The year Lou Reed gave up on music
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
I saw him 15 years ago in Leuven, Belgium and he played a great concert with all his new songs, ofc at the end of the night the crowd was crying out for more, especially "perfect day" and "walk on the wild side". He conceded and did play them but with great disdain, and it was obvious that he loathed playing them. 15 years later that is really all I remember from the concert.
As a comparison, I also saw the rolling stones (7 years ago in edinburgh), who in contrast were more than happy to play their classic hits, with the original vigour and energy. And it is one of my best memories.
I understand both, but it seems the line between artist and entertainer is a fine one and I can't help but think that the artists who share in the joy of entertaining are probably happier in the process.
I guess what I'm trying to say is that Lou Reed is a bit of a tortured soul who probably makes his own path harder than it needs to be - and this article confirms that.
Dave Brubeck, who performed almost to the end of his life, never seemed tired of playing 'Take Five' as the finale to his set, and it was not even his composition.
Also more on topic: it is also not implausible that he enjoys playing his current songs for an audience, but doesn't really enjoy playing older songs.
Of course artists are free to become disdainful of the very works that made them popular in the first place, but by accepting a paid gig you are taking on some tacit but well-understood obligations that cannot reasonably be waived away on the grounds of this new-found disdain.
Totally true, listeners are under no obligation to enjoy a certain body of the artist's work over the hit(s) they love. But art being art, listeners aren't in a position to dictate what the artist is doing. If the artist starts doing something else, that's their prerogative - they're exercising their artistic freedom and staying true to themselves. If the listener isn't onboard, that's totally fine, but it's time for the listener to walk away at that point, rather than attempt to continue to impose their will upon the artist.
I've obsessed over numerous musicians only to end up moving on after their style changed. I might be bummed, but they're the artist, it's their work and their right to move wherever they see fit. I'm just along for the ride, if I so choose to be - so is the rest of the audience.
And two can play this game: it is not-so-tacit, but very "well-understood" that some artists don't enjoy playing old hits. Insisting on it on the grounds of ignorance (by reducing an artists to one or two of their biggest hits, as another poster said) or in the grounds of "but I wanted to hear it" is more disrespectful than what you're complaining of.
And perhaps he cared to not hurt them by not playing it at all, but was hurt himself and pissed that they cared for the "hits" and didn't appreciate his performance. How about that?
The thing is, it's his concert. The artist choses the songlist. Would they pull the same shit on Miles Davis, or do they think because it's rock, the singer is their performing monkey?
If you choose to enter the marketplace, you have no basis for complaining when you are judged by it.
It's also more of what a label producer would say to made-by-the-company boy bands, or can be said about market friendly "entertainer" types, and tribute bands, not something that should in any culture should apply to artists.
As it happens, I am merely a consumer, while several of my close relatives are musicians, two make a living from it, one of whom also composes and has had their work performed in professional concerts by other musicians.
Now, how about you? And let's hear from coldtea as well, especially given his remarkably condescending reply to the above post (I associate that sort of attitude largely with teenagers - which, of course, he may be.)
>Now, how about you?
Sure! I was raised in a very music-first household, picked up the violin at the age of 9, and ended up teaching myself to play the bass, the alto sax, the guitar, piano and how to DJ by the time I left high school. I've played extensively in a few jazz bands and have had mild success as a local dance music DJ. I also worked with a variety of underground concert promoters throughout my 20's, and still volunteer to set up sound or work the door at shows from time to time. My vinyl collection is also getting to be a bit too large, but c'est la vie.
What shapes my thoughts here has almost nothing to do with music per se, and is instead grounded in a concept of fairness in the implicit and customary contract between performers and their audience. Caveat emptor is not a satisfactory response here, IMHO, and the logical conclusion of that route is that the audience should demand a setlist before buying tickets, which would not be to anyone's benefit.
to be clear, I don't think Reed's behavior here was egregious; it was merely a peccadillo.
If the audience didn't knew who Lou Reed was, and what songs he likes to play in concerns and how, then they were not paying attention. Perhaps they went in thinking it's some crowd pleaser performing a meddley of their hits? That's not "bait and switch" that's more like "they bought pigs in a blanket".
>I suppose you could argue that churlishly and begrudgingly performing that which had induced the audience to pay him for recorded and live performances in the first place was part of Reed's public persona!
I'd go further and say that it was also part of his sincere preferences and character.
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/tribe-call...
And he did, after all, play them in concert, though condescendingly (and perhaps realizing that if he did not, future earnings from performances would come to reflect how well-regarded his preferred works are.) In aggregate, his behavior looks to me to be petty and entitled, rather than high-minded.
