The Rock Annual

Playlist: Lou Reed

Several Lou Reed "greatest hits" albums over the years have included Velvet Underground tracks. Successfully blending those tracks with the solo-Reed material, though, is difficult. The difference in recording fidelity between the two is quite stark. And given how legendary the Velvets became—especially by the early Nineties, when the band reunited briefly and then put out an excellent box-set compilation, Peel Slowly and See—Reed's solo work inevitably has difficulty measuring up. Formal experimentation and sonic extremes characterized much of the Velvets' music, only occasionally Reed's. When placed next to the Velvet Underground's body of work, any fragment of solo-Reed, marked most of all by his extraordinary literary contributions to the art of song, is too subtle, too much of a rare treasure likely to be appreciated only by devoted listeners. Moreover, the entirety of two Reed albums, Berlin and Metal Machine Music, have proven to be cohesive works ideally listened to in their entirety, but in ways obviously starkly different; the latter is plainly not suited for a compilation. Transformer may not function as well as a singular listening experience but many would argue, with good reason, that is a better album than Berlin. On top of all this, in the last decade or so of his career, Reed mostly stopped making Rock albums. After Ecstasy, released in 2000, only The Raven and Lulu, both conceived as singular works quite distinct from the rest of his oeuvre, featured Reed's songs. Instead, he returned to the noise/ experimentation of Metal Machine Music and the Velvets at their most "out there," participating in Zeitkratzer's version of Metal Machine; forming, and recording a live album with, the Metal Machine Trio; recording a live album with Laurie Anderson and John Zorn; and doing an ambient album of sorts: Hudson River Wind Meditations. Again, as with much of the Velvets' work, this material does not meld together well with the standard solo-Reed fare.

The tendency to mix Reed and Velvets tracks on compilations started almost immediately, with the 1971 release Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground. Following in 1977, Walk on the Wild Side: The Best of Lou Reed was as more of an official release; numerous other compilations were coming out in European markets only. Another major compilation, Rock and Roll Diary: 1967-1980, released in 1980, split the Velvets and Reed material into two halves of a double L. P. Even cheap compilations that mostly featured solo-Reed music included a few token Velvets tracks, for example Retro, released in 1989. The same goes for a promotional album, A Rock & Roll Life, also released in 1989, to coincide with the album New York. This is not to say that there were no compilations that featured only solo-Reed material. Standard legal and logistical barriers to making a good compilation have always encouraged slipshod production standards in this realm of the music business. So there were comps like Vicious [1978], New York Superstar [1978], and New York Superstar Vol. 2 [1980] with only solo Reed cuts.

The box set Between Thought and Expression: The Lou Reed Anthology, on the other hand, did consist exclusively of solo-Reed music. After it, other compilations followed suit: e.g. Perfect Day, in 1997; The Definitive Collection, in 1999; The Very Best of Lou Reed, also in 1999; and Perfect Day: The Best of Lou Reed, in 2009. A few compilations, however, stuck with the old routine of mixing Velvets and solo-Reed material, e.g. The Wild Side [2000] and N. Y. C. Man [2003].

In 2016, Reed finally received what seems like the best approach to his solo discography: a large boxed set of albums, included in their entirety. The R. C. A. & Arista Album Collection includes every studio album from the self-titled 1972 album to 1986's Mistrial plus two concert albums, Rock n Roll Animal and Live: Take No Prisoners. The year prior, the box set The Sire Years: The Complete Albums Box included the studio albums from New York through The Raven, plus the Reed-John Cale collaborative album Songs for Drella and two concert albums: Perfect Night: Live in London and Animal Serenade.

My alternatives? After listening to Transformer, Berlin, and our fill of the Velvets, we may consider, instead of a compilation covering all of Reed's solo work, or all his solo work plus the Velvets, a compilation of Lou Reed tracks, sequenced like a double L. P., from the years, 1974-2000, that is, his post-Glam years as an artist who hemmed fairly close to the expectations of a Rock singer-songwriter solo artist, the dramatic exceptions like Metal Machine Music; portions of Street Hassle and The Bells; and Songs for Drella being all the more remarkable for their glimpses of the kind of solo artist perhaps wished for by those who value the Velvets more. A second imagined compilation would then take the other approach, of mixing Velvets recordings with music from Reed's solo career, but only the first few years of the latter.

