Lou Reed, on the making of his most
controversial album:
“ I would tune all the strings, say, to E, put the guitar a certain distance from the amp, and it would start feeding back. The harmonics would start mixing, going into something else. It was as if the guitar was hitting itself.”
Although
Lester Bangs approved of this album (see
ailie’s writeup), many other
critics did not:
An August 1975 Rolling Stone
review by James Wolcott likens
Metal Machine Music to
“the tubular groaning of a galactic refrigerator”. Lou Reed’s favorite
critique was from
Billboard magazine:
“Recommended cuts: None.”
The
album was recorded onto a
4-track “Uher” machine. Reed claimed that when mixing the four tracks into one
quadrophonic sound:
“I took the tape and just turned it backwards in the other two channels. Ha, ha.” He then split this large segment of
feedback into four sixteen-minute
segments: Part I, II, III, and IV. Interestingly, the
last track on the record contains a “locked-groove”. This makes the
section go on
forever, forcing one to get up and turn the record player off or “surrender to infinite squeal”.
“I wasn’t just squealing and making noises", Reed insists.
“But if you just like loud feedbacking guitars – well, there it is.”