“Stupid Man” is the first of three songs written in long-distance collaboration with Nils Lofgren, at that point ex-Crazy Horse, not yet E-Street Band, who was introduced to Reed by his old Berlin producer, Bob Ezrin. Most pertinently, it was the last cameo appearance of that decadent, caustic, speeding scum-punk persona Reed had inhabited across the 1970s – what he described as his “faggot junkie trip.” The Bells is a long, strange, sad goodbye to all that. It was the reluctant end of his love affair with the binaural process he’d first fallen for with Street Hassle, his last trip to record among the fake heads set up in Manfred Schunke’s farmhouse studio in Germany. It was the last time Reed would record with the Everyman Band, his core group since Coney Island Baby. He cited the title track as his favourite among all the songs he’d written, while also admitting that he never really wrote it – he improvised the lyrics on the spot at the mic in one take, he claimed, never sure quite where the words came from. Others contend that, if you can’t hear The Bells, you never really heard Lou Reed at all. There are cults within the larger cult of Lou, and the most stubborn gathers around this half-forgotten record from the summer of ’79. ![]() ![]() What bells are these? Are they the same bells the Velvet Underground saw “up in the sky” during “What Goes On” in 1969? Are they the Bells Albert Ayler chased through his fiery free-jazz milestone of 1965? “The Bells” that drove vocalist Clyde McPhatter weeping to his knees in The Dominoes’ unhinged 1952 lachrymose doo-wop classic? “The Bells” Marvin Gaye made The Originals pine after so sweetly on the Motown single of 1970? The Bells that rolled and tolled and throbbed and sobbed through Edgar Allan Poe’s troubling late poem of 1849?Īll these bells ring behind the dense, fizzing grey wash of what might be Lou Reed’s weirdest album (at least with Metal Machine Music, once you settled in, you knew what you were going to get, whereas The Bells just keeps doing things you weren’t expecting), and which, for some, is among his most definitive.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |