Metallica and Lou Reed Pretend To Make An Album Together

Metallica and Lou Reed.

Even on paper, this doesn’t sound good.

And while Rolling Stone’s David Fricke seems to think this is some match made in heaven, I’m of the opinion that David Fricke gets a little too worked up about things that may need to be viewed after first taking a deep breath.

This is one of those things.

I may be paraphrasing here, but I could have swore that he compared this to a Master Of Puppets meets Berlin or something equally as dumb or completely off-based. There is no way that it will be anywhere near Puppets or Berlin because 1.) Cliff is dead and 2.) Lou can’t remember the chord progression to “Lady Day.”

The collaboration is as simple as two artists without the hassle of a record contract, dicking around together because they can afford to.

For Reed, it’s probably a matter of his ego getting stroked by an immensely popular band who haven’t done anything creatively relevant for over twenty years. Of course, Lou is too old to understand this, but then again, Reed hasn’t been creatively relevant for over twenty years either, but nobody has got balls big enough to advise him of this.

And nobody will have the balls big enough to advise him that this project is ridiculous either. But mark my words, someone at Q Prime will politely tell the band that this pairing is not in line with the inroads they made to re-secure their fan base with Death Magnetic.

That album was more of a stop the bleeding effort, a public relations image builder than it was an actual creative re-birth. Do you really believe the band looked forward to revisiting the old thrash formula after spending well over a decade trying to flee from it?

And after re-establishing their popularity and attempting to regain some of the fans who got tired of their shenanigans, do you think Cliff Burnstein is going to let them release a full-length collaboration with Lou Reed? A record that’s based on the writings of German author Frank Wedekind?

No chance.

At best, this ends up on an overly-hyped Lou Reed album, in much the same way that all the eggheads creamed themselves over The Raven while most Reed fans declared that album to be a piece of shit.

If any of this does manage to end up on a Metallica disc, it will be done in a single song offering, not a full-length.

And it will be just as well-received as Reed’s other hard rock collaboration, Kiss’ The Elder.