Was. He died years ago. Show some respect and at least learn that before going on finding evidence to support your claim that "his behavior is petty and entitled". You clearly don't know who you're talking about
And your point is? Just because he didn't like some of his previous work anymore, or didn't appreciate the shallow focus on "past hits", he should have forfeited his publishing rights for those songs going forward?
This is some next level entitlement.
>And he did, after all, play them in concert, though condescendingly
Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
He haven't signed any contract that he'd play those songs. He haven't made any promise to play those songs. He didn't feel like playing those songs. He wanted to focus on more recent and less obvious stuff than past hits parade, as if he's in some tribute band. Some in the audience still insisted on the hits.
Is it not enough that he accepted that demand and played them. Did he also have to like it or put on a fake smile?
This is some next level entitlement.
Of course not - it's a fact emphasizing his willingness to hawk those works in the marketplace.
And this is said as someone who loves much of Reed's catalog.
Getting on label is just a deal to package your output and sell it. Doesn't have to come with compromises, especially if you don't do avant guard music but something that does have a livable audience anyway. You dont owe them to "sell even more".
In other words, the middleman pressing your records and distributing it, doesn't have to be your artistic advisor, on how you write or what songs you perform. Sure, if you want to put some water in your artistic wine, you can always do it. And if they don't like you, they can always drop you.
>I mean, don't sign with RCA and Warner and act like popular appeal isn't putting food in your mouth, by your own choice.
Sales of your music is what is "putting food in your mouth". You don't owe them money, you MAKE them money. Not to mention most artists in the 60s and up to the 80s with those big companies got horrible record deals and revenue sharing percentages anyway. They made the company $50 million (after expenses) and maybe they saw 5 of those, if they were lucky.
So your choice is merely going to a company with more reach, to sell what you write to more people, not to tell you to change what you write so that it sells more. They didn't sign a songwriter-for-hire, but a specific songwriter with specific tastes.
Yes. How is that related to having to compromise your art to do it? You can do it, and they can take it or leave it. They signed you, after all, no? At worst, the label doesn't think you're viable, and they drop you. The way Billy Joel puts it in that quote is like you have some obligation to be more commercial, just because you signed to a big label or because you sold records.
>Those people buying your music are what puts food in your mouth.
When they paid for a record, they got the songs in it, didn't they? Did anybody tell them they have some right on your future artistic direction too? Or what songs you play at your concerts and how? They bought a specific record or concert ticket, not stocks on the artist. They can always not buy more records if they don't like their new music.
>but continuing to accept their money while sniffing haughtily that you're not about that is disingenuous and fake naivety.
I'm not sure I understand the argument. You, as an artist put out some albums. People buy them. Perhaps they like them so much they buy a million of them. What exactly obligation does that give you? Didn't they get an album in exchange for their money, as promised?
Do you implied anywhere that you're "all about selling records"? If anything, by refusing to put out what they want you or what would sell more (e.g. more of the same), you imply that you're NOT about selling records. And not just imply it, but you also support this fact with your bottom line, risking not selling or alienating the record buying public.
So, it's neither "naive", nor "disingenuous", or "haughty" from the side of the artist. Sounds quite sincere. And it's not for the faint of heart, either, which is why there's no shortage of the opposite: "whatever the company wants", or "whatever will sell" audience pleasing artists.
Also, if the artist is "continuing to accept their money", this means they continue to give them their money. This means they still appreciate what he gives them, so he's not wrong by them, is he? The rest can always not give the artist their money.
I don't think that's the implication - I think it's more "don't sign with a large label for the extra exposure and income, while also complaining about how you never wanted to make it big because all you care about is the music. You're lucky, just enjoy it and keep doing what you want to do."
If anything, fans who don't know that Lou Reed wouldn't be too keen on mining his past aren't the strongest fans and the attitude they demonstrate can also be deemed disrespectful.
>Its not like this is some new concept with the job of professional musician on tour, its part and parcel.
A professional musician's job is to make music that they want to make, full stop. What you're describing - bucking up, putting on a smile and doing as your fans demand - crosses into entertainer/star territory. Lou was a musician first, and an entertainer/star last. That, too, is not a new concept. I have to fault the audience for showing up expecting someone to be something that they clearly are not and never were.
I sympathize w/ not wanting to play those songs. Imagine you had this huge multi-decade personal journey, and no matter what you build or become, nobody will let you be anything other than the guy you were for a few weeks as a kid when you first wrote that song long before most of them were even born.
