Trivia / Lou Reed

• Black Sheep Hit:
  • Rock 'n' Roll Animal is one of Lou's highest-charting albums. It's a stadium rock/heavy metal album filled with Epic Rocking from a man considered the Godfather Of Punk.
  • "Walk on the Wild Side" is practically his Signature Song, but it's not associated with the style he would use through most of his career.
  • "Sunday Morning" is one of the most popular songs he recorded with the Velvets, yet it's definitely poppy and not representative of his raw rock style.
• Breakthrough Hit: "Walk on the Wild Side".
• Breakup Breakout: His solo career was much more commercially successful than the Velvets.
• Colbert Bump: Reed's British popularity got a boost after David Bowie produced Transformer and championed him and the Velvet Underground.
• Creator Backlash: Lou was reportedly very disappointed with the final product of Sally Can't Dance, saying that he was forming it to be a concept-like album that was dismantled by the record label. Though, he seemed to like the edit version of the Title Track and the live version of "Kill Your Sons", which he put on his personal selected collection NYC Man.
• Creator's Favorite Episode: Lou Reed made his personal selections of his career for the compilation NYC Man (later re-named The Essential).
  • He seemed to be particularly fond of "Sweet Jane", since he played it live from the start with the Velvets and it survived in his solo career until the end. The same goes for his Signature Song "Walk on the Wild Side", and then, his last hit "Dirty Blvd." was also a particularly popular live track, despite being one of his later tracks (1989).
• Enforced Method Acting: According to one (probably exaggerated) rumour, Lou and producer Bob Ezrin recorded the coda to "The Kids", which consists of two children crying and screaming for their mother, by putting Ezrin's own kids in front of a microphone and telling them their mother died. While Ezrin acknowledges that those were his kids, he denies that he told them their mother died, saying he just told them to cry into his tape recorder and they got carried away.
• Executive Meddling: One of the theories about the conception of Metal Machine Music (it's hard to pin down one) is that it was Reed's way to tell off his record company, and that it was actually a Contractual Obligation Project. The rambling liner notes of the album give what may be a little help in that regard, as they're also free to interpretation ("Most of you won't like this, and I don't blame you at all. It's not meant for you.")
• Flip-Flop of God: Is Metal Machine Music a serious attempt at creating a minimalist masterpiece, a way to piss off his record company, or just the result of way too much drugs? Is John Cale a genius or an asshole? Is "Perfect Day" a Silly Love Song or an Ode To Heroin? Ask him. Wait two years. Ask him again. Compare the answers.
• Money, Dear Boy: The iconic double bassline on "Walk On The Wild Side" came about because the studio musician playing bass, Herbie Flowers, realised he'd get paid twice if he played two parts. He overdubbed an upright bass after playing bass guitar on the track.
• Older Than They Think: Most of the songs that appeared on his first three solo albums had been demoed with the Velvet Underground, to the point where Verve Records included said demos on the band's compilation albums VU and Another View in the mid-80s.
• One-Hit Wonder: Commercially speaking, Walk On The Wild Side is this. It is his only top 40 song in the United States. This was also the case in the UK for many years until the Children in Need version of Perfect Day (of which he participated in) was released and topped the charts there in 1997.
• Referenced by...: "Hey Lou" by Liz Phair is about him.
• What Could Have Been: Reed caught Talking Heads at a CBGB gig in their early days and expressed interest in signing them and producing an album. However, a legal consultant the band hired discovered that Reed would've obtained full ownership of the resulting record, resulting in them turning him down. When they actually got around to making a debut album, Talking Heads: 77, it was produced by Ramones collaborator Tony Bongiovi. Reed and Talking Heads remained on friendly terms despite this.
• Write What You Know:
  • Many of his songs were based on his life experiences or those of people he knew.
  • "Walk on the Wild Side" was originally written for an announced stage musical version of the Nelson Algren novel. When the project was abandoned, he replaced the characters from the novel with people from Andy Warhol's Factory. In his 1992 book of lyrics Between Thought And Expression: Selected Lyrics of Lou Reed, tying in with the release of the Between Thought and Expression: The Lou Reed Anthology box set, Reed explained this decision by writing, "I don't like to waste things."

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