The Date: July, 1975
The Event: Lou Reed releases Metal Machine Music
The Result: Infamy
In 1975, Lou Reed released one of the strangest, most confronting, most misunderstood records in rock history. Metal Machine Music was a double album consisting of nothing but ricocheting reverberation, a thick sonic soup of distortion being bounced from amplifier back to amplifier in an ever-evolving morass of cacophony.
In short: a noise record before 'noise' was a quantifiable genre.
Had this record been released by an austere, minimalist composer like Terry Riley or La Monte Young, it surely wouldn't have engendered such an infamous reputation. Yet Reed was, is, and always shall be a rockstar, the crown prince of downtown New Yorker cool. By 1975, his old band, the Velvet Underground, had finally won the fame and acclaim that largely alluded them whilst they were together. And Reed was coming off his biggest commercial success as a solo artist, 1974's Sally Can't Dance.
The reaction to Reed's experimental, conceptual album was almost wholly negative, many viewing it as a joke at best, and a debacle at worst. Anecdotally, Metal Machine Music shattered the record for most-returned album in record-store history, with tales of every second person who bought it coming back to ask for their money returned.
As time passed, and the album moved completely out of mainstream view, more sympathetic listeners took to the record.
Acts like Spacemen 3, My Bloody Valentine, Royal Trux, and Japanese noise legend Merzbow have cited the album as an influence, as much for its rebellious, iconoclast spirit as anything else.
Sonic Youth are, of course, its most famous and fervent devotees, having sampled sections of the record and used them on their acclaimed 1985 album Bad Moon Rising. And TV on the Radio turned the same trick in 2006, producer Dave Sitek sampling passages from Metal Machine Music and tossing it amidst the multi-layered productions of their Return to Cookie Mountain album.
Over 30 years on, Metal Machine Music has lost none of its infamy. But, rather than being hailed as one of the worst albums ever made, now the album is viewed with a softer, more open statement-in-extremis: you will either love this record or despise it. Three decades hence, there's still no in-between.
The Event: Lou Reed releases Metal Machine Music
The Result: Infamy
In 1975, Lou Reed released one of the strangest, most confronting, most misunderstood records in rock history. Metal Machine Music was a double album consisting of nothing but ricocheting reverberation, a thick sonic soup of distortion being bounced from amplifier back to amplifier in an ever-evolving morass of cacophony.
In short: a noise record before 'noise' was a quantifiable genre.
Had this record been released by an austere, minimalist composer like Terry Riley or La Monte Young, it surely wouldn't have engendered such an infamous reputation. Yet Reed was, is, and always shall be a rockstar, the crown prince of downtown New Yorker cool. By 1975, his old band, the Velvet Underground, had finally won the fame and acclaim that largely alluded them whilst they were together. And Reed was coming off his biggest commercial success as a solo artist, 1974's Sally Can't Dance.
The reaction to Reed's experimental, conceptual album was almost wholly negative, many viewing it as a joke at best, and a debacle at worst. Anecdotally, Metal Machine Music shattered the record for most-returned album in record-store history, with tales of every second person who bought it coming back to ask for their money returned.
As time passed, and the album moved completely out of mainstream view, more sympathetic listeners took to the record.
Acts like Spacemen 3, My Bloody Valentine, Royal Trux, and Japanese noise legend Merzbow have cited the album as an influence, as much for its rebellious, iconoclast spirit as anything else.
Sonic Youth are, of course, its most famous and fervent devotees, having sampled sections of the record and used them on their acclaimed 1985 album Bad Moon Rising. And TV on the Radio turned the same trick in 2006, producer Dave Sitek sampling passages from Metal Machine Music and tossing it amidst the multi-layered productions of their Return to Cookie Mountain album.
Over 30 years on, Metal Machine Music has lost none of its infamy. But, rather than being hailed as one of the worst albums ever made, now the album is viewed with a softer, more open statement-in-extremis: you will either love this record or despise it. Three decades hence, there's still no in-between.