LOU REED AND METALLICA

Lou Reed is the first to admit that Lulu, his collaborative concept album with Metallica, is “not a normal recording by any stretch.” First there is the very idea of the pairing, which left many wondering where the legendary Velvet Underground founder and the iconic heavy metal band would find common ground. Then there’s the subject matter: Lulu is based on a pair of century-old plays about the rise and fall of an abused femme fatale who ends up selling her body before ultimately falling prey to Jack the Ripper. Originally written by German playwright Frank Wedekind, the “Lulu” tales have been reinterpreted over the years in formats ranging from opera to film.

The idea for these two seemingly disparate entities to join forces came about after Metallica backed Reed on the Velvets’ “Sweet Jane” two years ago at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s 25th anniversary bash, held in Reed’s native New York City. The initial plan was to remake some overlooked songs from Reed’s back catalog. Then it occurred to Reed that the anger and darkness of the “Lulu” story—which he has also recently adapted into a stage version with playwright Robert Wilson—was ideally suited to the bone-crushing roar produced by his new friends from the West Coast. “I thought it would be amazing to have that kind of muscle in back of the whole thing, and really give it the power it deserved,” he says. The members of Metallica—singer and guitarist James Hetfield, lead guitarist Kirk Hammett, bass player Robert Trujillo and drummer Lars Ulrich—quickly agreed. After just 10 days in the band’s San Rafael, Calif., studio with co-producers Hal Willner and Greg Fidelman, Lulu was complete.

Critical consensus has been sharply divided on the merits of the results. Some have gleefully torn into it with knives sharpened, while others warn that Reed’s foresight has proven correct before: Now-classic Reed albums like Berlin and The Blue Mask were pilloried upon their release. In any event, says Reed, “We did this because we wanted to do this. No one asked us to do this.”

How was working with Metallica?

It was all instinctual. I’d sent it to Lars and James to see if they were even game for it. They loved the idea, and we got together and just tore through it. Nobody thought about anything. It was just a great opportunity to play together. I had a certain sound in my head that I wanted to try to get, and I got it. The way we did this is that if everybody didn’t agree, we didn’t do it. It wasn’t majority rules—it was all together or nothing. We essentially saw everything the same way. We were all on the same rocket ship. And we funded it, so there was no one to say, “You can’t do that.”

What was the studio like?

It was Metallica’s studio—but if I had the opportunity to set up a studio in New York I would do what they did, which is to have tons of leakage, everybody playing at the same time. Everybody can see each other. The vocal is not in a booth. It’s live, put it that way. People have gotten into the habit of putting an amp in one room and the vocalist in another room and blah, blah, blah. This is the opposite.

Doesn’t that present audio problems? 

You need a certain kind of engineer, because some engineers are really obsessed with that. They’ll say to you, “Now your voice has a guitar on it and I can’t make that go away.” But we were working with someone [Fidelman] who is used to what we wanted. I didn’t mind that the vocal was not pristine. When you start doing that, it turns into one of these incredibly clean digital records. This is singing with the band, live.

Was there much improvisation?

That is what we did: just go where it goes. The band was very well prepared. They had listened and gone over the lyrics. They had things to say, like, “What do you think of this?” “What do you think of that?”

Did they push you into new turf?

They’re into heavy metal, I’m into heavy guitar, so it was no big stretch. They were so ready to go, it was thrilling. It’s like someone gave you a Ferrari for free.

What was Hal Willner’s role?

He has an encyclopedic knowledge of everything, especially music. He has a great set of ears to hear when something is working or not, and great ideas about ways to blend things. He’s a producer—that’s what they do.

What drew you to the original German source material?

I’d done an album about Edgar Allen Poe [The Raven, 2003], and a good part of that was the fascination with the psychology of it. The “Lulu” story has been around forever, in various forms through the [1930s] Alban Berg operas, through [the 1929 German film] Pandora’s Box with Louise Brooks, right into the latest version, which is Robert Wilson’s play. There are certain ways of looking at things that are in that basic story. It was a lot of fun for me to get into writing for the different characters.

What is the story? 

It’s about a woman who, in those days, had to be killed because she is—quote-unquote—a “bad girl.” If she were a man, it wouldn’t end with Jack the Ripper. And if it were today, you might not have to have her killed off at the end at all. But this story is from decades ago, and that’s what happened to women who crossed that line [in fiction] at the time. It’s such a basic plot that there’s nothing to adapt.

Some are shocked by that plot.

People are shocked? They’re not shocked. These days there’s not one movie that starts off without a woman getting decapitated—the difference is that they’re bad movies written by hacks. This is a classic story and it’s written by me. I don’t have to shock anybody. You’re talking about people with the IQ of a saltshaker.

Any plans to tour Lulu with Metallica?

I don’t know. It’s a very intense physical album to perform.

Why choose the armless mannequin design for the cover?

[Album art designer] David Turner came up with some ideas after hearing what we were doing. One of them was a picture of this mannequin from a German museum. We all took one look and said, “That’s Lulu.” We took off from there. To prove that the proportions were correct, they found a model with the same measurements as the mannequin at the top—and then the bottom half in every single one of those photos is the real model. No one knows who made the mannequin. It’s plaster and wax and just insanely striking.

–Jeff Tamarkin