Lou Reed and Metallica “Lulu”
Big mistake.
I’m not talking about “Lulu,” which was really the opposite of a mistake. “Lulu” was a completely intentional, highly considered, rigorously researched dream come true for those involved. Lou Reed could not contain his pride, describing the album as “the best thing I ever did.” To this day, Lars Ulrich grins like a giddy schoolboy when describing the experience of making “Lulu.” No — in spite of what you heard, read or assume — “Lulu” was not a mistake. The mistake was mine. The mistake was this — thinking that it would be a good idea to revisit this album and write about it here, more than a decade after it was released.
When “Lulu” first came out, I heard exactly one song one time. I listened to “Junior Dad” — all nineteen and a half minutes of it — and concluded that I both did not need and did not want to hear more. Best to cut my losses early. In truth, I liked “Junior Dad.” It’s mostly just spare guitar and lots of viola behind a Lou Reed tone poem. It’s not far from some of the stuff of “The Blue Mask” or “Magic and Loss,” just much longer. And, for the life of me, I could not figure out what it had to do with a nineteenth century prostitute turned socialite gone wrong. Fearful of what would happen if I went back to track one and pressed play on the other hour plus of “Lulu” — assuming the criticism was even half true — I opted to move on. Eleven years later, I returned. And that was probably a big mistake.
This little project — reconsidering an album made by Lou Reed and Metallica (affectionately and dismissively referred to as “Loutallica”) — is a mistake for several reasons. For one, my Heavy Metal credentials are light. I’ve spent some time with Metallica’s “Black” album because I’m a man of a certain age. I know enough to be dangerous about “Load” and “Reload” because I worked for Elektra records at the time of their releases. And I checked in with “St. Anger” because, at the time, I was gripped by what I had seen in “Some Kind of Monster.” But — full disclosure — I’m not a fan of Thrash. I’m not really a fan of Metal at all. I love AC/DC. I dig a lot of Motörhead. But that’s pretty much the extent of my Metal fandom.
Additionally, I’ve not explored “Lulu’s” source material in any way. Before 2011, I’d never heard the name Frank Wedekind. Ten years later, I’ve still not read a word of his plays nor have I read the discourse surrounding them. During interviews in support of the album, Lou made it eminently clear that “Lulu” was for literate and curious listeners. At the time, I considered myself to be kind of literate and highly curious. But now, knowing what I know and having heard what I have heard, I am less sure. Though I’ve listened to a lot of Lou Reed’s music (Even the meditation album! Even “Metal Machine Music”!) and while I am interested in matters of class and gender and sexuality and morality, I'm not sure that I’m “Lulu’s” target audience.
Ultimately, though, I think this might be a mistake because there are very few albums — and probably none that were so commercially insignificant and so critically reviled — which have been as thoroughly considered and reconsidered as “Lulu.” Many very bright people have dissected the album. Chuck Klosterman for Grantland. Ann Powers for NPR. Stuart Berman for Pitchfork. Nitsuh Abebe for New York Magazine. James Parker for The Atlantic. “Lulu” was thoroughly covered by all the music trades, by the pop culture rags, the men’s mags, print dailies, alt weeklies, fine art publications and everything in between. Further, it’s been incessantly reappraised since its initial, thunderous thud. As the last studio album Lou Reed made before his death in 2013, it functioned as a strange, black leather encased lens into his final chapter. And, in 2021, ten years after it was first released, another round of reviews and revisions cropped up to mark the album’s anniversary. “Lulu’s” bibliography is long and studious.
Given how few people have actually heard the album, and how few of those people are interested in anything beyond the stars involved, the volume of “Lulu studies” is staggering. But the divergence of the various theses is so bold as to suggest that either (a) people are listening to different albums or (b) nobody knows anything.
Obviously, the answer is closer to (b). In retrospect, the “Lulu” discourse can read like an insular conversation between the one hundred people — mostly writers and a few Reddit group moderators — and maybe one or two of whom actually know something about Frank Wedekind or nineteenth century German culture. There is, of course, overlap in the various takes — but less than I would have assumed. I was amazed to learn how many different ways an album could be reviled. And, inversely, though there are many loving and sympathetic “Lulu” articles out there, none of them proclaim “this is a great album” or “I love listening to this.”
