“These things do take time”: Lou Reed on his most underrated solo albums
It is often the case that musicians come to resent their more popular work, particularly once that popular works starts to overshadow the rest of their discography. As a titan of subversive, underground music for the entirety of his existence, Lou Reed was certainly no different. Although his work rarely found widespread commercial appeal upon its release, select highlights from his extensive career have since become viewed as all-time classics, while other Reed efforts tend to go unnoticed or underappreciated, much to the chagrin of the songwriter.
Lou Reed never courted commercial stardom. His first flirt into the music industry, forming The Velvet Underground alongside John Cale in 1964, existed as a staunch alternative to the musical mainstream. He might have drawn upon his love of R&B and blues, but the sounds of The Velvet Underground were unlike anything audiences had ever heard previously.
Their pioneering discography found a cult audience at the time, inspiring the likes of David Bowie and impacting the later punk scene, but the musical mainstream was never going to rush out and buy copies of a song called ‘Heroin’.
The subversive nature of Reed’s songwriting made him a legendary figure within alternative music, but it didn’t make him a household name in the same way as the era’s pop stars. Although the songwriter’s subsequent solo career witnessed a greater degree of mainstream attention – Transformer even reached 13 in the UK album charts – some of his greatest records remain woefully underrated.
Every Lou Reed fan has their own take on the most underrated album in the songwriter’s expansive discography. After all, Reed produced over 20 solo studio albums during his extensive career. Many of his later records tend to fly under the radar, particularly for casual listeners, despite their clear quality. However, if anybody is qualified to give an account of Reed’s most overlooked work, it is the man himself.
During a 1998 interview with Mojo, Reed reflected on his lauded career, in addition to highlighting some of the efforts he thought deserved more praise. “Look at ‘Perfect Day’, it sat there for however long. I don’t know how things work,” he shared, noting that ‘Perfect Day’ was largely ignored initially but went on to become one of the songwriter’s defining moments.
Continuing, Reed shared some of the specific albums he hoped might have a similar renaissance to ‘Perfect Day’. “I think there might come a time when people notice Magic And Loss a bit more than they have or notice the Berlin album more than they have, or Time Rocker for that matter,” he shared. “But these things do take time.”
Arguably, Berlin has witnessed the kind of resurgence that Reed was thinking about, with the 1973 album regularly hailed among the songwriter’s finest work, and rightly so. The record captures Reed at his most prolific and profound and is one of the most fully formed and artificially inspired records. However, Time Rocker sticks out as a particularly odd project to highlight.
There is no official Lou Reed album called Time Rocker; it was a 1996 play by the Texan playwright Robert Wilson, for whom Reed provided musical accompaniment. Other than a smattering of bootleg records, the songwriter never officially released his work on the play. However, according to the man himself, the music for Time Rocker might just be worth revisiting.
