![\"Lou](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/Lou-Reed-1970s-The-Velvet-Underground-Far-Out-Magazine-1140x855.jpg\")
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(Credits: Far Out \/ Alamy)<\/p>\n
Thu 11 September 2025 0:00, UK <\/p>\n
Strangely enough, acerbic songsmith Lou Reed<\/a> and greasepaint glam rockers Kiss share some strange overlaps throughout their respective careers.<\/p>\n Ree\u2019d\u2019s dabbling in the metal world formed an essential chapter of his late chapter, his very last album 2011\u2019s Lulu, with thrash pioneers Metallica, a characteristically confounding and jarring clash that teased magic amid the clunky mulch of opposing styles. Yet, Reed had entered the Kiss fold 30 years earlier, penning the three songs \u2018Dark Light\u2019, \u2018Mr Blackwell\u2019, and \u2018A World Without Heroes\u2019 from 1981\u2019s bloated fantasy LP Music from \u201cThe Elder\u201d.<\/p>\n An instrumental hand in Kiss\u2019 conceptual blunder is Canadian producer Bob Ezrin. Credited to a broad swathe of rock\u2019s dazzling heights and silliest lows across Dr John and Thirty Seconds to Mars, Ezrin has held a reputation for possessing a sharp knack for shaping a mass of studio material into a gripping coherency. Alongside his longtime production work with Alice Cooper\u2014dubbed \u201cmy George Martin\u201d by their frontman\u2014Ezrin assisted with the narrative honing of Pink Floyd\u2019s double opus The Wall and Nine Inch Nails<\/a>\u2019 epic two-disc The Fragile.<\/p>\n Big conceptual visions were exactly what Reed was after in preparation for his third album. Having already penned story vignettes following memorable characters since his days fronting The Velvet Underground, the success of 1972\u2019s Transformer, featuring the canonical \u2018Walk on the Wild Side\u2019 and \u2018Perfect Day\u2019, freed up the creatively restless Reed to pursue a new direction. Hanging out at Ezrin\u2019s Toronto home for a preproduction chat, the pair looked back on a number from his eponymous solo debut to inspire his awaited next project.<\/p>\n Released in October 1973, Berlin regaled the bleak, rock opera tale of dysfunctional lovers Jim and Caroline\u2019s deteriorating relationship set against the gloomy backdrop of the city\u2019s Cold War division. With the Wall dividing the former Prussian capital and figuratively cutting across their intimate world, the album swirls downwards into a mess of abuse, drug use, and Caroline\u2019s suicide.<\/p>\n One of the most grimly remembered songs from Berlin is \u2018The Kids\u2019. The dour snapshot of social services removing the couple\u2019s children from their care, the backing wails and howls from the titular kids inspired an unsettling rumour that Ezrin had told his two sons, David and Josh, had told them their mother had died to illicit profound anguish. It would be a monstrous thing to do, and thankfully, the record was put straight by journalist Rob Bowman in the liner notes for 1992\u2019s Between Thought and Expression: The Lou Reed Anthology box set.<\/p>\n \u201cAccording to Ezrin, the story is that he went home and told his seven-year-old son David that he was doing a play in the studio and he needed some kids\u2019 voices to sound scared because their mom was being taken away,\u201d Bowman revealed. \u201cThe first few attempts didn\u2019t sound terrifying enough, but on a third, unprompted, his two-year-old joined in and just started screaming. The two children screamed so loud that they distorted the tape\u201d.<\/p>\n Three years later, Ezrin would step up to both production and mixing duties for Kiss\u2019 1976 album Destroyer. Considered a defining record among the Kiss Army, their fourth LP featured one of Gene Simmons\u2019 themes of sorts with \u2018God of Thunder\u2019, often played live after spitting copious amounts of blood. As well as Ezrin\u2019s idea to gift the thumping cut to Simmons over its author, Paul Stanley<\/a>, Ezrin also sought to add an extra element of spectral sonics by recording Dan and Josh once again with cheap walkie-talkies to create the intended ghostly effect.<\/p>\n While going for spooky escapism over gritty realism, Dan and Josh had struck gold again, gifting Kiss with an essential element of high fantasy phantasmagorical heft which stands proudly aside Ace Frehley\u2019s Norse hammering, heavy riff in \u2018God of Thunder\u2019s mythic strut.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ Alamy) Thu 11 September 2025 0:00, UK Strangely enough, acerbic songsmith Lou Reed and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":77068,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[61339,96,8250,5656,33325,128,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-129761","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-bob-ezrin","9":"tag-entertainment","10":"tag-gene-simmons","11":"tag-kiss","12":"tag-lou-reed","13":"tag-music","14":"tag-uk","15":"tag-united-kingdom","16":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129761","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=129761"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129761\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/77068"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=129761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=129761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=129761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}