I asked a co-worker what he would listen to to remember this time of their life? Maybe I'm an idiot. Maybe no one wants to remember their 30's, their 40's, their 50's....
Anyway (off on a tangent) the point is that people go to Lou Reed concerts to remember when they were in college making a mix-tape including "A Perfect Day" for their boyfriend.
While I feel bad for the artist "artistically", plenty of artist are of course making bank by playing wineries to 50-somethings that now have deeper pockets and want their love shack, baby.
I think those are precisely the type of audiences someone like Lou Reed would hate to have.
There’s a collective pull too. If you’re open minded enough to appreciate new music, but your peers usually don’t, you end up enjoying things alone or only able to musically connect with college age people. The ability to enjoy music with the other similar age peers around you will generally pull you to the older stuff they enjoy too. (Unfortunately hasn’t worked for me)
I do believe there's neural plasticity we can lose as time goes on. Maybe those people, and myself, got busy for a while and forgot how to listen to new music, is all.
My current theory is that while brain development and age plays a role, the psychological trait openness plays an equal role, maybe a greater one with age. Conscientiousness might too.
(I also do music composition and songwriting as a hobby, but I can’t figure out if that’s a contributing cause or another manifestation of the underlying psychology. Fortunately/unfortunately I don’t have the problems of fame tying me to a work I’ve outgrown.)
It's the quality of the music. Most of it is the equivalent of an overly processed sugar-spiked pseudo-food. Tracks are designed to sound the loudest from streams (so they compress the living daylights out of the dynamic range). The songs don't go anywhere: monotonous repetition of one or two chords, nothing complex or surprising. Many used canned beat tracks; that same trap beat you hear over and over again.
Every once in a while you hear new music that's actually new. Music that reaches. But it's so rare to discover because all the main channels are clogged with engineered, safe, sameness. I still like discovering new artists, its just that there are so few that do what bands from the 70s to the early 2000s did. Most of the pop these days is programmed, and even the hip hop seems... artless, all texture, no lyricism.
It also used to be an age where music is simply prevalent, but even that has changed.
Being associated with something even slightly popular can resurrect a 4 decades old hit familiar to the elders from obscurity. However, I haven't yet seen the reverse where something is really popular and drives across age groups.
Where the hell is the modern equivalent to Gangnam Style, for example? (I chose that because it's more modern, but you've got mega-hits that everybody knows from most decades--until about 2010 (see: check any karaoke night--start a betting pool on how long it takes until someone does something from Journey, for example--you won't reach the fifth song) or watch an entire venue join in for something from Neil Diamond)
Taylor Swift is supposedly killing it, yet I probably wouldn't be able to name anything she did in the last 10 years. Depeche Mode is releasing a bunch of new stuff--anybody heard any of it? Johnny Marr has released a bunch of new stuff in the last 10 years--I somehow actually bumped into one song somewhere in public. Has anybody not already a solid David Bowie fan heard anything off of Blackstar? How about Tori Amos? She's still just as brilliant as ever.
I pointed it out: go to a karaoke night. You might catch someone set up "Shake It Off" (okay, I guess I'm wrong--that counts as Taylor Swift within the last 10 years--barely). Maybe. That's it. And we're talking mostly 20-somethings--not 50-somethings.
In the 70s or 80s, you simply couldn't avoid the music. Now, it's quite easy.
Is that true? All of the music writing I see seems to contradict that.
The general consensus seems to be that the mega winners are not as big as yesteryear in terms of numbers, but, contrariwise, they are MUCH bigger in terms of percentage. ie. the market has shrunk but the remaining market is now dominated by a very few players.
Historically, there was no practical way for the average Joe to find and obtain worthless music. Only well connected hardcore music geeks had a chance, and even they often would fall short. Now it is right there at everyone's fingertips, every bit as easy to listen to as Taylor Swift, and recommended to them by algorithms.
Of what music that has been able to find value, it stands to reason that segment is shrinking with people now finding and listening to more and more worthless music. It also stands to reason that with more and more time spent listening to worthless music, it has become more and more difficult for music with potential value to find its place, thus leaving a market ripe for monopolization.
But the rise of worthless music has broken down the monolith. We're not stuck all listening to the same 1,000 valuable songs. Now we have 1,000,000,000 worthless songs that divides up the attention and some remaining segment paying for 100 songs that rose above being worthless.
I can sympathize with the architect, same as you can. He is 4000 years old, after all.
But I can also sympathize with anyone who attended only to hear about Stonehenge and now wants their money back.
If he's touring because he needs the money, he should suck it up and give his paying customers what they want. Maybe he'd be able to make more money short term and so be able to quit touring sooner.
