Lou Reed - "God should have a Leica".

jsrockit said:
Kind of a stupid thing to say, but I'm sure I'd say even stupider stuff if I was in the public spotlight often.
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Well, after reading "Please Kill Me," about the New York punk scene of the 70s, I realize Mr. Reed has a tendency to say things that are, ummm, a little off-base. I think he thinks it's part of his charm.
 
Lou has done some amazing stuff. But unfortunately, for the last 20, or arguably 25, years he has lived off his legend.

He is also exceptionally obnoxious. That could be forgiven, but personally, I've seen many shows, including the Velvets reunion, which were dreadful, all the way through to the Metal Machine Music tour, which was possibly worse - it's hard to be definitiv... as Sam Johnson said, it's like arguing precedence twixt a louse and a flea. Few other people rely on their reputation quite as much.

John Cale, on the other hand, is very nice - and his albums, over the last 20 years, are far better.

I've seen some of Lou's photos, and they are pretty bad; he might even make Bryan Adams look talented. He did hang out with Andy Warhol, but so did Gerard Malanga - whose photos are great. So no, personally I don't care if he uses a Leica.
 
Paul Luscher said:
Well, after reading "Please Kill Me," about the New York punk scene of the 70s, I realize Mr. Reed has a tendency to say things that are, ummm, a little off-base. I think he thinks it's part of his charm.
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Be careful what you believe in that book. The 'writers' just pulled quotes from 30 years of magazine interviews and assembled them into the history that they wanted to create. They totally ignored tons of bands and people who were integral to that whole scene because they don't like them. The Cramps are a perfect example: they are barely mentioned in the book, but were a huge part of the 76-79 CBGB scene. Legs happens to hate The Cramps, so he just left them out.
Total rip-off, in my opinion...
 
bob338 said:
Be careful what you believe in that book. The 'writers' just pulled quotes from 30 years of magazine interviews and assembled them into the history that they wanted to create. They totally ignored tons of bands and people who were integral to that whole scene because they don't like them. The Cramps are a perfect example: they are barely mentioned in the book, but were a huge part of the 76-79 CBGB scene. Legs happens to hate The Cramps, so he just left them out.
Total rip-off, in my opinion...
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I was there.
The Shirts, The The...OMFUG records...the Police.
Strictly as an interloper though.
 
For some strange reason I'm reminded of John Lennon's infamous statement when arriving in the US in the sixties that the Beatles were probably more popular than Jesus Christ.

A large segment of offended Americans reacted by burning their albums in the streets.
 
bob338 said:
Be careful what you believe in that book. The 'writers' just pulled quotes from 30 years of magazine interviews and assembled them...
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Not true. Legs and Gillian have indeed imposed their own agenda - one I don't particularly agree wtih - but these were essentially all new interviews, not taken from secondary sources. I happen to know that, because I know many of the people interviewed.

THis is a very disparaging accusation to make... when it's wrong.
 
Paul Luscher said:
Well, after reading "Please Kill Me," about the New York punk scene of the 70s, I realize Mr. Reed has a tendency to say things that are, ummm, a little off-base. I think he thinks it's part of his charm.
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doesnt french peopel start drinking red wine at 10 in morning..

i was in france like 4 years ago and we were drinkign red wine with camembert cheese at 10 in morning like a regualr hhint
 
denizg7 said:
doesnt french peopel start drinking red wine at 10 in morning..

i was in france like 4 years ago and we were drinkign red wine with camembert cheese at 10 in morning like a regualr hhint
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Well if you did then they all must.

Don't you see the fallacy of such generalizations?
 
denizg7 said:
doesnt french peopel start drinking red wine at 10 in morning..

i was in france like 4 years ago and we were drinkign red wine with camembert cheese at 10 in morning like a regualr hhint
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Well if you did then they all must.

Don't you see the fallacy/silliness of such generalizations?
 
Paul T. said:
Not true. Legs and Gillian have indeed imposed their own agenda - one I don't particularly agree wtih - but these were essentially all new interviews, not taken from secondary sources. I happen to know that, because I know many of the people interviewed.

THis is a very disparaging accusation to make... when it's wrong.
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Did they interview Lou? I highly doubt it, but they have a bunch of quotes from him in the book.
I don't have the book in front of me, so I can't tell you the number, but they credit the original sources for the quotes they used in the book, and there are quite a few of them.
I thought this book was interesting on first read, but after you consider that it was written by two people who made up their own version of history and crafted their interview quotes to support it, it really has no journalistic merit. In my not-so-humble opinion they did this purely for money and ego, not for the sake of history.

Oh yeah, I know a lot of the people in the book, too. I worked for one of those bands for 16 years, so I'm not talking out of turn here.
 
denizg7 said:
doesnt french peopel start drinking red wine at 10 in morning..

i was in france like 4 years ago and we were drinkign red wine with camembert cheese at 10 in morning like a regualr hhint
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No. White in the morning. And not always as late as 10:00.

Or a Cognac or Calvados for a 'heart starter', some time between 0600 and 0900.

Some (not many) drink little or nothing.

Cheers,

R.
 
bob338 said:
Did they interview Lou? I highly doubt it, but they have a bunch of quotes from him in the book.
I don't have the book in front of me, so I can't tell you the number, but they credit the original sources for the quotes they used in the book, and there are quite a few of them.
I thought this book was interesting on first read, but after you consider that it was written by two people who made up their own version of history and crafted their interview quotes to support it, it really has no journalistic merit. In my not-so-humble opinion they did this purely for money and ego, not for the sake of history.

Oh yeah, I know a lot of the people in the book, too. I worked for one of those bands for 16 years, so I'm not talking out of turn here.
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But that's what an oral history is; it doesn't take away from the mass of research in there. I don't subscribe to the history - they try to write off British punk and they also have it in for James Williamson and others - but that doesn't stop this being a great social document. Lou might have been taken from cuttings but they tracked down a lot of great people, including all the original Stooges at a time they were very tricky to get hold of.

I'm not a fan of McNeil, I was engaged in an overlapping project when he was working on Please Kill Me & he tried to stop people talking to me. But that book, while admittedly biased, is a great document of an intriguing period.

But then again, my opinion might be warped, my brain has definitely been damaged by sitting thru (most of) the recent Metal Machine Music show.
 
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