Lou Reed - Metal Machine Music

cool! you'll lose 20 bucks, get a headache and most importantly someone else will get a cheap used copy of "metal machine music!" win-win-win!

Thing about the lester bangs write up is that at one point he says that as a statement within rock music its great but it doesn't work as a classical record bcz the genre might as well be dead.

I don't think that's true at all, given how terribly polite the guitar can sound in a classical record (ever heard boulez 'sans maitre' [check on exact title later if i can]?) and how much of the classical world didn't even bother to get their heads around electricity and feedback.

It works as classical, rock, and as drone music.

i had to download it cz my vinyl copy is STILL awol (cf all those earlier threads)

vinyl remains the best away to hear it - i still maintain that its digitalisation has fucked up and coarsened it

it's pretty

*did u see what i did there *sigh*

i've heard it's quite...uh...interesting.

Paid a visit to the NYPL exhibit again - spent so much time in the VU section last time that I needed another trip to cover the later years. This time I concentrated on one of the rooms that has a bunch of glass displays arranged in a rectangle, with each display covering a different topic. (It's really cool to see the actual helmet that was used for the cover of Legendary Hearts.) The one for Metal Machine Music was especially edifying for a program of clips that played on its monitor. It shows an excerpt of a concert followed by clips from what seems like a moderated discussion following the same performance, and Lou's remarks pretty much puts to rest all the myths that have been published about the album as well as demystifying why it was even recorded.

First time I heard about this album was through Jimmy Guterman's book on the worst records ever made, where it made #2, right ahead of Dylan's Self Portrait at #3. Amusingly both albums have similar myths that were spread by fans and critics/writers soon after they were released - that both albums were meant to be terrible, that Reed and Dylan never liked them and did them as intentional sabotage. Couldn't be further from the truth, but in Dylan's case he eventually adopted that myth years after the fact (maybe more than a decade later) even though testimony from people directly involved with Self Portrait and its follow-up New Morning clearly portray Dylan as someone who was surprised by the abysmal reviews and as a result became very anxious about New Morning and how it would be received.

Reed's interview, on the other hand, dismisses every rumor about Metal Machine Music. He lists all of those individual theories about why he did what he did, and none of its true - he explains how he came to the idea for the album while observing and experimenting with his own equipment (guitars, amps, etc.), and his simple explanations not only make perfect sense, they seem apiece with what he's said in the past. (On one of the live Velvet Underground albums from 1969, he pauses to discuss the feedback from his guitar. After giving a sample, he rhetorically asks how cool it would be to hear a room full of that same exact noise from a large number of guitars.) If you've caught his feedback installation from his final years, it makes even more sense and suggests that what he did on record was probably far more acceptable to the general audience as an art installation rather than an album. But Metal Machine Music was definitely meant to be an album - he really believed it was music of a different kind and hoped people could approach it differently and listen to something from a different perspective.

I put it on when I got back home (it's on Spotify), and I think I get where he was coming from. I'm tempted to compare it to some of my favorite films by Stan Brakhage - they're amazing films, but the ones I'm thinking about don't have anything recognizable as a human being appearing in them or possibly any actual photographed objects, and they don't have anything like a plot that can be mentally superimposed on them. They're basically abstract spectacles that appeal to you in other ways, and Metal Machine Music is basically that. In the past, I might've thought "this should've been an art installation, not a record," but that seems pretty silly when I have Blu-rays of experimental films sitting next to Hollywood films on my shelves. (I don't arrange them by genre or type, they're just by title.)

Reed also mentioned that RCA pulled the album after a few weeks and basically told him that they couldn't release another record from him. (They had been so reluctant to put it out to begin with that Reed approached their Red Seal imprint to find someone who'd be willing to support it.) Reed already clarified he was never trying to get out of his contract, but when he seemed willing to accept this as the end, RCA told him they'd be willing to keep him on as long as he agreed never to give them something like a Metal Machine Music II. He did and that was it, he continued making records for RCA. He then mentioned that nowadays there's something that's called "the Metal Machine Music" clause in most contracts that brings to mind the Geffen lawsuit against Neil Young, where a label expects someone like Neil Young to release "Neil Young music."

FWIW, exhibit also had some video footage of a concert from the Street Hassle tour at Park West in Chicago. I only saw part of the title track, but not surprisingly it plays like a scrappy off-Broadway theater production, with back-up singers to Lou's right and Lou kind of standing in front of the mic without a guitar and coming off like an actor giving a musical monologue.

