Rock n Roll is Dead, and Lou Reed Killed It

Rock n Roll is Dead, and Lou Reed Killed It

By: Erreh Svaia

Caprine Dispersion

What would be better than thinking that rock is dead and that nowadays there is the opportunity to start over, to start something really disruptive like rock n roll was in its beginnings? Something really rebellious and that shakes us the very existence, what could be better than to think that Lou Reed himself killed rock n roll with his extraordinary and unexpected album Lulu in which Metallica was his band? Lou Reed had done it before, had created records like the legendary Metal Machine Music of 1975, a legendary recording consisting of white noise considered as a professional suicide, or his Hudson River Wind Meditations record in an “ambient” plan that proved more squeezing for his followers that same MMM, to this we can add the album that he edited with his Metal Machine Trio, a concept of improvisation live in which again Lou was "played the skin" with a live show of pure instrumental improvisation that angered his followers, desperate calls for Sweet Jane or Rock N Roll were heard while Lou and his companions responded with unexpected sounds created at the time.

Lulu is an album that if you learn to listen to it like a Lou Reed album, it's wonderful, a sort of summary of Lou's career, if you want to listen to it like a Metallica album, it's an obvious failure, something like Julio Cortázar´s Rayuela (or perhaps the "interactive" Bandersnatch of the creators of Black Mirror) in which you choose the way you want to listen to it, is an album that definitely "destroyed" Metallica, who were already badly wounded after their flirtations with the "Alternative Metal" trend, Lou Reed took them to the difficult and destructive musical environments in which he always knew how to handle, but for Metallica luck was not favorable, to the extent that his career seemed to be always hanging by a thread, impossible to imagine that a new Master of Puppets, Ride the Lightning or ... And Justice for All was inside them, in the case of Lou, Lulu was the perfect closing for his career, the ultimate insult to the casual listener, more "interactive "? Simply impossible, Bob Dylan with Slayer? Unimaginable

In 2018 the best powerful rock albums I could hear were those of the Pestilence and the Voivod, recordings by veterans of the metal already far from their highest points musically speaking, the Judas Priest could not make a record or at least close to his legendary Painkiller, while The Body probably created the most terrifying record, but it could hardly be described as I Have Fought Against It, But I Can't Any Longer, like a "metal" album, of course, it has elements of the genre, but it works as something very different, not to mention classics of the genre such as Megadeth or Slayer, or giants like AC / DC, Guns n Roses, Aersomith or Kiss (or my beloved Hanoi Rocks), which since years ago stopped producing relevant or really exciting music, today, those doses of adrenaline rarely come from metal or rock, come from bands like the Sons of Kemet (fierce jazz Afro roots), Kamasai Washington (The shape of jazz to come?) , from the Silent Servant (electronic combative), or Trent Reznor (who now makes great soundtracks), I'm about to hear the new album of The Struts, who tell me, are better than the Greta Van Fleet (which would not be very difficult to achieve) , but after a couple of songs I do not think anything relevant, which confirms my version about the death of rock, the need to invent something new and the opportunity to learn something from genres that flow parallel to rock, but not rock n roll, Lou Reed knew how to do that since long time ago, he died, but he went away with a big smile on his face.