Was Lou Reed and Metallica’s ‘Lulu’ really that bad?
Throughout a wieldy body of work nearing half a century, New York songsmith Lou Reed could confidently claim to authentically confound critics and fans alike right til his final studio album before his death in 2013. He flashed his acidic riposte to 1967’s Summer of Love, penning The Velvet Underground & Nico‘s lyrical tales of drug dealers and sadomasochism. From his glam opus Transformer with Berlin‘s bleak rock opera to wilfully burning his bridges with the music industry on Metal Machine Music‘s double LP of grinding feedback and distortion, Reed was well acquainted with the rancour his artful provocations could trigger.
Reed’s creative affrontery hadn’t dimmed an inch by the time of his final LP, which was released in 2011, two years before his death. Reed’s parting statement was Lulu, a collaboration with Californian metal heavyweights Metallica based on German playwright Frank Wedekind’s 19th-century two-play cycle of Earth Spirit and Pandora’s Box.
A transgressive exploration of unabashed sexuality and a study of Wilhelminian society through Wedekind’s grubby, violent lens seems the perfect conceptual fodder for Reed’s cool, lyrical view of humanity. Throw in Metallica’s thrash-spiked hard rock, and the world should have the apex in poetic alternative metal, right?
Unfortunately, Lulu was met with near-universal critical disdain. Despite serving as Reed’s highest Billboard charting release since 1974’s Sally Can’t Dance, sales soon plummeted once critical reception had had their effect, with only 33,000 copies sold in the US three years after its release.
Rubbing their fans up the wrong way was nothing new to Metallica. While never treading Reed’s contrarian waters, the Los Angeles metal outfit had invited accusations of musical heresy unseen since Bob Dylan’s going electric, inversely going ‘acoustic’ when opening their 1984 ballad ‘Fade to Black’ with frontman James Hetfield’s signature 12-string. The 1990s was when they truly tested their puritanical fanbase. Resenting their beloved spotty thrash poster boys ‘going mainstream’, the following Load and Reload LPs saw Metallica embracing the artier end of hard rock, cutting their hair and appearing in eccentric Anton Corbijn photo shoots not dissimilar to his work with U2 and Depeche Mode at the time.
While 2008’s Death Magnetic had been favourably received as a return to form, Lulu shot any metalheads misty-eyed over the Kill ‘Em All days that Metallica was proffering the thrash they’d been pining for. Crafting sludged-out metal attacks behind Reed’s spoken word delivery, it’s a trying listen for even the most committed Reed with an appetite for his avant-garde excesses. What transpires across its near hour and a half is an intriguing EP of an idea lost in its overly ponderous double LP length.
It’s not laughably bad, as many critics alleged. It’s just not interesting. Kirk Hammett’s metal chug never seems to gel or find an easy sonic relationship with Reed’s laconic sprechgesang delivery, traipsing through jams that go absolutely nowhere with an excruciating absence of momentum. On a less indulgent release, ‘The View’ would have sat nicely on a mutually non-canonical effort, harnessing a disquieting metal attack that clashes with pleasing unease with Reed’s lyrical collage. The finale ‘Junior Dad’ reaches an audaciously moving plane—ironically 20 minutes- yet avoiding any of the album’s otherwise nagging sense of Lulu’s desperate need for an editor.
As a whole, Lulu just doesn’t work. Yet it’s a noble failure, a misfire where audacity and an artistic leap of faith carry it a long way. Reed rounded off his career doing what he always does—whatever the hell he wants—while Metallica can boast a record that sought to stimulate metal’s left side of the brain, something thrash’s “Big Four” never went near.
