It seems that people who have any familiarity at all with Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music, a sonic bomb released in July 1975, assume that it was a big “eff U” to his record label. A contractual obligation stunt of sorts.
I suppose it could have been, though it doesn’t take a whole lot of digging to discover that Lou Reed was actually serious. About what I’ve never been sure, but a good guess is that he got himself all torqued up on speed, and decided to do his best La Monte Young tribute/simulation.
I was mostly unaware of the album back in the day, with the exception of Lester Bangs’ review in Creem magazine. Because of Lester’s style, I had no actual idea if he really liked the album or not. Oh sure, he ends up stating that “It is the greatest record ever made in the history of the human eardrum.” But that was after much talk about sex with vegetables, references to everything from Tangerine Dream to Robert (Bob) Christgau to Idi Amin.
By the time I got to the bit about Bangs version of Scriabin’s Rigoletto set in a Puerto Rican leather bar, I decided that I was having too good of a time to care which side of the album Lester came down on. And yes, Rigoletto was written by Verdi. I suspect Mr. Bangs knew that.
So, what to make of this pulsing chunk of electrons? I’m sure that it was a shocker back in the day, but in the intervening time so many artists have picked up on noise, distortion and atonality — the whole industrial movement — that it seems pretty mild in comparison.
Lou Reed actually took this thing out on the road, not long before he died, giving the contractual-obligations crowd one final “eff U.”
P.S. I own this on 180 gram vinyl, much to TheWife™’s dismay.
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