Lewis Allan Reed was born on March 2, 1942.
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(RCA)
Lou Reed's relationship with Bob Dylan got off to a rocky start, but by the mid-1980s, they became friendly, and even worked together on certain projects.
In the mid-1960s, when the Velvet Underground was first trying to make it, someone, possibly Andy Warhol, was trying to get Dylan to see Lou Reed's young band. Robbie Robertson went to see the Velvets instead, and was not impressed. Referring to Reed, Robertson said, "That guitar player, he ain't nothin' ". Reed retorted by saying that Dylan's songs were "marijuana leftovers", and something like "Dylan is the type of person you'd want to punch out at a party."
In reality, Reed was greatly influenced by Dylan, even wearing a harmonica rack in the early days, which he abandoned to avoid any comparisons. In the mid-1960s, Reed was one of a handful of musicians writing "serious" lyrics, but was so far ahead of his time that commercial success did not arrive until the 1970s, when he was a solo artist. Even then, Reed would sabotage his career by putting out deliberately noncommercial albums, challenging and alienating his audience time and time again, until his experimental work was eventually praised years later. Much like Dylan.
Backstage at Farm Aid, 1985.
In November, 1984, Lou Reed was in Los Angeles for a television appearance. Dylan was in the audience, sitting next to Reed's wife, Sylvia Morales. Halfway through Reed's performance of "Doing The Things We Want To" (which references Martin Scorsese), Dylan said to Morales, "Man, that's a great song. I wish I had written that song." When Reed heard this, he sent his roadie out to buy every Dylan album.
In the 1960s and 1970s, Lou Reed would have been considered a political liability. In the mid-1980s, things had changed, and Reed had become more mainstream, appearing in movies, television commercials, and the Billboard charts.
Bob Dylan invited Lou Reed to play the first Farm Aid, in 1985. Backstage, Lou was apparently miffed when Dylan approached Lou and Sylvia with open arms, only to hug their bodyguard, Big John Miller. However, you can see Bob and Lou talking in the clip above, about two minutes in.
Later that year, Lou Reed and Bob Dylan appeared in the video for Little Steven's project, Artists United Against Apartheid. In November, Lou Reed attended a party, at the Whitney Museum, honoring Dylan. Reed and Dylan praised each other in the press, and Dylan even thanked Reed on the inner sleeve of his album, Knocked Out Loaded. Bockris wrote that despite all of this, Reed was still jealous of the praise and attention Dylan and other musicians received, even though Reed's influence in the music world was certainly in the same league as some of these artists.
Lou Reed at "Bobfest", 1992.
Lou Reed appeared at the Bob Dylan 30th Anniversary Celebration Concert at Madison Square Garden, October 16, 1992. Although "Tangled Up In Blue" was allegedly considered, Reed covered the relatively obscure "Foot Of Pride", a 1983 song finally released in 1991. It was widely praised as one of the highlights of the evening.
"I chose 'Foot Of Pride' because I just got back from an eight-month tour. Once a day I would listen to it and just fall down laughing. I always go out and get the latest Dylan album. Bob Dylan can turn a phrase, man. Like the album Down In The Groove, his choice of songs. 'Going Ninety Miles an Hour Down A Dead End Street' - I'd give anything if I could have written that. . .
"That was as much fun as I could ever have, as much fun as anyone could legally have."
(Note: Most of these stories were written from memory, so I cannot attribute the sources, except some quotes, which were taken from Transformer: The Lou Reed Story by Victor Bockris (Simon & Schuster). If you have more information, please comment below).
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Comments
"Ninety Miles an Hour (Down a Dead End Street)" was written by Hal Blair and Don Robertson and was a huge hit for Country and Western legend Hank Snow in 1963.
Reed originally wanted to play "Dont Think Twice, It's Alright" at Bobfest but discovered a few hours before the show that Clapton was supposed to do it. It was actually the organizers' mistake, not his. So, he came up with Foot of Pride and had to use a teleprompter as he had no time to memorize all the lyrics.
Both artists are absolutely brilliant. Lou's New York album packs serious punch and no amount of praise is enough to heap on his Live Berlin album.
Victor Bockris is the Weekly World News of music journalism, and anything he says about Lou Reed is probably made-up.
Actually there was a bank of teleprompters for use by all the artists at the Bobfest, they can be seen in several of the shots of the event. Watch the performers eyes, they're all using it, 'cept maybe Bob.....but you never know.
I would go as far as to say that Lou is actually better than Bob except in live performance. No matter how bad Bob is on any particular night, he always does a few numbers that remind you, just how great he is, whereas Lou is diabolical live when he's bad but is something else when he's brilliant.
Well, no wonder Robbie Robertson didn't think much of the great Lou's guitar skills, after all Robbie had some of the best guitar licks in rock history and fitted Dylan's amphetamine lyrics like a glove. I really don't think Dylan has ever found a guitarist as good as Robbie. Robbie was lightning, after all he was Ronnie Hawkin's axeman first. Bob has the edge on Foot of Pride, but then Lou is kicking butt too, cause its live, after all!!!
Dylan was a spent force in the eighties and most of the nineties and do not hand me that Oh Mercy stuff, half baked daniel Lanois u2 production. Lou released "New York" and lets face it folks, he was the only artist that emerged in the sixties that released anything as relevant, proving to those of the same generation and those pretenders that followed that talent is something few possess, sure Dylan has bags of it, he wrote "Like a Rolling Stone" but Lou, LOU wrote "Sweet Jane", Probably the greatest Rock song ever written. Take a bow Lou!!!!!
lou bob
I'd hand you a copy of "Oh Mercy" but I guess it would be wasted on you. Whatever you think of the production it has a great number of great songs that cannot be described as "half-baked". I wish I was as satisfied with the classic rock radio stations as you seem to be.
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