Lou Reed - Transformer
On November 8, 1972, "Transformer", Lou Reed's second studio album, was released.
The spring of 1972 found Lou Reed at a critical artistic and personal crossroads. Less than two years after abandoning his legendary parent band, The Velvet Underground, in late 1970 and returning to his parents' home on Long Island, Reed attempted to launch a solo career with a self-titled debut album recorded in London with studio players from Yes, including Steve Howe and Rick Wakeman. The album, which consisted largely of discarded songs from the band's time, was a commercial failure and left Reed frustrated and directionless, until the fateful intervention of his biggest fan across the ocean, David Bowie. Bowie, who was taking Britain by storm at the time as the alien Ziggy Stardust, declared in every interview that The Velvet Underground was the most important band of his generation, and offered to produce his musical hero's next album for RCA Records.
For the task, Bowie enlisted his right-hand man, the brilliant guitarist, pianist and arranger Mick Ronson, who was the musical engine of the band "The Spiders from Mars". In August 1972, the three entered the famous Trident Studios in the Soho neighborhood of London, along with the young and brilliant sound engineer Ken Scott. In contrast to the cold and hesitant production of the debut album, Bowie and Ronson wrapped Reed's dry and conversational vocals in a theatrical, rich and sparkling glam-rock shell, which connected the underground punk of the New York boulevards with the European cabaret of Berlin and polished British rock.
The recording session brought together an extraordinary rhythm section led by veteran bassist Herbie Flowers and drummer John Halsey from the band "Patto", alongside veteran saxophonist Ronnie Ross, who taught Bowie to play the instrument in his youth. The iconic black-and-white cover, photographed by British lensman Mick Rock, was born from a miraculous mishap in the darkroom during the printing of a performance photo from the King's Cross Cinema club in London. The overexposure burned Reed's outline and turned him into an ambiguous ghostly figure that oscillated between masculinity and femininity and between light and shadow, while the back cover incorporated provocative portraits created by photographer Karl Stoecker, completing the album's visual mythology.
(Photo: Mick Rock)
The album opens with "Vicious", a song that was born in the 1960s following a conversation with mentor Andy Warhol. Warhol suggested that Reid write a song with that name, and when Reid asked what kind of bastard, Warhol replied with a smile, a bastard who hits you with a flower. Ronson gave the song a razor-sharp, spiky guitar riff, accompanied by a rhythmic cowbell and a screeching, hypnotic guitar solo that illustrates from the first minute the electric tension between witty irony and rough rock and roll.
Next comes "Andy's Chest," a song Reed originally wrote in 1969 after the failed assassination attempt on Warhol by Valerie Solanas, which left the artist with severe chest scars. While the original version recorded by The Velvet Underground was fast and bouncy, on the "Transformer" album Bowie and Ronson slowed the pace to a dreamy, hallucinatory tempo, held by Flowers' melodic bass line and Bowie's high-pitched, theatrical backing vocals that give the surreal lyrics the atmosphere of a night circus.
The quiet rhythm continues into one of the album's peaks and greatest moments of grace in rock history, "Perfect Day." The song was inspired by an innocent, romantic day Reed spent in New York's Central Park with his then-fiancée Betty Kronstadt, which included drinking sangria and watching animals at the zoo, although many critics and listeners have also interpreted it over the years as a complex, double metaphor for addiction. The recording's unforgettable charm lies in Ronson's masterful orchestration, who played the piano himself and wrote a cinematic, melancholic string section that rises in the chorus to a chilling emotional catharsis, until the closing lines in which Reed repeats the resonant phrase that you're going to reap exactly what you sow.
Immediately after the dramatic silence, "Hangin' 'Round" erupts, an energetic and fast rock and roll showdown based on Ronson's sweeping guitar riff and a racing boogie-woogie piano, in which Reed, with sharp wit, paints dubious characters from the New York underworld. The first side of the record is closed with the huge hit and most associated with Reed, "Walk on the Wild Side", a song that began its journey as a sketch for a Broadway musical that was never produced based on the book by American author Nelson Algren.
Instead of the characters from the book, Reed decided to immortalize five real underground stars from Warhol's Factory gang in the song, including Holly Woodlawn, who hitchhiked from Miami, Candy Darling, Joe Dallesandro, Little Joe, and Jackie Curtis. To give the song a rich acoustic depth, bassist Flowers came up with the ingenious idea of recording a lead double bass line and doubling it with an acoustic fretless bass guitar that creates the famous surf sound, a studio trick that earned him a double fee of seventeen pounds sterling for the session. Combined with the "Thunderthighs" chorus of singers and Ross's timeless baritone saxophone solo at the end, the song managed to escape British and American radio censorship and become an unprecedented international Top 20 hit.
The second side opens with "Make Up", a cabaret ballad on which Klaus Voormann, an old friend of the Beatles, plays the tuba and leads a bare, proud and unapologetic hymn to the world of drag and the freedom of gender identity. It is followed by the melodic pop-rock gem "Satellite of Love", a song that Reed wrote back in the summer of 1970, towards the end of his days in his mother band. Ronson and Bowie turned the song into a celestial and sparkling anthem, made famous by Ronson's bright piano role and especially by Bowie's falsetto background vocals at the end of the song, which soar to astronomical notes as Reed watches with bittersweet envy the satellite of love sailing through the sky.
The album's final section sees the band let loose completely with a trio of wild, theatrical songs. "Wagon Wheel" combines a heavy, swinging glam-rock beat with rich production and sharp tempo changes, followed by "New York Telephone Conversation", a minute-and-a-half vaudeville piece based on Reed's nightly gossipy phone conversations with Warhol. The album closes with "Goodnight Ladies", a clear homage to 1920s Berlin cabaret and New Orleans Dixieland, with trumpet, tuba and saxophone accompanying Reed in a cynical, humorous farewell song about lonely nights in front of the TV.
Upon its release, "Transformer" soared to number 13 on the UK charts and number 29 on the US Billboard charts, transforming Reed from an underground cult figure into a major international rock star. More than fifty years after it was recorded at Soho Studios, the album remains a rare example of a one-off meeting of minds, the moment when the bare, dark urban poetry of New York donned the glitter of London and created a timeless classic that forever changed the face of rock and roll.
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