Lou Reed - 1978-03-22 - Old Waldorf Theatre, San Francisco (Remastered, Live On Broadcasting) '2025

Tracks list

	Tracklist:

1. Gimme Some Good Times (Live) (03:27)
2. Satellite of Love (Live) (07:13)
3. Leave Me Alone (Live) (12:54)
4. Lisa Says (Live) (07:03)
5. Coney Island Baby (Live) (09:33)
6. Walk on the Wild Side (Live) (06:09)
7. Sweet Jane (Live) (04:09)
8. Rock and Roll (Live) (07:12)


 moreLewis Allan Reed was born on March 2, 1942 in Brooklyn, New York. His
family moved to Freehold, New York on Long Island when he was nine years old,
and he didn't adapt well to his new surroundings; by the time he was in junior
high, he was regularly targeted by bullies. He developed a variety of phobias
and anxieties, and at the age of 16 he started to experiment with drugs. Hoping
to deal with his problems, Reed's parents followed the advice of a psychiatrist
and submitted him to electroconvulsive therapy; many years later, he would write
about the traumatic effects of the treatments in his song "Kill Your Sons."

Reed would find solace in music, embracing early rock & roll, doo wop, rhythm &
blues, and jazz, and by the time he was in high school, he was playing in bands
and gigging professionally. One of his earliest groups, the Jades, cut a single
when he was 16 years old, "So Blue" b/w "Leave Her for Me," with Lou playing
guitar and singing backing vocals; legendary session musician King Curtis sat in
on sax. The single flopped and it was their only release, but Reed kept writing
songs, and in 1962, while attending Syracuse University, he cut a pair of tracks
for producer Bob Shad, who released the Jades single, "Merry Go Round" and "Your
Love." They were not released at the time, but Norton Records would issue them
and the Jades single on a 2000 EP titled All Tomorrow's Dance Parties. After
graduating from Syracuse, Reed moved to New York and took a job with Pickwick
Records, a cut-rate record company who specialized in budget-price compilation
albums. To fill out their LPs, Reed wrote and recorded songs following popular
trends in music and teen culture. One of his compositions was a noisy would-be
dance number called "The Ostrich," which among other things featured him playing
a guitar with all the strings tuned to the same note. Pickwick thought the song
had commercial possibilities and released it as a single under the group name
the Primitives. Pickwick arranged for the Primitives to play some live dates to
promote the disc, and while rounding up a band, Reed met John Cale, a Welsh
musician who had come to New York on a scholarship from Aaron Copland and was
playing in an avant-garde ensemble with LaMonte Young. Cale wasn't much
impressed with "The Ostrich," but he was intrigued by Reed's alternate tuning,
which was the same as one he was using with Young for his drone pieces, and when
Reed wanted to form a band to play his own music that fell outside the
boundaries of what Pickwick would release, Cale joined him.

Reed recruited a friend from his days at Syracuse, Sterling Morrison, to play
guitar in the new band, with Cale on bass and viola and Reed on guitar and
vocals. After briefly working with percussionist Angus MacLise, the group
brought in Maureen Tucker to play drums. They adopted the name the Velvet
Underground from a sensational paperback about the sexual revolution one of them
found on the street, and after they were discovered by Andy Warhol in 1966, he
became their manager and made them part of his pioneering multi-media show the
Exploding Plastic Inevitable. With an aggressive sound at once primitive and
adventurous, and lyrics that boldly dealt with sex, drugs, and the challenges of
contemporary life, the Velvet Underground became one of the most controversial
and talked-about bands of their day, and they released four studio albums
(1967's The Velvet Underground & Nico, 1968's White Light/White Heat with Cale,
1969's The Velvet Underground, and 1970's Loaded with his replacement, Doug
Yule) that sold modestly but would be regarded as influential classics in the
years after the band broke up. In the summer of 1970, as the band was recording
Loaded, they played a residency at Max's Kansas City in New York, and Reed,
growing weary with the demands of the group and their lack of success, quietly
dropped out of the VU in August 1970; while lineups of the group led by Doug
Yule would stagger on until 1973, for most fans Reed's departure marked the end
of the band.