On the first imagined compilation, The Bells, an album that should have been great, given the line-up of musicians involved, is not represented well. Perhaps if you like it, you must listen to it whole, engulf yourself in its weird energy. The track, ‘The Bells’ is perhaps the most successful at whatever Reed hoped to accomplish with the album, but it is long; better to include Street Hassle's titular track. ‘I Want to Boogie with You’ manages to provide a glimpse of the album's sonic peculiarities while still being a great Lou Reed rocker. No tracks from Set the Twilight Reeling, a good, but hardly noteworthy, album; or from Rock and Roll Heart and Mistrial, both widely considered subpar. While many consider Sally Can't Dance part of Reed's Glam phase, a lone track from it fits in better here than on the second compilation, especially since that track, ‘Kill Your Sons’, fits in well enough with the Street Hassle-Bells material. New Sensations arguably is also not represented well, but this does not warrant much concern; essentially, that album took Legendary Hearts and reduced the electric guitar while adding synthesizers, to little or no effect.

A:
My House [The Blue Mask]
Power and Glory [Magic and Loss]
Fly into the Sun [New Sensations]
Legendary Hearts [Legendary Hearts]
Think It Over [Growing Up in Public]
She's My Best Friend [Coney Island Baby]
B:
Dirty Blvd. [New York]
Halloween Parade [New York]
The Gun [The Blue Mask]
Dirt [Street Hassle]
Kill Your Sons [Sally Can't Dance]
I Want to Boogie with You [The Bells]
C:
Coney Island Baby [Coney Island Baby]
Street Hassle [Street Hassle]
The Blue Mask [The Blue Mask]
D:
Magic and Loss [Magic and Loss]
Ecstasy [Ecstasy]
Waves of Fear [The Blue Mask]
Home of the Brave [Legendary Hearts]

A slight modification of this set-up could see ‘Fly into the Sun’ removed, so that side A is not too long. Then, take out ‘Magic and Loss’, and replace it with, first, ‘What's Good’, also from the album Magic and Loss, followed by the titular track from New Sensations; but the two coming after ‘Home of the Brave’, to end this imagined, and quite long, double album on a (relatively) upbeat note.

For the second compilation, if we set aside the entirety of both The Velvet Underground and Nico (except maybe ‘I'll Be Your Mirror’) and Berlin, we could easily make a double album to cover the rest, with no tracks from Lou Reed [1972], if only because several of its stand-out songs had already been recorded with the Velvets—superior versions by far; and with Metal Machine Music still placed aside with his other experimental work.

A:
Rock and Roll [Loaded]
What Goes On [The Velvet Underground]
Perfect Day [Transformer]
Candy Says [The Velvet Underground]
Sweet Jane [complete version first released on Peel Slowly and See; original abridged version on Loaded]
I Can't Stand It [V.U. version, as compared to the Lou Reed re-recorded version]
B:
White Light/ White Heat [White Light/ White Heat]
Sister Ray [White Light/ White Heat]
Some Kinda Love [The Velvet Underground]
C:
Satellite of Love [Transformer version, as compared to the Velvets' version first released on Peel Slowly and See]
Walk on the Wild Side [Transformer]
Pale Blue Eyes [The Velvet Underground]
Ocean [1970 version first released on Peel Slowly and See, as compared to two later recordings, found on V.U. and Lou Reed]
Lisa Says [V.U. version, as compared to the later recording on Lou Reed]
D:
I Heard Her Call My Name [White Light/ White Heat]
Here She Comes Now [White Light/ White Heat]
Beginning to See the Light [The Velvet Underground]
Head Held High [Loaded]
New Age [complete version first released on Peel Slowly and See; original abridged version on Loaded]

–Justin J. Kaw, February 2022