Brighton Festival: Lou Reed Drones

'Lou Reed Drones is an installation of his guitars and amps in feedback mode: 24 strings set in motion from the push of magnetically driven cones; 360 partial harmonics colliding against each other, cascading, uniting, elevating, rising up like New York skyscrapers along the Hudson.

Introducing gain and sculpting sonic frequencies, a feedback loop is created with each guitar and its respective amplifier. Their overlapping harmonic structures produce pseudo-acoustic notes in which a beating sensation is then set in motion. Lou Reed Drones is a visceral, emotional and spiritual experience...'

Stunning metal machine music in a disused church.

The only concert I've been to where they thrust earplugs at you on the way in, and where they had beds inside.

It's on every afternoon til Tuesday (and it's free).

Might try and get some acid and go again.

Almost certainly the only thing I'll see in this year's Brighton Festival.

Lou Reed: Not Exclusive

Daily Mail.

Err, he talked about this many times and wrote a song about it, Kill Your Sons.

PS It was so well known that his sister, Merrill Reed Weiner, wrote about it here, claiming his ECT was mebbe not to do with his queer feelings.

Lou Reed: Setting The Record Straight

In the coming weeks, my brother, Lou Reed, will be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a solo performer, an honor celebrating his incredible impact upon the world of music. Since his passing from liver disease in 2013, there have been many accolades, articles, and ruminations on his life. As biographers have begun in earnest to explore every aspect of that life, there has been speculation about the childhood issues that contributed to his artistic genius.

With this piece I hope to provide clarity and context around this section of his life, as it has been inaccurately portrayed by previous authors, to the detriment of my family. For all those whose families’ lives were damaged by the pervasive medical thinking of the time, I hope to offer solace and comfort...

From an article in Medium by Lou's sister, Merrill Weiner, a psychotherapist.

This was picked up by much media around the world who, like the Guardian, zoomed in on this bit...

It has been suggested by some authors that ECT [Electroshock treatment] was approved by my parents because Lou had confessed to homosexual urges. How simplistic. He was depressed, weird, anxious, and avoidant. My parents were many things, but homophobic they were not. In fact, they were blazing liberals. They were caught in a bewildering web of guilt, fear, and poor psychiatric care. Did they make a mistake in not challenging the doctor’s recommendation for ECT? Absolutely. I have no doubt they regretted it until the day they died. But the family secret continued. We absolutely never spoke about the treatments, then or ever...

See for example, The Guardian, Lou Reed's Sister: Electroshock therapy wasn't for homosexuality.

I'm pretty sure it was Lou who first said it was an attempt to turn his little gay boy self straight...

PS Typically the illiterates at The Independent balls this up, claiming she's denying Lou had 'homosexual urges'. [Edit: Unless I'm going mad/der, The Independent piece was tweaked Sunday after someone left a sarcy comment about this...].

Lou Reed: Mark E Smith Writes...

At 14 when some bikers in town told me
I could score at this horrible gig in Sth. M/CR,
Lou Reed was a constant in my life.
The support group was 'Lou Reed & The Tots'.

By 73 I was a criminally devout Velvet Underground fan.
Not a 'Velvets' or 'Lou Reed' fan.
Or Johnny cum latelys.

About 87 when my mother was moving out,
I stood in the front room and looked at the stereogram
I'd listen to "Sister Ray" on full blast, 14 years back.
I opened the curtain and Nico walked past the house.

On the 'Gorillaz' tour,
Lou Reed must've been the only person I didn't talk to.
I bowed and he nodded.

The Velvet Underground group live and on vinyl of 1969–70
excels over 'pop & rock' of yesterday, tomorrow,
this, last and next week.

The Remainderer.

"WHEN ARE YOU GONNA LEAVE,
YOU FUCKIN TRAMPS?"

LOU REED
Manchester. 'Rock N Roll' Animal tour 1974

The Wire.

Love Lou, love MES, so this is beyond wonderful.
Mark thought I was a girl, Lou was predictably brusque.
A New York 60 year-old dwarf in black leather.
I bowed and he nodded.

"Hi Richard!"

Nearly broke my hand.
Great man.
Good times!

x

Letter Of The Week: Colour Me Lurid

The Guardian.

Here is the offending item by Richard Williams.
Nicholas de Jongh is, of course, a theatre critic of some note, who wrote for the Guardian for 20 years.

Lou Reed: He Wasn't Too Keen On Journalists...

Apparently the last portrait, taken earlier this month by Jean Baptiste Mondino.

Only saw two queer-specific articles about Lou in the British media, which seems rather odd considering his stunning impact on your actual gay culture, but doesn't really surprise me.
Here's Paris Lees on the Channel 4 News website on what he meant to trans people.
And Tom Robinson wrote for The Independent on his "implied bisexuality"...

Perhaps it was our own hunger for affirmation that led my generation to try and cast such a complex – and downright ornery – individual as Lou Reed in the role of Gay Figurehead. If ever an artist saw sexuality as a vast, diverse landscape with many bright wonders and dark private places – and if there was ever an artist unlikely to identify himself publicly with just one corner of that territory – it was Sister Lou.

An Independent reader replies...

And let's not forget the Daily Mail's moving eulogy to Uncle Lou...

A VERY debauched walk on the wild side: He did more than any other rock star to give drugs a false and dangerous glamor. Now, after a liver transplant in May, Lou Reed's own excesses have finally caught up with him

Remember, the life of this rapacious, proselytizing drug-taking pervert was cruelly cut short at the age of just 71.

Just say no, kids!

Update: In Wednesday's Mail Jan Moir writes on Lou Reed and our "dysfunctional relationship with celebrity death."
Yes, that's the same Jan Moir who infamously wrote about Stephen Gately's Strange, Lonely And Troubling Death!

Lou Reed: Nothing Left To Say

Tried to find something to sum up your whole wonderful unsummableupness and stumbled on this video.

"And there's nothing left to say
but oh how I miss him, baby...

C'mon baby, why did you slip away?"

PS Fagburn is taking today off, due to an impersonal bereavement. x

Update: Fagburn "accidentally" put some gay porn on while Venus In Furs and Run Run Run were playing - funny and quite hot.
It's what Lou - and Andy Warhol - would have have wanted.
x

Lou Reed Is Dead: Magic And Loss

"There's a bit of magic in everything, and some loss to even things out..."

That's all I want to say for now.
Whatever anyone's said you probably said it better.
Playing Songs For Drella.
Thanks for everything.
It's been a ball.

"Linger on..."

x

PS Thank fuck you're not around to hear all the crap all the phonies are saying about you now, Uncle Lou.