Uncertain where to go next, Reed moved back to Long Island, staying with his
parents and working as a typist at his father's accounting firm. By 1971, he was
ready to make music again, and he landed a contract with RCA Records; he flew to
London and cut his self-titled solo debut with a studio band that included Steve
Howe and Rick Wakeman from Yes. Lou Reed was dominated by songs he wrote during
his days in the Velvet Underground but didn't release, and the album came and
went with little notice. He had significantly better luck with his second solo
effort; David Bowie, who was in his first flush of superstardom after the
release of The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, was an
outspoken Velvet Underground fan, and he and Spiders guitarist Mick Ronson
stepped in to produce 1972's Transformer. With Bowie's support, Reed embraced
the trappings of glam rock and came up with a far stronger album that was a
commercial success. The song, "Take a Walk on the Wild Side," became an
international hit single, and "Perfect Day" would go on to become one of his
most beloved songs. Reed used the success of Transformer to persuade RCA to
bankroll a far more ambitious and elaborate follow-up. The grandiose Berlin,
issued in 1973, was glossy and richly arranged and produced, but the
unrelentingly depressing tone of the song cycle about a decadent love affair put
off Reed's new fans and the album was a severe commercial disappointment.

Eager to win back his audience's good graces, he assembled a new band centered
on the guitar team of Dick Wagner and Steve Hunter, with Reed confining himself
to vocals. The new band approached Reed's tunes as crowd-pleasing hard rock, and
1974's Rock N' Roll Animal was a live album that showed off the strength of the
material while making it more accessible and thus a success. Reed toured
extensively in the wake Rock N' Roll Animal, and later the same year released
Sally Can't Dance, a set of half-hearted glam-leaning tunes hardly up to the
standards of his best work (except for the savage and personal "Kill Your
Sons"). While a weak effort, it became Reed's highest-charting release to date.
His next studio album, 1975's Metal Machine Music, was an unrelenting and
uncompromised exercise in guitar-generated noise that alienated nearly everyone
who came into contact with it and was seen by many as a deliberate act of career
sabotage. He did an about face with 1976's Coney Island Baby; except for the
unnerving "Kicks," most of the album was warm, gentle rock & roll, with the
moving title track informed by the doo wop music he loved as a youth.

Coney Island Baby finished off Reed's deal with RCA, and he signed with Clive
Davis' Arista label for 1976's Rock and Roll Heart, a largely upbeat but
unremarkable effort that attracted little notice. However, with the rise of punk
rock in New York and London, Reed was frequently cited as a hero and inspiration
to many acts on the scene (especially his work with the Velvet Underground), and
the attention emboldened him to make 1978's Street Hassle, a bitter and often
deliberately offensive album in which he took an unblinking look at himself and
his music. The album was too harsh to break through to mainstream listeners, but
it earned strong reviews and signaled a new commitment to his muse after his
uneven work since going solo. Though 1978's Live: Take No Prisoners was devoted
more to Reed's acid-tongued stage banter than music, 1979's The Bells and 1980's
Growing Up in Public found him dealing with personal issues and demonstrated a
growing maturity in his writing. Growing Up in Public closed out Reed's deal
with Arista, and it coincided with a period in which he finally overcame a
longtime addiction to liquor and drugs, he married his girlfriend Sylvia Morales
after years of publicly identifying as gay or bisexual, and moved from New York
City to a farmhouse in New Jersey where he had peace and a chance to focus. He
began working with former Richard Hell guitarist Robert Quine, who encouraged
Reed to recommit himself to playing electric guitar, and after signing a new
deal with RCA, they recorded The Blue Mask, an intense, revealing, and literate
effort that was his most impressive music in years.

Reed and Quine worked together again on 1983's Legendary Hearts, another
critical success, but at the last minute, Reed chose not to use him on 1984's
New Sensations, instead multitracking lead and rhythm parts himself. The album
was a relatively positive and accessible effort, and included "I Love You
Suzanne," which became a minor hit. For the first time since he got clean, Reed
toured extensively in support of the album, with Quine returning to his road
band; a show from the New Sensations tour was documented on 1984's Live in
Italy. He once again handled all the guitars on 1986's Mistrial, an uneven
effort that closed out his second run on RCA. However, Reed soon struck a new
deal with Sire Records, and rebounded with 1989's New York, an album full of
political commentary and observations on his spiritual home town that won rave
reviews and earned him a gold record. The final track, "Dime Store Mystery," was
written in memory of his late friend and mentor Andy Warhol. Warhol's passing
also brought Reed together with John Cale; the two had been on frosty terms
since Reed's contentious departure from the Velvet Underground. The former
bandmates teamed up to create a song cycle about Warhol's life and work, and
1990's Songs for Drella marked their first work together since 1968's White
Light/White Heat. Later that year, Reed and Cale were invited to perform Songs
for Drella as part of a celebration of Warhol's life and legacy staged by
Foundation Cartier in Jouy-En-Josas, France. Sterling Morrison and Maureen
Tucker were also invited to attend the event, and as an encore to the concert,
the four original members of the Velvet Underground performed an impromptu
version of "Heroin."

