Metallica Helped Lou Reed To Be ‘The Best I’ve Ever Been’

Lou Reed continues to talk up ‘Lulu,’ his forthcoming collaboration with Metallica in glowing terms, saying that the San Francisco bred heavy metal quartet pushed him as an artist to be “the best I’ve ever been.”

He tells Classic Rock Magazine that the “power team” of Metallica is “amazing.” The Met guys helped him out immensely with ‘Lulu,’ but first, he had to get his head around the concept.

Describing the concept, which dates back to two 100 year old plays by Frank Wedekind, the acerbic veteran says, “Lulu is a great femme fatale. In those days, it was shocking for the bourgeois, because she was conceived as amoral.” Reed “got his paws” on the concept and sat with his longtime companion Laurie Anderson, working to “make sense of it.”

While we’re still waiting to find out what ‘Lulu’ will sound like, we did recently get a look at the track listing. We learned that both parties – Metallica and Lou Reed – are really stretching out on this new album, with the closing number, ‘Junior Dad’ clocking in at nineteen minutes and twenty-eight seconds.

Certainly, we will be very interested to see exactly what they’ll end up doing in that time span!

When looking back at his famous catalog, you get the sense that Reed isn’t really the type who enjoys looking backwards (and we’re not surprised by that, one bit!). Asked by Classic Rock if he was surprised that the racy parts of ‘Walk On The Wild Side’ got by the censors at the time, Reed is unfazed.

He notes that there have been plenty of similar situations with books and movies that were allowed to stand similarly untouched by the editors. “Who could possibly be bothered by the lyrics to ‘Wild Side?’ It’s inconceivable.”

But he’s somewhat grateful that ‘Wild Side’ made the impact that it did, saying “without it who knows, maybe I’d be digging a ditch. So thank God for it.”

The Lou Reed and Metallica ‘Lulu’ release will be in stores on Nov. 1. Check out the cover art here.