The Song Fight Bulletin Board

I just got back from seeing Lou Reed play Berlin live. This was one hell of a concert, though very loud at times in the second row. Guitar-god-of-the-day, Steve Hunter was brilliant backing Lou, whose voice was amazing. Bob Ezrin produced and music directed on stage, then there were bassists Rob Wasserman and Fernando Saunders, Tony "Thunder" Smith on drums, Sharon Jones and Anthony singing backup (with the 12 person Brooklyn Youth Choir), cellist Jane Scarpantoni and two violinists, two clarinets and 2 horns. He dedicated the night to Laurie Anderson, who was two rows behind us.

The guy at Rolling Stonewrites better than I.

Damn, I would have loved to catch that show. Lou Reed is one of my giants.

Well, get on a flight to Sydney, cause he's playing it there a few nights starting [oops!] January 18. That's it.

that would have been a difficult concert for me to watch, what with being turned around staring at laurie anderson the whole time.

She is hot.
I was just thinking about Lou Reed a couple weeks ago after listening to Octohorpe. They should do a cover of "Blind Rage".

Dang, I'm jealous. One of my brothers just moved to Brooklyn, and I was joking that if I were rich I would try to somehow buy him tickets to one of those shows for Christmas.

i think steve hunter played on his live album, the one with the killer long sweet jane intro, that came out back in the early 80's.

i've always thought steve hunter was a guitar god since that album.

Now that's funny, because I'm listening to Laurie Anderson at this exact moment ("O Superman"). I love the rhythm on this track. She's awesome in general.
-bill

holy crap! I LOVE that Berlin album. That's his best in my opinion. Would've loved to see that show!

BTW ever see David Bowie recently? They tend to do a cover of O Superman and the Bowie live version is the best version.

jack wrote:i think steve hunter played on his live album, the one with the killer long sweet jane intro, that came out back in the early 80's.

i've always thought steve hunter was a guitar god since that album.

Does Lou Reed himself still play lead guitar?

Assuming he did most of the solos on VU songs, he kicked ass back then. But I really haven't followed his career enough to know.

When Lou does lead guitar himself it's about 3 notes. Check out "I Love You Suzanne" that's what I think of when I think of Lou soloing. I like the VU stuff in a very Sonic Youth kind of way. By that I mean that the transcription or the score of it doesn't translate it's awesomeness. Hunter does all the really great lead lines in later Lou Reed solo stuff. I know I'm supposed to love the Lou Reed live version of Sweet Jane, but my favorite is the studio VU version with that beautiful out of nowhere intro that resolves to a tight as Hell chuck along song, plus the John Cale harmonies make the song for me.

I always think of Lou Reed doing the Love You Suzanne lead line whenever I listen to Zappa's Joes Garage "...bend the strings like...."

I love Lou Reed, but I'd never accuse him of a good solo.

Victor Bokris' bio of Lou Reed, called "Transformer," talks about Lou's lead guitar playing... in Bokris' opinion, at least, Lou has this musically self-destructive pattern of putting together a really good band with really good players and then insisting on doing the leads himself. Eventually, the band gets tired of it and goes elsewhere. I believe that the Steve Hunter et al. band that played on Rock 'n' Roll Animal defected en masse to become Alice Cooper's band when Cooper's original band got tired of Alice getting all the attention.

By the way, TSI, you should read this book. After the Velvets broke up, Lou had to live with his parents for a while.

Charles