Like the album itself, the “Lulu” discourse is hard to follow. And while I’ve not cracked the code, settled the argument or even figured out a pattern to the various takes, I can, minimally, describe their gist. And so, if only to justify my Loutallica plunge and my insistence in finishing what I started, I’ve organized the conversation into its three most salient positions:
“Lulu” is a horrific record: This is perhaps the most common argument, and the easiest to understand. The bevy of one star/F- reviews, typified by Pitchfork’s famous 1.0, make the case quickly and indelicately. For those standing on this corner, “Lulu” is unenjoyable, needlessly obtuse and poorly rendered. This camp suggests that the two artists were mismatched and that whatever Lou Reed was trying to do on “Lulu” (a beat poetry, one man show?) Metallica was doing something else (pretentious, heavy handed flailing around Lou’s ridiculous words).
The harshest of these critics spare nothing and no one. For them, “Lulu” is worse than the time that Sinatra went Disco or when Gary Cherone took the mic for Van Halen. In 2011, both Lou and Metallica were in restless, fallow periods. Lou’s previous albums were the two hour homage to Edgar Allen Poe and “Hudson River Wind Meditations.” Metallica, meanwhile, had been desperately, publicly trying to survive haircuts, Alt Rock, addiction and superstardom. Most everyone involved in “Lulu” was an easy target. But while there is a fair share of snark in even the harshest “Lulu” criticism, the basic premise is the same: the album is an awful, sadistic failure.
“Lulu” is an act of artistic bravery: This assertion is more nuanced and therefore harder to defend or assail. Most of the writing that fits this bill stops short of the traditional album review. Rather than assess the merits of particular songs, these tend to be “think pieces” applauding the courage required to make something so evidently challenging and intellectual. They marvel at the valor of the visionary and their vision. They cite Lou’s knack for poetry and cultural criticism within a “Pop” (or “Semi-Pop”) format. They cheer him for confronting and loving the unlovable. They extol the sheer ambition of “Lulu” — of creating a heady work of avant garde theater in just two months' time.
These writers are less “Lulu apologists” than they are devoted “Lou Reed explainers.” And while their various cases are heartfelt and cogent, you won’t find many unabashed “Lulu” exaltations or strident textual defenses in these selections. Instead, you get a lot of “thank you for daring to be Lou Reed” and “thank you, Metallica, for daring to follow Lou Reed.”
“Lulu” is completely misunderstood: This is the biggest tent of the “Lulu” parties and, also, perhaps the most justifiable. On the one hand, “Lulu” is misunderstood because it is nearly impossible to understand. It is obtuse and symbolic. It’s dense as fuck — ten and twenty minute songs with eight verses consisting of ten lines per verse, delivered from various perspectives through the deep, aged monotone of one man. Unless you are a scholar of Wedekind and Rock Music and modern poetry, I’m candidly unsure how you could understand “Lulu.”
Moreover, “Lulu” suffered in part because it was received as either a Lou Reed album, a Metallica album or a Lou Reed and Metallica album, when in fact it had very little in common with either artists’ most iconic work. And finally, there is the assertion that Chuck Klosterman made, which goes something like: the problem with “Lulu” isn’t so much the music (which is obviously terrible) but rather that a major record label would agree to release and promote the album as a significant commercial event; that “Lulu” suffers most because of the medium, format and context in which it was released.
There are many corollaries to that assertion of “misunderstanding.” For instance, it is fair to wonder how “Lulu” might have been received if Lou Reed staged it as a one man show, with Metallica as his orchestra, at The Public Theater in New York or whatever its Berlin equivalent is. Or if it was released on some tiny, avant garde record label. Or if Diamanda Galas sang in place of Lou Reed. Or if it had been made in 1983, when Metallica were just coming up and right after Lou had released “The Blue Mask.”
