A longer walk on the wild side

Just how live is a "live" album?

I was once told, by someone claiming to have "inside" knowledge, that the 1987 Simple Minds live album "Live in the City of Light" had had everything from the original recording stripped away - apart from the kick drum - and then brand new vocal and instrumental studio tracks added for its eventual release.

Of course, I have no way of proving if that was true, but it's a fact that many "live" albums have been fettled, rejigged and manipulated so that what you end up hearing is different to the original performance. The reasons for such jiggery-pokery are many and varied. There could have been a bum note, an out of tune vocal, a faulty mic, etc, etc. The degree of studio modification can also vary greatly, depending on how the finished product is intended to be heard - glossy and perfect, or warts 'n' all.

Anyway, here's one of my absolute favourite live albums - actually two albums from the same gig that should have been released as a double, instead of a year apart, so as to preserve the running order and keep all the material in.

Together, Lou Reed's 1974 "Rock 'n' Roll Animal" and 1975's "Lou Reed Live" document the last show of the 1973 tour to support the "Berlin" album -  at Howard Stern's Academy of Music in New York. The tour took in 25 venues in Europe and the US, with at least the last one putting on two houses, with the second house providing the live recordings.

  Lou Reed - London - The Berlin Tour 1973

Reed had a top notch band for the tour, with Steve Hunter and Dick Wagner on guitars, Peter Walsh on bass, Pentti "Whitey" Glan on drums and Ray Colcord on keyboards. Hunter and Wagner, in particular, were of special note as they became the "go to" pair when you wanted top drawer guitar pyrotechnics - as acts such as Aerosmith, Kiss, Peter Gabriel and Alice Cooper found that they did on various occasions.

Opinion about the band and their interpretation of Lou's material is divided. Some saw the whole concept as bloated heavy rock that was at odds with Reed's relatively "subtle" approach, whilst others reveled in the spectacle of him fronting a powerful and highly technically proficient band. As Reed reverted to less polished and more low key tour musicians soon afterwards, it's fair to say that he would have probably preferred a less "in yer face" approach.

 Dick, Lou & Steve

At one point in the tour, Lou went to see Hunter and Wagner and, according to Wagner, asked them to tone things down a bit: "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!"

Hot?

Hot???

Hell, they were almost on fire - especially during their intro to "Sweet Jane".

Originally written by Steve Hunter during his stint with Mitch Ryder, and first played in the Chambers Bros band, this intro is now highly regarded in its own right. In the Lou Reed Band form, it was  used as walk on music for Lou and then segued into "Vicious". At some point in the tour, Lou decided to make "Sweet Jane" the opening number on occasion, so the intro started switching between the two songs. As Hunter explains, "It just so happens that “Vicious” is in E minor and “Sweet Jane” is in E major, so it worked because the last chord is the five of the E."

As for Lou, well, he's still Lou here - half singing, half talking and sounding on good form, even though he was, by all accounts, rather chemically enhanced during this tour. Clad head to toe in black leather, and made up with white face to look like some sort of mutant Marcel Marceau, Lou didn't exactly leap about, as some surviving footage (see below) of the Paris gig from the tour reveals. During "Walk on the Wild Side", he starts off sitting down to sing and slyly masturbates his mic, which is about as theatrical as he seems to get. 

 

 Lou - Paris - 1973

As far as I can tell, there's virtually no studio chicanery in the final released albums. Fortunately a good soundboard of the show exists and I can't hear any glaring differences, except in terms of EQ and balance. The band is incredibly tight and tends to dominate the performance, although if there's going to be a voice over the top of Lou Reed material being played, it's best that it's Lou's and, indeed, it just wouldn't be the same without him. 

Anyway, wouldn't it be just great if the whole show was one complete album and with all the songs in the correct set order? But where would you find something like that? 

Look no further...