If he's touring for himself, then he has every right to do what he wants. He shouldn't be surprised that his fans are clamoring to hear his older works. If he doesn't want to play them, fine. But he shouldn't be dismayed if he finds himself playing smaller and smaller venues when his old fans start showing up in smaller number because he refuses to do so.
I mean, this is a guy who we all know by name because of his contributions to music. He's one of the lucky ones. Talk about your first world problems.
Guess it doesn't matter now.
That's exactly what I (and many others) expect from artists. We don't want sing-and-dance men and women to amuse us.
Performing artists are free to alienate their audiences if they wish, but the consequences aren't necessarily positive for anyone.
Performing is not the same as entertaining.
Performing just means putting up a performance, that is playing in front of an audience. It could be a "top hits meddley crowd pleaser"or it could be an expression of things you want to explore as an artist, or anything in between.
>Performing artists are free to alienate their audiences if they wish, but the consequences aren't necessarily positive for anyone.
That's for the artist to decide. Some artists could not give less fucks about the consequences, and if they did they'd be in boy bands.
Only if your only idea of a positive consequence is money.
But I think that was a fine response to this problem artists have with deep catalogs. I remember seeing a Van Morrison concert, and I didn't recognize a thing he performed. Not just the songs, the style of music.
If you want to hear the hits, there are a bunch of tribute and cover bands that will play those. Considering the composition of many modern incarnations of older bands may well not include any of the original performers, even the acts themselves are essentially cover artists, they just get to use the name and logo.
>Bowie felt that a burden had been lifted by retiring the old hits he felt he was forced to perform, and said "[Retiring my old hits on tour] was a very selfish thing to do, but it gave me an immense sense of freedom, to feel that I couldn't rely on any of those things. It's like I'm approaching it all from the ground up now, starting with 'Okay, we know what songs we needn't do anymore. What, of my past, did I really like?' You pick things that were really good songs, and you try to recontextualize them, by giving them current, contemporary rhythms. And we've been knocking around ideas like 'Shopping for Girls' from Tin Machine, 'Repetition' and 'Quicksand' from Hunky Dory. Certain songs that I probably haven't ever performed onstage. They're working shoulder to shoulder with the new material, and I'm starting to see continuity in the way that I work."
>Generally, most songs that Bowie performed on the tour were played live in years to come, with only a small number of songs from the Sound+Vision Tour set list truly being retired forever; the most notable songs never to be played live again were "Young Americans" and "Rock 'n' Roll Suicide". Bowie only played "Space Oddity" on tour a single time afterwards, although Bowie did perform the song three times on other occasions. In future tours Bowie would in fact begin to play lesser-known songs, only occasionally punctuated by his well known older "hits", and bias towards playing material written after 1990. After finishing the Sound+Vision tour, Bowie returned to his band Tin Machine for their second album.
It's absolutely worth reading or listening to the whole thing, but one thing that actually took me by surprise was:
BOWIE: Frankly, if I could get away with not having to perform, I'd be very happy. It's not my favorite thing to do. As I say, I don't mind trying it out and making sure something seems to work well. But I really do rather want to move on because I think it's rather a waste of time endlessly singing the same songs every night for a year. And it's just not what I want to do. What I like doing is writing and recording and much more on the - I guess, on that creative level. It's fun interpreting songs and all that, but I wouldn't like it as a living.
Taking it out of context does not do the comment justice, and if you're not as joyless as Lou Reed during an encore (or, for the love of God, during an interview), you should go ahead and listen to or read the whole thing.
https://www.npr.org/2023/08/25/1195632580/david-bowie-the-fr...
Funnily enough he also was very disappointed by the Stones, and how they seemed so cocky on stage and that they didn’t care to sing half the lyrics aloud. Of course this was back in the late 70s/early 80s.
I’m under 40 but while we’re on the subject of rock “legends” on stage, no performance I’ve seen has matched Elvis Costello I saw in 2011 or so. He played acoustic guitar without a band backing him nor any kind of stage lighting to speak of, and it was mesmerizing.
Used to listen to it while studying to block out background noise.
There is a poem called "The Coach and Glory of Love" that is in fact the very song "Coney Island Baby" from the homonymous album released later in 1976[1].
[0]: https://theadvocateblogdotnet.wordpress.com/2012/11/13/from-...
[1]: https://theadvocateblogdotnet.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/pg...
Actually I like his first album more than "Transformer":
Sounds like something out of a Wes Anderson movie. Guess it should be the mom not the dad though.
Answer: “can I kick it? Yes you can.”
This is in the FAQ at https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html and there's more explanation here:
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&so...