1992's Magic and Loss was a somber concept album about the death of two of
Reed's close friends that received positive reviews but didn't match New York's
sales or acclaim. Since the spontaneous performance in Jouy-En-Josas, rumors
circulated that the Velvet Underground would reunite, and in June and July of
1993, Reed and his bandmates staged a tour of Europe that was rapturously
received by fans, though reaction from critics was mixed. A string of American
dates and an appearance on MTV Unplugged were to follow, but tensions in the
band once again boiled over, and by the time Live MCMXCIII (recorded during a
three-night stand in Paris) appeared the following October, the group was once
again history, which became permanent after the death of Sterling Morrison in
1995. (The following year, the Velvets were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall
of Fame, and Reed, Cale, and Tucker performed a song they wrote in tribute to
Morrison, "Last Night I Said Goodbye to My Friend.") Not long after the VU
reunion tour, Reed and Sylvia Morales divorced.

Reed returned to duty as a solo artist with 1996's Set the Twilight Reeling, an
album that focused on the joys and challenges of relationships; it appeared as
Reed and musician/performance artist Laurie Anderson entered into a romantic
relationship. (They married in 2008 and would remain together for the rest of
his life.) A semi-acoustic appearance at the 1997 Meltdown Festival in London
was recorded for the 1998 release Perfect Night: Live in London. That same year,
Reed's life and art were celebrated in a television documentary for the PBS
series American Masters, Lou Reed: Rock & Roll Heart, which was subsequently
released on home video. Reed also collaborated with playwright and director
Robert Wilson for his play Timerocker, penning songs for the piece. In 2000,
Reed moved from Sire to Reprise Records (both offshoots of Warner Bros.), and
released Ecstasy, a set of lyrically challenging, poetically informed songs set
to rough rock & roll guitars. Reed collaborated with Robert Wilson again for a
show informed by the writings of Edgar Allan Poe, POE-try, and much of the
material for the play was revisited on Reed's 2003 album The Raven, which
included readings from Willem Dafoe and Steve Buscemi. Reed staged an intimate
concert tour following the release of The Raven, and a show at Los Angeles's
Wiltern Theater was recorded for the 2004 album Animal Serenade.

In 2006 and 2007, Reed revisited the album Berlin in a series of concerts in
which he performed the album in full, with original producer Bob Ezrin leading a
small orchestra. Shows at St. Ann's Warehouse were filmed and recorded, and the
album Berlin: Live at St. Ann's Warehouse came out in 2008. Reed also took a
fresh look at Metal Machine Music when the German avant-garde ensemble
Zeitkratzer created arrangements that allowed the LP's soundscapes to be
performed on-stage. Reed and his frequent guitar foil Mike Rathke joined the
group for several performances of the piece, one of which was released as Metal
Machine Music: Live at the Berlin Opera House. And in 2007, Reed brought out
Hudson River Wind Meditations, a collection of ambient pieces he created to
accompany his tai chi exercises. In 2009, he performed several songs at an event
honoring the 25th anniversary of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in New York City.
He was accompanied by the iconic heavy metal band Metallica, and the
collaboration inspired Reed to invite the band to work with him on his next
album. Based on the work of playwright Frank Wedekind, 2011's Lulu was an
aggressively confrontational and uncompromising work that received largely
negative reviews and seemed to rub both Reed's and Metallica's fans the wrong
way. A tour in support of the album never came to be, and the following year,
Reed, who had been treated for hepatitis in the past, was diagnosed with a
severe liver disease. He underwent a liver transplant at the Cleveland Clinic in
April 2013, and although he subsequently proclaimed his strength and intention
to return to performing and songwriting, he died of end-stage liver disease at
the home in East Hampton, New York that he shared with Anderson in late October
of that year. In September 2020, Rhino Records brought out an expanded edition
of New York; in addition to a remastered version of the original album, it
included a bonus disc of rough mixes, work tapes, and alternate versions, as
well as a complete live performance of the album from 1989.

While sorting through material from Reed's office with the cooperation of Laurie
Anderson, archivists Don Fleming and Jason Stern discovered an unopened package
Reed had mailed to himself in 1965. It contained a five-inch reel of tape
featuring rough recordings of a number of songs Reed had postmarked as a "poor
man's copyright," including tunes he would record with the Velvet Underground
and others that were previously undocumented. (A few also boasted accompaniment
from John Cale.) Anderson partnered with Light in the Attic Records to release
the newly discovered recordings, and Words & Music, May 1965 was issued in
September 2022; LITA and the Lou Reed Archives revealed it was the first in a
series of albums that would be drawn from Reed's extensive collection of
unreleased material. © Mark Deming



Lou Reed - 1978-03-22 - Old Waldorf Theatre, San Francisco.rar -  346.9 MB

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