Hippies vs. Punks: Metal Machine Music 1975

Lou Reed died this past Sunday. Here is one of the items from his New York Times obituary by Ben Ratliff that caught my eye:

Beloved of Mr. Reed and not too many others, “Metal Machine Music” was four sides of electric-guitar feedback strobing between two amplifiers, with Mr. Reed altering the speed of the tape recorder; no singing, no drums, no stated key. At the time it was mostly understood, if at all, as a riddle about artistic intent. Was it his truest self? Was it a joke? Or was there no difference? 

Mr. Reed wrote in the liner notes that “no one I know has listened to it all the way through, including myself,” but he also defended it as the next step after La Monte Young’s early minimalism. “There’s infinite ways of listening to it,” he told the critic Lester Bangs in 1976.

I read the obit Monday morning on the train coming into work. As an homage I listened to Metal Machine Music, which was released the summer of 1975, all the way through on Wednesday.  I made another attempted go-round on Thursday, making it only halfway before I was pulled away from my desk to rearrange the conference space on the first floor. I resumed this afternoon approximately where I left off

James Wolcott in a review from August 14, 1975 in Rolling Stone calls M/M/M a masochistic indulgence:

If this album is Reed's Self Portrait, then we may have to tolerate a lot of stroboscopic sludge before he gets back on the tracks. What's most distressing is the possibility that Metal Machine Music isn't so much a knife slash at his detractors as perhaps a blade turned inward. At its very worst this album suggests masochism.

And I think there's something to it. Absorbing all that guitar feedback you can't help but feel as if you are indulging in self-punishment. The sound is the sound of radio signals bouncing through deep space; it's the sound reminiscent of the soundtrack of low-budget science fiction masterpiece Dark Star (1974); it's a sound that includes squeaking noises of small feral animals; it's the sound of the monkey-mind chattering away during that part of the race when you are done, finished, kaput but you have miles left to go -- "Stop! Give up! You're just hurting yourself." / "No. I must continue." Metal Machine Music is the sound of suffering.

But for all of that, listening to M/M/M is not unpleasant. It was appropriate that I did so at work, ear buds affixed to head, toiling away at my Bartlebyesque chores. The modern office, boneyard of Western Man, is a perfect environment to hear Metal Machine Music. No one wants to be in an office: it's a soulless, sorrowful place filled with electronic equipment and alienated people; it's not a place for pop or hard rock or really for any music other than the distorted electronic feedback sounds captured on M/M/M.

Lou Reed biographer Victor Bockris has called Metal Machine Music "the ultimate conceptual punk album and the progenitor of New York punk rock." And while this may be true, M/M/M is fundamentally an homage to drone music. Lou Reed gives a shout-out to La Monte Young's Theatre of Eternal Music, the group John Cale was a member of prior to The Velvet Underground, in the liner notes to M/M/M: "Drone cognizance and harmonic possibilities vis a vis Lamont Young's Dream Music."

Cale's viola on "Venus in Furs" and "Heroin," my two favorite tracks on VU's debut LP, The Velvet Underground & Nico (1967), introduced countless college undergraduates to drone music:

A prime example of drone music is Dream House 78' 17" (1974), by its chief creator La Monte Young, with his partner Marian Zazeela and the Theatre of Eternal Music:

La Monte Young's drone music is influenced by Hindustani classical singer Pran Nath. (Lou Reed might have loathed the Hippies, but drone music is important to both.)

I went through a Spacemen 3 period a couple years back after stumbling across a copy of The Perfect Prescription (1987) in a branch library near work. Mostly I listened to Dreamweapon: An Evening of Contemporary Sitar Music (1995), which is an appreciation of La Monte Young and a wonderful introduction to drone music:

In the last five years Lou Reed returned to Metal Machine Music by performing as part of the Metal Machine Trio. A recording of their first live show is excellent and available for download on Lou Reed's website.

To draw an illuminating contrast, a brief inspection of an album released a month prior to M/M/M is called for. Gary Wright's The Dream Weaver (1975) is touted as the first-ever all-synthesizer pop album (if you don't count the many Wendy Carlos albums like the soundtrack to A Clockwork Orange (1971), or session superstar Jim Keltner's drumming or some Ronnie Montrose guitar on one track).

Released in June 1975 The Dream Weaver peaked in the spring of 1976 at #7 on Billboard's pop album chart. I listened to it twice in a row at work today. And believe it or not, while much shorter in length than Metal Machine Music, I found it more painful to listen to. There are some decent tracks. I like "Can't Find the Judge" and "Much Higher" where Wright is doing his best to channel his inner Stevie Wonder. (The Dream Weaver features the ARP synthesizer and the Fender Rhodes electric piano, Stevie's instruments of choice from the albums of his classic period.) I'm less enamored with all the Moog Wright employs; it frequently rises from the back of the mix like a stoned zombie teenager stumbling out of a Friday night 1970s planetarium laser light show.

Gary Wright was definitely a Hippie. A buddy of George Harrison -- he played piano and organ on All Things Must Pass (1970) -- and previously the organ player and a vocalist for Spooky Tooth, Gary Wright wrote the song "Dream Weaver," which, along with "Love is Alive," reached #2 on the Billboard singles chart, after reading the Hippie manifesto Autobiography of a Yogi, a gift from George Harrison. (I grew up in the 1970s frequently glancing at the picture of Paramahansa Yogananda that adorned the front cover of his autobiography; for a couple of years there my father always seemed to be caring around a copy.)

One thing you can say about Gary Wright's The Dream Weaver, it successfully forecast the synthesizer-based, slow-dance schlock that dominated the 1980s.

The moral of the story? In 1975 the Hippie cashed in while the Punk took a courageous stand.

Let's end with the words of the great Lester Bangs taken from a 1976 Creem article devoted to Metal Machine Music:

When you wake up in the morning with the worst hangover of your life, Metal Machine Music is the best medicine. Because when you first arise you're probably so fucked (i.e., still drunk) that is doesn't even really hurt yet (not like it's going to), so you should put this album on immediately, not only to clear all the crap out of your head, but to prepare you for what's in store the rest of the day. 

Speaking of clearing out crap, I once had this friend who would say, "I take acid at least every two months & JUST BLOW ALL THE BAD SHIT OUTA MY BRAIN!" So I say the same thing about MMM. Except I take it about once a day, like vitamins.

Not bad advice.