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| Rock N Roll Animal, released 1974 |
This show was recorded on the night of my birth, December 21, 1973.
Every birthday it is the only music I play, from beginning to end and
without skipping tracks. My appreciation for this album increases every year. It is far and above the greatest LIVE Rock record I have ever heard, with the Rolling Stones' "Get Yer Ya-Ya's Out" coming in a
close second.
Yes, I have heard all the great ones, KISS Alive, ABB, and on and
on...but there are 3 elements that make this album such an amazing
experience: 1) Dick Wagner & Steve Hunter's twin guitar assault, 2)
Lou's delivery, 3) the lyrics. Damn,
what if Steve Hunter had tried out for Kiss instead of Ace?! You'd have
some better music, brother! (Sorry, NYC Dreamin'!) Funny, but Hunter routinely filled in for
Frehley during KISS studio sessions.
Individually, Hunter & Wagner are outstanding guitarists. And even
though they are technical masters they still can play with an urgency
and ferociousness that other less capable musicians cannot duplicate.
I've heard a dozen guitarists play "better" guitar, but when it comes to
playing with raw emotion? Forget it. What makes Hunter & Wagner
even more amazing is how they play TOGETHER. The way their guitars
weave in and out of each other. The way they unselfishly trade solos
and play off eachother is incredible. This album is pure 1970's in all
its glory, but Hunter & Wagner elevate it to a timelessness that
will always make it sound fresh and new.
Here is what the bassist, Prakash John - had to say about the album:
"Wagner and Hunter - I remember this clearly - all these guys that
came after Wagner and Hunter in '73, all these guys in that band
Aerosmith, and a band called Boston, they'd have those dueling guitar
things, you know... leads, harmonizing - they got that all from Wagner
and Hunter. These guys use to come and follow us all over the place -
New York, Boston, wherever we were playing with Lou Reed.
Next thing I know, I listen to their albums, and it sounds like Wagner
and Hunter. And good for them, but people should acknowledge that Wagner
and Hunter were the originators. They're the guys who made that sound.
If you hear that live album, Rock N Roll Animal, play the intro to
"Sweet Jane." I'm telling you, that will give you and idea of what the
two Detroit guys - well, Hunter came from Decatur, Illinois - and Whitey
and I from Toronto, with our R&B roots, hammering away on a Lou Reed song. It's
unedited. The beauty of that is none of the mistakes are fixed. Nothing
is fixed on that album. It's a true live album. It was the third day I
was in that band. I rehearsed one day, played in Toronto - of all places
- the opening night, the next night was in New York and they recorded
this album. When we were with Alice Cooper, people all over the
world would always play that album, more than Welcome to My Nightmare,
so that usually used to irritate Alice. That album got such rave reviews
that even Lou Reed hates it, because a lot of people started panning him because of his singing, and I thought that was kind of unfair. Lou Reed
has his own style - great lyricist - and people shouldn't judge him on
his ability to sing. Nobody said he had to be Al Green or Frank Sinatra.
He's Lou Reed. He can sing in that monotone voice, and if he didn't, it would sound silly. Anyway, Lou doesn't acknowledge that album, but that is a famous album, and everywhere in Europe, they'd play it.
People still e-mail me about that album. The president of the Jack Bruce
fan club finally got a hold of me a couple years ago. He'd been looking
for me because was such a fan of Jack Bruce, but he was also a fan of
Chris Squire and, oddly enough, me. He was telling me how influential
that album was to a lot of people in Australia. Get it, play it full
blast, and think of yourself at the Academy of Music in New York. Steve
Katz, the guitar player for Blood, Sweat, and Tears, produced that
album... the most unusual guy to produce that album, but nevertheless,
the best guy, because he left it alone. That's probably my favorite
album of all the albums I've done. I've done stuff that's maybe
technically better, but every time that album is played, it sounds just
like the way we recorded it. There's Lou reed
coming in a bar early, two bars late... but that's how he is. You would
be surprised at how many people talk about "Sweet Jane" alone. People
just go mental when they find out that I played on it or they've been
looking for me.
Outtakes of that album actually ended up on an album called Lou Reed
Live. That's a prime example of RCA Records ripping off the bloody
musicians. They have two albums, they pay us for one, but they can get
away with it, because it was outtakes of the previous album. You
couldn't give each musician a couple grand in the early '70s? That's the
stuff that really irks me about the business. Once in a while I may
think of it in a conversation like this, but really, the overriding
factor is the music."
In an interview, Steve Hunter said: "That band definitely took Lou Reed into a different direction. Reed talks bad about the Rock and Roll Animal and Lou Reed,
Live albums we played on, now. He puts that whole era down. Well, in
every place we ever played back then, the press was always putting down Lou Reed
and talking about the great guitars of Hunter and Wagner. He hated
that! He came to us during the tour and made us stop playing to the
audience and entertaining them because we were stealing his show. We
didn’t mean to, we were just hot!"
Don't think that is an exaggeration, because Lou is notorious for that kind of stuff. Robert Quine suffered the same fate in the 80s.
And that leads us to the vocals.
Lou took his Velvet Underground material and supercharged it into a 1970's hard-rock mold. The softer, almost "pop" leanings of Sweet Jane and Rock & Roll
have been transformed into amphetamine fueled rages; yet the delivery remains focused...sorta like a laser-sight on a tank cannon. This may be the
greatest version of Heroin ever recorded, having been described
by some as "church at black mass." Gone was the glam-rocker introduced
to the world by Mick Ronson and David Bowie. A NEW Lou
walked onstage tonight, dressed in tight black leather with a spiked
dog collar, speed-freak skinny with a shaved head.
When you play this
loud, it's like Lou is yelling at YOU. And he HATES you!
