ShareThisBy MARK BROWN
Sunday, October 22, 2006
Even if he hasn't released a new studio album in three years, you can find new Lou Reed recordings and performances.
Recently he has recorded with everyone from The Strokes to Jack White's new group, The Raconteurs, as well as soul legend Howard Tate.
"I'm a working musician. I like to play. It's what we do. I've been a big fan of Howie Tate forever. I was at a show, I forgot what club it was. ... Later on they got in touch with me about Howard doing one of my songs. I was very, very thrilled. That's how that happened," says Reed.
Reed appears on other recordings as well, including Rogue's Gallery, a double-disc collection of sea chanteys and pirate songs; on it, Reed contributes an eerie reading of "Leave Her Johnny."
"How do you like the sound I'm singing to?" Reed demands. It sounds like a low keyboard part.
"It's a guitar," Reed says triumphantly. "Yeah. It's a thing made by Electro Harmonix, naturally. One of the young guys turned me onto it. It's called The Hog. That's what's doing that. It sounds like some astonishing electric church organ or something. It's a big, big sound."
Reed has always been into technology.
"I've been doing video and photography since the '60s. What do you think of that?" he says. He has always had the latest audio equipment, he says. "I just got a thing made by M-Audio that's unbelievable. I've always written songs with a little cassette or a disc or this or that, something simple where you hit record and it just records it. There are a lot of problems with that. With M-Audio it's broadcast quality. No hiss. Astonishing. From cassettes all the way to that. Amazing."
While Reed is known for character-driven big hits such as "Sweet Jane" and "Walk on the Wild Side," some of his best work is much more introspective. On the "Magic & Loss" album he recorded "What's Good," a song questioning why fate works the way it does: "What good was cancer in April? Why, no good _ no good at all."
That song got a bit of airplay and became a Reed classic, but one of his best songs is even more overlooked. "Why Can't I Be Good?" is from the "Stay! Faraway, So Close" soundtrack; in it, Reed ponders how hard it is for man to change his nature _ "I don't wanna be what I am anymore."
"Well, you know, I'm a guy who has a degree in English who is trying to use themes from novels in rock songs," he says. It was that background that attracted him to "The Raven," the Edgar Allan Poe story, and inspired him to make a double-disc musical version of it in 2003 at the suggestion of director Robert Wilson.
"Bob Wilson asked me to write it. I wouldn't have come up with that idea myself. Even my ambitions wouldn't have gone into that," he says.
Reed still won't discuss Sept. 11, but becomes passionate when talking about the politics surrounding it.
"They still stole the election. We campaigned as hard as we could and did benefits for Kerry to no avail. Bush is still there. Astonishing," he says. "He's still there and we're still there. The biggest question in the world is how do you get out of Iraq, where we shouldn't be in the first place. Why can't this guy at least supply them with armor? Why can't this guy make sure the people in Katrina are taken care of? Why can't they even give the money to the right people for the people at the World Trade Center? This is beyond scandal _ it's criminal."
There's still hope, Reed says.
"We need someone really smart. I was so impressed by Al Gore's film. Did you see that? Amazing. I wish he'd been that way when he was running."
