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Recorded live in the same year he released Berlin, his Brechtian trawl through a demimonde of drug use, physical abuse, suicide and general nihilism, Rock'n'Roll Animal was Lou Reed's comedy album by comparison. Gone were the playfully ambiguous trappings of Transformer, his solo debu...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inThe Australian (Canberra, A.C.T.)
Main Author Greg Callaghan, Phil Stafford
Format Newspaper Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Canberra, A.C.T Nationwide News Pty Ltd 06.03.2004
Subjects
Reed, Lou
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Summary:Recorded live in the same year he released Berlin, his Brechtian trawl through a demimonde of drug use, physical abuse, suicide and general nihilism, Rock'n'Roll Animal was Lou Reed's comedy album by comparison. Gone were the playfully ambiguous trappings of Transformer, his solo debut; Reed's stage persona was now all skin- tight leather, dog collar, close-cropped skull and pre-Goth make- up, equal parts S&M menace, hollow-cheeked glam and heroin chic. Animal kicks off with, of all things, an overture. Reed's band preferred to understate it as an Intro, four minutes of highly orchestrated dual guitar interplay that leads into one of rock's truly great chord progressions, Sweet Jane. The album's centrepiece follows, an epic song from Reed's Velvet Underground past and probably his most controversial, Heroin. Vilified at the time for acting out its subject matter onstage, he still makes no apology and insists he never set out to glorify heroin use. But Reed hardly discriminated when it came to drugs; this album also contains the Velvets' White Light/White Heat, his paean to speed.
ISSN:1038-8761