{"id":541842,"date":"2026-04-20T23:02:10","date_gmt":"2026-04-20T23:02:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/541842\/"},"modified":"2026-04-20T23:02:10","modified_gmt":"2026-04-20T23:02:10","slug":"the-1975-album-lou-reed-said-he-wasnt-allowed-to-revisit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/541842\/","title":{"rendered":"The 1975 album Lou Reed said he wasn’t allowed to revisit"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Lou<\/p>\n

(Credits: Far Out \/ Arista Records \/ Mick Rock)<\/p>\n

Mon 20 April 2026 21:00, UK <\/p>\n

There\u2019s one album in Lou Reed<\/a>\u2019s LP oeuvre that sits with confounding belligerence and defies categorisation.<\/p>\n

Across the early 1970s, Reed had wandered a rewarding yet diffident presence in the charts. Was his yo-yoing success bad luck, or a deliberate barricade to pop stardom\u2019s teases? It was never clear, the former Velvet Underground frontman never wanting to make things easy for his fans, label, or even himself, but the commercial highs of Transformer and Sally Can\u2019t Dance would just as quickly have their rug pulled from underneath by the likes of Berlin\u2019s bleak rock opera.<\/p>\n

He\u2019d test his label\u2019s patience once again for his fifth album. After Sally Can\u2019t Dance\u2019s relative pop-rock flourish, Reed became enamoured with the tonalities and noise that could be emitted from just one guitar and some feedback. Tuning all the strings to the same note, Reed waved his guitar next to the amp to create all its howling din, adding an extra guitar and amp to then trigger feedback clashing with another blast of feedback, before simply recording the grating loop. Sticking some effects on and playing with speed on the tape, Reed handed his experimental creation to an exasperated RCA, who didn\u2019t understand what just landed on their desk.<\/p>\n

Released in July 1975, Metal Machine Music was indeed his boldest effort yet. A double album of four tracks of metallic noise and nothing more, Reed\u2019s avant-garde conjuring initially sold a respectable 100,000 copies before an avalanche of returns forced its pull from circulation after just three weeks. Suggestions had been made to issue the unwieldy record of white noise on RCA\u2019s Red Seal classical imprint to illustrate its avant-garde nature, an effort by RCA to gently set fans\u2019 expectations not to expect a \u2018Walk on the Wild Side<\/a>\u2019, but Reed scoffed at the idea, deeming such marketing as \u201cpretentious.\u201d<\/p>\n

Naturally, it bombed. Lester Bangs gave a rave review, but otherwise, Metal Machine Music was forever deemed as a \u201cfuck you\u201d to Reed\u2019s RCA overlords, as well as a sabotage of his newfound fame. As ever, Reed offered coy insights into exactly what his motives were in its aftermath, veering between a sincere exercise in high art and a complete joke: \u201cAnyone that gets to side four is dumber than I am.\u201d Whatever its merits, Reed had once stated that RCA held a grudge over his noise sludge baby.<\/p>\n

\u201cYears ago, someone wanted to do an installation of Metal Machine Music, and we tried to get the original tape from RCA\u2026 as though they cared,\u201d Reed quipped to PopMatters in 2007, reflecting on the record\u2019s original quadrophonic version. \u201cThey wouldn\u2019t even let us. It\u2019s complicated, but they wouldn\u2019t let the original tape out of their warehouse, which is interesting\u2026 the fact they even have it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Time would eventually vindicate Reed\u2019s snarling, alien beast, Sonic Youth reportedly having been inspired<\/a> by Metal Machine Music to pursue their own explorations of noise\u2019s possibilities, as well as serving as a spiritual precursor to a whole slew of industrial and power electronics set to rear its head amid the punk underground.<\/p>\n

Reed never disavowed his cacophonic terror either. In 2002, Reed performed Metal Machine Music with the Zeitktratzer ensemble in Berlin\u2019s MaerzMusik festival, with a personally overseen reissue landing on shelves in 2010. Decades later, RCA\u2019s LP headache became an essential piece of Reed\u2019s confrontational body of work.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, I mean, I really like it,\u201d Reed declared. \u201cI really love it. Not just the idea \u2014 the actual thing. I wouldn\u2019t have done it if I didn\u2019t love it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

ADD AS A PREFERRED SOURCE ON GOOGLE \"\"\/ <\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ Arista Records \/ Mick Rock) Mon 20 April 2026 21:00, UK There\u2019s one album…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":380387,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[96,33325,128,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-541842","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-lou-reed","tag-music","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541842","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=541842"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541842\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/380387"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=541842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=541842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=541842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}