Also they had a listening kiosk for a 1997 show at the Supper Club. Good show, before "Busload of Faith" starts the first verse, Lou tells the audience "just so you know, I wrote this on a very bad day...but everyone has bad days, right?"

Didn't have much time to look at Lou's record collection, but amusingly I saw a section of Dylan records that was mostly EIGHTIES Dylan: Street-Legal (1978 actually), Infidels, Real Live, Empire Burlesque, Biograph, Knocked Out Loaded, and that's it. Then a rare white-label promo of Paul McCartney's Flaming Pie personally sent to him from Paul (Lou even saved a signed letter from Paul). And a reissue of the Byrds' rejected RCA recordings of "Eight Miles High" and "Why" sent to him by Jimmy Page, with an accompanying note from Page saying "thought you might enjoy a little more Coltrane!"

Also amusing, there was a display on a poem he wrote for Life magazine that was used for an article on some can collectors in NYC. However, the poem was two pages long, so Life chopped out the majority of it. (They show the published page in the magazine and a copy of the original two-page poem, though unhelpfully the second page of the poem remains stapled underneath the first page.) Reed was apparently very unhappy that his poem had been edited by Life because there's also a letter from the editor that apologizes to Reed, explaining why they cut out so much of it (basically for space reasons). Amusingly, the letter is actually crumpled but flattened out, leaving one with the impression that Lou crumpled it and tossed it in the trash out of annoyance, only to fish it out later after deciding he should save it.

great posts, bird! sounds like a fantastic exhibition.

i was always confused by the legends around mmm because it was introduced to me as "lou reed's `fuck you` to his record label." but i was a nerd so when i researched his catalogue and saw that he continued to record for the same label, it didn't add up to me. i just figured i was an ignorant noob and lou reed was super smart.

(i mean, he was but i digress)

something i've always wondered about is the famous quote that lou supposedly said about the album, which was, "anybody who makes it to side 4 is dumber than i am."<---i don't he actually said that. or maybe it's been passed down, lacking the proper context.

*don't think he actually said that

Thanks Austin! I could see Reed saying that, but I'm under the impression that he was prone to saying stuff that wasn't true whenever he was irritated by a question. Not lying as a way to cover up a fact but more as a way to express his displeasure at the question. I think Jim DeRogatis called out Reed several times for doing something like that. (Once on record for something Reed said about Lester Bangs that was blatantly untrue.)

Also two corrections: when Reed talks about the "Metal Machine Music" clause, he may not have said it actually exists - I think he mentioned it as something else he's heard said about the album (maybe another myth). When he recounts it, he's not dismissing it (or saying its true either) he only describes what it allegedly means. And also re: Red Seal, upon further reflection, I think he approached Red Seal to put out the LP in an appropriate manner, or as close to appropriate as he can at RCA for an experimental record, and not necessarily to find somewhere there to back him up. (I think he found the support he needed with RCA's president.)

*someone there

Street-Legal (1978 actually), Infidels, Real Live, Empire Burlesque, Biograph, Knocked Out Loaded

King-level Dylan collection, IMO

By the way, re: the Red Seal thing – here's what Lou says in a 1975 Punk magazine interview (the one where Holmstrom & Legs cornered him at a Ramones concert, and then they all went to get a burger):

I made it for myself. A hit of classical music. They went crazy over it. The only reason I played it for them is because a friend of mine at the record company (...) said to play it. Great, so I played it for them. And they said, "Oh, you've got to be putting us on!" And this whole thing went on 'cause I wouldn't let them put it on a classical label. No way. 'Cause that makes it look like – y'know, the smart stuff is over here, and other stuff is for the shitheads... there's no way. Put it out on the regular label just like everything else. Just put a note – a disclaimer or something, so the kids know about it. So naturally they didn't, y'know.

Should have put it out on Red Bird records more like it, for his Coney Island Baby.

Hard to trust anything Lou said about anything in the 70s tbh.

Re the disclaimer..

Did anybody actually buy it thinking they were getting "Rock and Roll Animal part three"?

Because I remember the outcry about it, and it didn't even come out over here until some years later ..

Hard to trust anything Lou said about anything in the 70s tbh.

It sounds more feasible than most versions..

Especially as Lou was happy enough to hang later with those guys. Must have been in a good mood.

fuck I love this record though
when he died it was all I wanted to play, so I did.