All of which begs the question: what is “it”? What is “Lulu”? It’s obviously not a mainstream Rock and Roll album with three to five minute songs, one or more of which might be played on the radio. It’s not a stage play. Not a one man show. There’s really nothing else like “Lulu.” For all of its pretension, it is not concerned with virtuosity — it’s not a Prog album. And despite its occasionally thunderous riffage, it has movements that are quiet or classical or something that is hard to describe but definitely not Metal. The one thing I can say about “Lulu,” which many others have said before and which Ann Powers suggested in her 2012 eulogy, “What Lou Reed Taught Me,” is that it is designed to discomfort.
Human beings hate discomfort. We seek closure and pleasure and meaning. We avoid uncertainty and pain and ambiguity. It’s a survival tactic — one that allows us to make more efficient decisions. But it’s also a massive vulnerability — one that leads to bias and impatience. Lou Reed was, if nothing else, acutely aware of this tension. He was, by trade, a gifted Pop songwriter, eminently capable of melody and structure and everything that is required to make a song comfortable. And yet, very early in his career, he committed to the subversion of Pop through drones and noise and forbidden subjects. Though today they might be considered “beautiful” songs, “Heroin” and “I’m Waiting For the Man” and, even “Femme Fatale” were undoubtedly cause for discomfort in 1967. And as entrancing as “Sister Ray” may sound today — as much as it sounds like the blueprint for The Modern Lovers and Eno and Can and Yo La Tengo and…you name it — it undoubtedly caused a lot of headaches in 1968.
But none of those songs — not even “Sister Ray” — are as discomforting as “The View” or “Mistress Dread,” both of which are plainly terrifying, like the soundtracks to a genital tattooing in some eastern european dungeon. And, for all of the needle pushing and gender bending of Lou’s early career, he never sounded so terrifyingly sadistic and masochistic as he does on “Frustration”:
I feel the pain creep up my leg
Blood runs from my nose
I puke my guts out at your feet
You're more man than I
To be dead to have no feeling
To be dry and spermless
Like a girl, like a girl
I want so much to hurt you
I want so much to hurt you
I want so much to hurt you
Marry me
I want you as my wife
Spermless like a girl
More man than I
More man than I
Like “Sister Ray,” and many lesser, but still wonderful Lou Reed songs wherein his conversational delivery strays from the rhythm and melody, “Lulu” plays with the relationship between “singer” and “song.” More often than not, Lou sounds just barely concerned with meter. It’s not so much that he is unaware of Metallica behind him or that they are performing something different so much as it does like Lou is intentionally pressing up against the band, pushing them away — pushing everything away.
There are, necessarily, moments of relief on “Lulu,” if only because our body naturally reacts to changes in volume and to suggestions of the familiar. “Iced Honey” is not so far from Loutallica’s performance of “Sweet Jane” at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame anniversary. When James Hetfield sings backup, it’s hard to not imagine Doug Yule on “Loaded,” or the “colored girls” singing “doo doo doo” on “Walk on the Wild Side.” And if you squint your ears and forget the names on the album cover, “Cheat on Me” sounds not unlike The Dirty Three — a simple, vaguely hymnal melody paired with an anxious string section. Tired on the outside and broken within, Lou’s character repeats the titular refrain until he is joined by Hetfield, who howls along in desperation rather than harmony. But there is just enough to hold onto — the melody, Hetfield’s familiar voice, the relative lack of volume — to induce very brief, very minor comfort.
Much of the same can be said about “Junior Dad,” which, in spite of its girth (nearly twenty minutes) is beautiful in the way that the downturn of a frown can be beautiful. And touching in the way that distance and regression can be. I think it is a genuinely exquisite song. But over an hour into “Lulu,” you have no bearings. You don’t really understand what’s going on. You don’t know who is who. You’ve lost sight of what is pleasure and what is pain, what is male or female, brilliant or idiotic, love or fear. With all the talking and all the noise and the words, there’s just not much oxygen left at the end of “Lulu.” You’re lightheaded. And exhausted. And only comforted by the fact that you are no longer so uncomfortable.
Then, a week later, you’ve pretty much forgotten about “Lulu.” You’re not sure what it is exactly or what you’ve learned, and whether it taught you anything you hadn’t already surmised from “Femme Fatale,” “Berlin,” side one of “Rock and Roll Animal,” random parts of “Metal Machine Music” and “Waves of Fear.” And then, ten years later, you start thinking about “Lulu” again. I’m almost sure of it.