Lou Reed on the moment he reached perfection: “It still won’t stop”
There was no rulebook that said an artist needed to sound a certain way whenever they made a record in the 1970s. At the end of the day, there’s only so much time that people had to work on vinyl, so whatever musicians put in between those grooves was going to be what they felt in their heart half the time. Although Lou Reed certainly had time to craft unique stories every time he made a solo album, he knew that Metal Machine Music stood alone as one of the most compact experiences that he put together.
For anyone with functional ears, though, that notion feels like an absolute joke. Despite critics deriding The Velvet Underground as nothing but unconventional noise in their prime, Metal Machine Music may have been Lou Reed’s way of giving his naysayers exactly what they thought they wanted.
Because looking through this album, good luck finding any kind of hook. Instead of crafting his usual literate masterpieces, the entire record is literally just guitar feedback spread over a double album. It might appeal to those curious about experiencing tinnitus or satisfy the deaf community by cranking up the volume to feel the abrasive noise rather than hear it.
Considering this was the time when Reed was on a role with one classic album after the next, the whole thing feels more like a middle finger to his higher-ups. He had already been making music that had a commercial edge to it, so this feels like him deliberately going against the grain just to mess with some heads, especially when those same heads are getting thrown into a blender by the feedback.
Still, for something that was such a radical departure, Reed thought that it was probably the best statement that he could have made, saying, “That record is the closest thing I’ve ever come to perfection. It’s also the only record I know that attacks the listener. Even when it gets to the end of the last side, it still won’t fucking stop. You have to get up and remove it from the fucking turntable yourself. It’s impossible to even think when the thing’s on.”
If you take away everything that you know about traditional music, is there still merit to Metal Machine Music? Everyone was already judging it based on Reed’s track record of making songs like ‘I’m Waiting for the Man’ and ‘Pale Blue Eyes’, but looking at it from an avant-garde point of view, it’s easy to listen to it for a few minutes and get lulled into a bit of a trance, albeit one that could really start to hurt after a while.
With the rise of more abrasive styles of music that came later, it’s hard not to see industrial acts taking cues from this approach. While Nine Inch Nails or My Bloody Valentine might not list Reed as a primary influence, it perhaps took a big name like him to make it acceptable for music to sound hypnotically washed-out when someone dropped the needle on their turntable.
So, in a strange way, Metal Machine Music might be the most forward-looking Lou Reed album that he ever made. It’s not necessarily good, and you’d have to make a real argument that it’s one of his best records, but whether people like it or not is beside the point when you look at its legacy.
