I consider myself a huge fan of both Lou Reed and Metallica, but for whatever reason, when Lulu came out in 2011, I didn’t rush out to buy it. Maybe it was the critical drubbing that the album was already receiving: The AV Club gave it a D, Rolling Stone gave it a lukewarm three stars, and even today it sits at a 45 on Metacritic. But curiosity abounded in me: could it really be that bad, or weird, or whatever people said about it? I spent yesterday and today immersing myself in Lulu, and the answer is: not really. But also: holy shit, yes.
The first, most obvious thing about Lulu is that this is a weird album. The opener, “Brandenburg Gate” sets the tone early on, with Metallica laying down some serious thunder while Lou Reed sings lines like “I would cut my legs and tits off/When I think of Boris Karloff and Kinski/In the dark of the moon.” Lol wut? Later, James Hetfield (he’s the singer of Metallica, guys) adds vocal assistance, and the sound of Hetfield screaming “Small town girl!” while Reed talk-sings about movie monsters produces exactly the kind of cognitive dissonance you’re imagining. Apparently Lulu was inspired by the plays Earth Spirit and Pandora’s Box, by Frank Wedekind, which, yes, of course, that’s a very Lou Reed thing to do. It also makes me want to see these plays really badly, because they were written by a German in the 1890s, and they inspired this album, which means that they must be categorically insane.
https://youtu.be/0yQif1hIUuw
This is an album that is very adept at keeping the audience at arm’s length, which is one of the pitfalls of being a Lou Reed fan. For every “Who Loves the Sun?” you get a “Sister Ray”; for every Magic & Loss, you get a Metal Machine Music. Lulu borders on self-parody with songs like “The View,” which features more contribution from Hetfield, delivering inane, nonsensical statements like “I am the table!” The Internet had the following reaction:
So, yes, a lot of Lulu is very silly. Luckily it hits its nadir early on, with “Mistress Dread.” Metallica thrashes in the background with riffs worthy of their Kill ‘Em All days, while Reed is content to drone on and on about some Lou Reed shit. It’s with songs like “Mistress Dread” that Lulu sounds less like a collaboration and more like a mashup. (There’s an episode of Workaholics where Anders is anxious about getting older, and starts listening to mashups to prove his youth bonafides. Adam takes a listen: “Oh, I get it, it’s like Jamiroquai mashed up with Nickelback.” “Mistress Dread” is the Jamiroquai/Nickelback moment of Lulu.) Luckily – for the album and the listener – “Mistress Dread” is followed by “Iced Honey,” probably the most radio-friendly song on the album. Which is saying a lot, because Lulu is probably the least commercial thing Metallica has ever done, and I’m counting St. Anger AND their Napster lawsuit.
https://youtu.be/HC9Z_D8hFiA
But that brings me to my next point: Lulu is not a collaboration. This is a Lou Reed album. Other than a few backing vocals, Hetfield’s voice is nowhere to be heard. In fact, if Metallica’s name wasn’t on this album, Lulu doubtfully would have gotten the attention it did. That’s not to say that Lou Reed doesn’t deserve attention, or that his contribution to music is of lesser importance than Metallica’s, but this is a “normal” album – for Lou Reed. Look, of the two names on this album, one of them is famous for doing weird, experimental shit, and it’s not Metallica.
But the most successful parts of Lulu are due almost entirely to Metallica, because Metallica is a really good band. I don’t mean that they’re all individually talented – but yes, they are that – I mean that these four guys are really fucking good at playing together. (Okay, let’s be honest, Hetfield, fellow guitarist Kirk Hammett, and drummer Lars Ulrich are good at playing together. Rob Trujillo is a solid bassist, and he meshes well with the group, but bass has never been important in Metallica. Sorry, Rob.) What Lulu asks of one of the best-selling groups of all time is to be Lou Reed’s backing band, and they knock it out of the park. Metallica is Lou Reed’s best backing band since he toured with Detroit in the 1970s.
Look no further than “Pumping Blood,” the album’s third track, which is pretty much one long breakdown. The meat of the song is barely-controlled chaos, playing more like slam poetry than music. It’s held together by Ulrich’s drumming, in such a defiant manner that he almost dares you to bring up Napster, or band therapy, or that time he auctioned off a bunch of his art and was really whiny about it. Reed drones on like rock and roll’s most nihilistic vampire (sample lyric: “If I pump blood in the sunshine/And you wear a leather box with azaleas/And I pump more blood/And it seeps through my skin”) and Metallica matches him beat for experimental beat. It’s grisly, and certainly not user friendly, but like much of Lulu as a whole, it’s oddly compelling.
https://youtu.be/u_DPns5_2NA
And that right there is probably why this album is considered such a failure: it’s not for hardcore fans of Lou Reed or Metallica, it’s for hardcore fans of whatever the fuck is going on here, and that’s admittedly a niche market. Lulu can give the listener real whiplash, because songs like “Iced Honey” approach real cohesion, and songs like “Little Dog” traffic in bored vulgarity, with Reed seemingly fixated on dogs’ dicks. At least Lulu has the good sense to end on a high note: the album closer “Junior Dad” is twenty minutes long, and somehow earns every one of them. Reed actually sings, instead of delivering his lyrics in the street-poet style he’d been doing since his Velvet Underground days. It’s a lovely number that brings a bizarre, polarizing album to a surprisingly graceful conclusion.
At the end of the day, history will be unkind to Lulu. The writing’s on the wall there. The album’s reputation hasn’t improved any even since Reed’s death. But it’s not a mere curiosity, either. There’s a lot to like here – and a lot to puzzle, irritate, frustrate, and confound. But if I had to guess, I’d say that’s exactly what Lou Reed wanted.
This guy didn’t like it, though.
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