There's a quote from Mtume, Miles Davis's percussionist in the mid '70s, talking about how they had to wait for a new generation of critics to come along for what that band had been doing to be appreciated. Having listened to MMM many, many times (rarely all the way through, usually just one side or so at a time), I'm convinced that its reputation has been a) overblown and b) damaged beyond repair by idiot rock critics who didn't have the breadth of listening to understand its real origins or meaning or purpose. I mean, put it alongside La Monte Young. Put it alongside Xenakis. Put it alongside Varèse. Put it alongside Roland Kayn! It's beautiful. If its initial reception had been left up to, I don't know, Kyle Gann (who was too young to review it when it came out) or someone like him instead of Lester fucking "pass the cough syrup" Bangs and a bunch of other knuckle-walkers who couldn't understand that not everything is about songs, we'd be having a very different conversation nearly 50 years later.

I hate almost all of Lou Reed's music, but I love MMM. I wish he'd made a dozen albums like this instead of all the bullshit he wasted his — and listeners' — time with.

I thought Lester Bangs liked MMM? It's ridiculously overrated now, it's nowhere near Xenakis or Roland Kayn tbh.

Yeah.

I have the big Lou box, and have dug out MMM, "Take no prisoners", "Legendary Hearts" and, um, something else. It's a huge box and I have time, but the first two are the ones I have previous with.

Yeah was xpost btw

Well cover has him in the bleach blonde skinhead and leather look, posing menacingly and it does have Jimi Hendrix's distortion box on as the star instrument and stuff dunnit?

Vistas of classical sounding structure made out of scree and disposing of cats in blenders and the like. Not heard it in ages. Did get through 3 sides of it in a row and then got called for dinner once.

That's a happy ending.

instead of Lester fucking "pass the cough syrup" Bangs and a bunch of other knuckle-walkers who couldn't understand that not everything is about songs,

Yep, that Lester Bangs could only deal with, and write about, songs, songs by some of his favorite songwriters like (checks notes) Edgard Varèse, Milford Graves, Miles Davis, and Pharoah Sanders. Songsmiths all.

this

Hard to trust anything Lou said about anything in the 70s tbh.

― Aw naw, no' an Antonioni wan oan noo an' aw (Tom D.), Sunday, January 8, 2023 4:34 AM

juxtaposed by this

he was prone to saying stuff that wasn't true whenever he was irritated by a question. Not lying as a way to cover up a fact but more as a way to express his displeasure at the question.

― birdistheword, Saturday, January 7, 2023 8:34 PM

is kind of my version of 'people who have figured out how to live.' keep 'em guessin, always with a grin tho.

full disclosure: i have never made it through mmm once. it's pretty extreme music and i'm not ashamed to say that it's really not my thing. obviously (and oh boy, here we go) it was hugely influential. moreso in a "YOU'RE ALLOWED TO DO THAT?????" sort of way. very bold move by lou and i guess somebody had to do it.

i used to joke that somebody needed to do a triphop chillout remix album based off mmm and then i'd be a fan lol.

Seems like Farm Machinery Music has gone off of the internet because of Lou.

Never mind, found it.
https://img.photobucket.com/albums/v296/WilliamCrump63/JerryReedMMM.jpg

he was prone to saying stuff that wasn't true whenever he was irritated by a question. Not lying as a way to cover up a fact but more as a way to express his displeasure at the question.

― birdistheword, Saturday, January 7, 2023 8:34 PM

Sure, but the list of gear used on MMM (in the liner notes) is entirely fictitious. Maybe he wrote them in anticipation of an irritating question that hadn't yet been asked.

In that Punk interview, Lou also casually says that he lied about not choosing the album cover.

(“Oh bullshit, I put the picture on there. I’m just lying.”)

I love how decisively not static MMM is. Put a microscope to it and you'll see a whole kingdom of moving organisms.

I've put the album on before when I'm feeling anxious and could do without any external noises beyond the music itself. It's a cliched choice and it absolutely works.

That reminds me of a quote from Diana Clapton's biography:

Like "Sister Ray", wide open at 10, it obliterates all thought, but unlike "Sister Ray", it does not exalt; it just...removes.

I don't think there's any paradox in Lou simultaneously loving all the sounds on the record and knowing just how much of an aggressive/career-destructive gesture it was to release it (and also being amused or outraged by those reactions).
The liner notes to the CD suggest that one of the unspoken motives for putting the record out was the collapse of his relationship with his manager Dennis Katz; maybe related to how Bowie turned towards more esoteric music while his former manager was still collecting a percentage of his earnings.