979
"I DO LOU REED better than anybody else, so I thought I'd get in on it." ...
Review by Don Snowden, Los Angeles Times, January 1979
LOU REED IS one of the major influences on '70s rock, but consistency has never been his strong point. As the creative catalyst of the ...
Lou Reed: I Love It When You Talk Dirty
Report and Interview by Paul Morley, NME, April 1979
WHY DOES SUCH A MAN LIVE? ...
Live Review by Peter Silverton, Sounds, April 1979
ANOTHER YEAR, another Lou Reed in a different toilet. ...
Review by Jon Savage, Melody Maker, May 1979
WHAT DO you buy when you buy Lou Reed, and do you still need to buy him? ...
Lou Reed: Growing Up In Public (Arista)***
Review by Sandy Robertson, Sounds, May 1980
THIS BUGGER don't give up, and, like poseurs of antiquity, rumours of his death have been greatly exaggerated. ...
Lou Reed: Growing Up In Public (Arista)
Review by Nick Kent, NME, July 1980
GROWING UP IN PUBLIC finally spells out what Lou Reed's records since 1976's Coney Island Baby have been murmuring in varying dissonances: that the inspiration ...
Interview by Dave DiMartino, Creem, September 1980
"There's a lot of very funny things floating around my albums." ...
Lou Reed: Clean Living And Dirty Looks
Report by Chris Bohn, NME, March 1982
FLANKED BY his wife Sylvia to his right and his management on his left, Lou Reed lords it over the press gathering from a sofa ...
Lou Reed: Blue Reedo A La Talk
Interview by Sandy Robertson, Sounds, April 1982
LOU REED has a song on his new album about the day President Kennedy was shot. His manager looks like the kind of guy who ...
Lou Reed: Legendary Hearts (RCA)
Review by Cynthia Rose, NME, March 1983
What made The Blue Mask Lou Reed’s watershed album was his choice of musicians, a new wave super-set of them – Fernando Saunders on bass, ...
Review by Mat Snow, NME, February 1984
GROWING UP in public (a further instalment). ...
Interview by Bill Holdship, Creem, November 1984
IMAGINE BEING served one of the greatest meals of your life, and then being told you have exactly one-half hour to consume it. ...
Interview by Richard Kick, ZigZag, April 1985
WILD MEN of rock come and wild men of rock fizzle out. Or, rebels don't – their voices just fade away. Robert Quine, mild mannered ...
Lou Reed: The Prince of Darkness Lightens Up
Interview by Ben Fong-Torres, GQ, September 1986
I NEVER SAW the Velvet Underground during their five-year lurch through the New York music scene. From 1965 to 1970 I was on the left ...
Review by Anthony DeCurtis, Rolling Stone, February 1989
NEW YORK is Lou Reed's rock & roll version of The Bonfire of the Vanities. But whereas Tom Wolfe maintains an ultimately cynical distance from ...
John Cale and Lou Reed: Songs For Drella
Review by Mark Cooper, Q, May 1990
ANDY WARHOL'S NAME was all over the famous banana sleeve of The Velvet Underground's debut album. ...
John Cale/Lou Reed: 15 Minutes With You
Interview by Mark Kemp, Option, July 1990
THE HECKLER'S voice sounded its fury like a cannon about midway through Lou Reed and John Cale's performance of Songs For Drella, a pop requiem ...
Lou Reed: Magic And Loss (Sire/All formats)
Review by Edwin Pouncey, NME, January 1992
LOU REED may have abandoned his 'Phantom Of Rock' image long ago, but the search for his creative mainline has continued unabated. ...
Cool Hand Lou: The Transformations of Lou Reed
Comment by Barney Hoskyns, Vogue, February 1992
SINCE THE RELEASE of Growing up in Public in 1980, Lou Reed has pretty much grown up in private. In 1981 he not only ...
Interview by Simon Reynolds, Pulse!, February 1992
On Lou Reed's touching elegy to two recently departed friends, Magic and Loss, he grapples with the age-old question: What is the meaning of death? ...
Lou Reed: Alchemical Engineering
Interview by Simon Reynolds, Wire, The, February 1992
Lou Reed is one of the few 60s figures who has kept up any serious exploration of rock's sounds and words. In this exclusive New ...
Review by Robert Sandall, Q, February 1992
SINCE POWERING HIS WAY BACK info everybody's good books three years ago with the New York album, Lou Reed has become more creatively focused than ...
Interview by Mark Cooper, Q, February 1992
THESE DAYS, PREPARING for a Lou Reed interview is like joining the Civil Service. First, the specially run-off CD of the new album, Magic And ...
The Velvet Undertaker: Lou Reed at the Palace Theatre, Manchester
Live Review by Jim Arundel, Melody Maker, March 1992
A CURSORY listen to Lou's latest, Magic And Loss, and you'd be forgiven for thinking that Tragic Old Toss might have been a better title. ...
Review by Andy Gill, Q, May 1992
IT'S OFTEN OVERLOOKED in the face of the wholesale "decadent" mythology that has surrounded him since the early Velvet Underground, but of all the poets ...
Interview by Max Bell, Vox, September 1992
At the age of 48, Lou Reed is better disposed to write sedate six-string symphonies about mortality than feedback musings on the subject of scoring ...
Lou Reed: Life After The Leather Jacket
Interview by Ian Penman, Guardian, The, February 1996
MY ORIGINAL IDEA vis a vis this whole Lou interview situ and how to break his notoriously Siberian icepack reticence was to kick things off ...
A Dark Prince at Twilight: Lou Reed
Interview by Barney Hoskyns, MOJO, March 1996
THE DAY DOES not begin auspiciously. The first flakes of a snowstorm descend as I open the curtains in my hotel room, adding yet another ...
Essay by Mark Sinker, Wire, The, June 1996
2005 note: Savage Pencil did a nice illustration for this: John and Yoko hilariously naked, among other excellent things. It also elicited an angry postcard ...
Interview by Paul Zollo, Performing Songwriter, 2000
"Music was what bothered me, what interested me. I always believed that I have something important to say and I said it. That's why I ...
Lou Reed: Royal Albert Hall, London
Live Review by Gavin Martin, Uncut, August 2000
BACK IN the Seventies – revelling in junkie debauchery – Lou Reed shows were a notoriously ghoulish spectacle, He was the wayward poet of sleaze, ...
Review by Richard Williams, Guardian, The, January 2003
IF ANYONE IS still wondering, more than a quarter of a century later, what Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music was all about, they need look ...
Lou Reed: Iron Glove, Velvet Fist
Interview by Mick Brown, Daily Telegraph, May 2007
The legendarily cantankerous Lou Reed's definition of abject misery is being interviewed by an English journalist. But get him on the right subject and he ...
Profile by Robert Sandall, GQ, August 2008
ROCK STARS were never supposed to be regular guys, though that's the way most of the ones who stick around usually end up. It's hard ...
Retrospective by Kris Needs, Clash, April 2010
IN 1975, LOU Reed was the most dangerously fascinating figure in rock 'n' roll. With his old associates Bowie and Iggy having turned respectively into ...
see also Velvet Underground
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