Reed would rarely sound this commercial again, but Rock N Roll Animal proves he could please a crowd when he had to.It would be years before the cult of the Velvet Underground became big enough to mean anything commercially, leaving Lou pretty much back where he started from in the public eye after five years of hard work, and he seemed to be searching for a different musical direction on this set without quite deciding what it would be; while the best tunes are admirably lean, no-frills rock roll, there are also several featuring tricked-up arrangements that dont suit the material terribly well (at no other time in history would anyone believe that Steve Howe and Rick Wakeman would be a good choice as backing musicians for the guy who wrote Sister Ray).Lou also didnt appear to have done much songwriting since he left the Velvets in 1970; with the exception of the hilariously catty Wild Child and Berlin, a song Reed would revisit a few years later, nearly every significant song on Lou Reed dated back to his tenure with the Velvet Underground, though it would be years before that bands recordings of I Cant Stand It, Lisa Says, or Ocean would surface.
On its own terms, Lou Reed isnt a bad album, but it isnt a terribly interesting one either, and since superior performances of most of these songs are available elsewhere, it stands today more as a historical curiosity than anything else. One might well have argued that Lou was due for a disappointment, and Mistrial certainly filled that bill. On Mistrial, Reed opted to handle both lead and rhythm guitar parts as he had on New Sensations, but with a few shades less precision, and while Fernando Saunders once again did yeoman work as a bassist, as a co-producer he didnt fill out Reeds sound especially well. The decision to use a drum machine on most of these tracks gives the album a stiff feeling, and a texture that captures what was least fortunate about 80s rock, but most importantly Reed didnt have an albums worth of top-shelf songs on tap. No Money Down and Tell It to Your Heart are smart and funny sketches on the difficult art of romance, while Mamas Got a Lover is an unexpectedly sweet character study and The Original Wrapper is a game stab at hip-hop from a 44-year-old white guy. But Outside and Spit It Out are just filler, and Video Violence is a pretty strange attack on the media from a guy who tried to bring the mindset of William S. ![]() Reed opted not to work with guitarist Robert Quine this time out, instead overdubbing rhythm lines over his own leads, and if the guitars dont cut quite as deep, theyre still wiry and in the pocket throughout, and the rhythm section of Fernando Saunders and Fred Maher rocks hard with a tough, sinewy groove. And while much of New Sensations finds Reed in a surprisingly optimistic mood, this isnt Dont Worry, Be Happy by any stretch of the imagination. On Endlessly Jealous, My Friend George, and Fly Into the Sun, Reed makes it clear that happiness can be a hard-won commodity, and when Reed embraces lifes pleasures on Turn to Me and New Sensations, he does so with a fierce joy thats realistic, unblinking, and deeply felt, like a man whose signed on for the full ride and is going to enjoy the good times while they last. Like Coney Island Baby, New Sensations showed that Reed had a lot more warmth and humanity than he was given credit for, and made clear that he could write happy when he felt like, with all the impact of his serious material. It was his first album for Arista Records (now a sister label to his previous label RCA Records, via Sony BMG) after record mogul Clive Davis reportedly rescued him from bankruptcy. A Sheltered Life dates back to 1967, when the Velvet Underground recorded a demo of it (available on Peel Slowly and See). The Velvet Underground also performed Follow the Leader, and a live recording of it was released on The Quine Tapes. The Velvet Underground Quine Tapes Zip Zip By InUptempo numbers with pop hooks dominate the set, the 12 songs zip by in an efficient 38 minutes, and instead of Reeds trademark meditations on the dark side of life, the lyrics are (for the most part) lean bursts of verse and chorus, in which the artist sings the praises of good times in general and rock roll in particular (then again, on I Believe in Love, Reed pledges his allegiance to both good time music and the iron cross, a bit of perversity to remind us whose album this is). But if Rock and Roll Heart sounds like Lou Reed Lite, there are more than a few flashes of Reeds inarguable talent. His band is in fine form (especially Marty Fogel on sax and Michael Fonfara on keyboards). Banging on My Drum is a crunchy rocker that recalls his work with the Velvet Underground; A Sheltered Life is an amusing bit of VU archeology (the Velvets demoed the song, but this marked its first appearance on record); and the closer, Temporary Thing, is a bitter, haunting narrative that foreshadows Reeds next album, the harrowing masterpiece Street Hassle. Produced by Steve Katz and Lou Reed, the performance featured several Velvet Underground songs re-arranged into a powerful hard rock set. The album peaked at 45 on the Billboard Pop Albums chart in 1974. The Velvet Underground Quine Tapes Zip Crack Road BandRecorded in concert with Reeds crack road band at the peak of their form, Rock N Roll Animal offered a set of his most anthemic songs (most dating from his days with the Velvet Underground) in arrangements that presented his lean, effective melodies and street-level lyrics in their most user-friendly form (or at least as user friendly as an album with a song called Heroin can get). Early-70s arena rock bombast is often the order of the day, but guitarists Dick Wagner and Steve Hunter use their six-string muscle to lift these songs up, not weigh them down, and with Reeds passionate but controlled vocals riding over the top, Sweet Jane, White LightWhite Heat, and Rock n Roll finally sound like the radio hits they always should have been.
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