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And Finally Beef Of The Week
CMU Beef Of The Week #85: Metallica fans v Lou Reed v Metallica fans
By Andy Malt | Published on Friday 4 November 2011
Lou Reed has revealed that Metallica fans have been threatening him with an untimely death for daring to make a record with their favourite metallers. As he and the band prepared for this week’s release of their collaborative album, ‘Lulu’, the former Velvet Underground frontman claimed their hatred isn’t even directed at the music.
Speaking to USA Today, Reed said: “[They] are threatening to shoot me, and that’s only because I showed up. They haven’t even heard the record yet, and they’re recommending various forms of torture and death”.
Of course, over the last couple of weeks, with previews available, they have been able to hear the album, and for the most part it doesn’t seem to have calmed them down. Reed’s not fussed though, he’s used to alienating people. Of his own fanbase he says: “I don’t have any fans left. After [1975 electronic noise album] ‘Metal Machine Music’, they all fled. Who cares? I’m essentially in this for the fun of it”.
He admits that “no one wants a ‘Lulu Part Two'”, but he says that Metallica are his “metal blood brothers” and “on Radio Lou, in my head where I hear these songs, I want more of it”.
Whether Metallica are ready to commit to another record is less clear. Although drummer Lars Ulrich says they and Reed are “a new collective”, he also describes it as a “one-off project”.
However, he speaks with enthusiasm of how the band became involved with Reed, saying of the initial demos they received: “[There were] no drums, no guitars, no recognisable rhythms or keys, just these soundscapes, incredibly beautiful. And Lou reciting these potent words. It was so deep. I called Lou and said: ‘I don’t know where this is going, but we’re in'”.
He adds that Metallica fans are prone to complain about any changes to the band’s sound, saying: “In 1984, when hardcore Metallica fans heard acoustic guitars on ‘Fade To Black’, there was a nuclear meltdown in the heavy metal community. There have been many more since then. This is something they’ve never heard. Nobody hears rhythms or delivers poetry the way Lou does. It’s not for everyone, but I think it’s a fantastic record”.
And to be fair, there is a certain admirable quality in both Reed and Metallica forging on with something they believed in, even though they probably knew all along it would receive a negative response from many people. As Reed put it in another interview, published this week in Vanity Fair (one more typical of his relationship with the press, involving him mostly refusing to speak before hanging up the phone mid-sentence): “I could do anything I want. They could do anything they want. We chose to do this as a project we wanted to do. Something beautiful. Period. It’s not complicated”.
