More than a half century ago Lou Reed would end the sparsely attended shows by the Velvet Underground by leaning their buzzing guitars against the amps, allowing the pulsing waves of feedback to continue long after the band had left the stage. Nine years after Lou left this mortal coil for good, he would likely be pleased to know his guitars and amps are still churning out that feedback.
In the sculpture garden at the Hirshhorn Museum in DC one hot Friday this month, a dozen of his amps, some of them out of cases with “Lou Reed Sister Ray Enterprises Inc.” stickers still on them, were arranged in a circle on the grass, between a couple of contemporary sculptures.
In front of each amp was one of Reed’s own guitars that he had used over the years until his death in 2013, each one turned on and tilted toward the speaker. Where once the guitars rang with “Vicious,” “Walk on the Wild Side,” and “Dirty Boulevard,” were now emitting low hums in various frequencies.
Presiding over the noise was Reed’s own longtime guitar tech Stewart Hurwood, in a T-shirt emblazoned with the familiar image of his onetime boss from the 1972 Transformer album. Hurwood, his hair an explosion of greying curls, would turn a knob here, shake a guitar there, or gently bang the body of a guitar against the ground to conjure more up noise.
Presented under the name “Lou Reed’s Drones,” it was a project of the rocker’s widow Laurie Anderson, in conjunction with the large survey of her art currently on display inside the Hirshhorn, the Smithsonian’s contemporary art museum. The elfin artist herself was tucked away in another corner of the sculpture garden, under a pine tree’s shade, adding her electronic violin and loops to the undergirding drone.
Completing the experimental improvisations in the opposite end of the garden, Karou Wanatabe, a member of Yo Yo Ma’s Silkroad, punctuated the sound with all manner of percussion as well as occasional flute. Initially exciting in its abstract way, filling the summer afternoon with notes as challenging as the surrounding art, the event also lived up to its name by droning on, largely formlessly, for four full hours nonstop.
On a hot afternoon, it was a lot.
Anderson, who is doing a number of live performances through the run of her show which continues through August 7, kept her usually chatty, entertaining stories to a minimum (though there were a few of them). Dedicating the performance to the hope of some kind of gun reform, it was unclear whether sufficient cacophony would drift up the National Mall to the nearby Capitol to make any difference.
Few shows have so seamlessly segued from soundcheck to performance. What seemed mere bleats and dirge before showtime became central to the performance once the long line of sold out ticket holders were allowed in.
It was interesting to see their spatial response to the music. Old school rockers circled the amps, of course, taking copious photos of the historic equipment as if they were at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Museum (where the elaborate rig certainly wouldn’t be out of place). Some tried to chat up Hurwood even as he worked, asking technical questions.
One guy with a grey ponytail unfurled his backpack to lie down near the circle of amps as if he were staking out turf at an imagined rock festival, ready to have the noise wash over him. More people gathered toward Anderson in the corner—she was the famous living artist at hand, after all, and the voice behind the international hit “O Superman” doesn’t give all that many concerts in Washington these days. Still others wandered around the space as they were so moved or retreated into the disappearing shade to try and keep cool.
While advance notice kept repeating how loud it would be—free foam earplugs were available from a large bag at the entrance—it rarely reached dB levels of a rock show. Indeed, sometimes the combined musicians, intently listening and playing off one another, quieted so much one could hear the birds chirp, bypassing sirens or the line of ice cream trucks on 7th Street, SW and their incessant repetition of “Frere Jacques.”
Of course audio levels could be adjusted by the individual listener just by walking around. Near Hurwood’s circle of rumbling amps, for example, one could hear nothing but the waves of feedback; but in another part of the garden, it seemed to drop way into the background of accompanying instruments.
The guitar noise itself seemed to conjure the spirit of Reed, and specifically the controversial experiments of Reed’s infamous 1975 Metal Machine Music, a double album of relentless feedback so uncompromising some thought it would end his career. “People think I made that record to get out of a record contract. It’s really funny,” Reed told me in 1998.
Inspired by the experimental music of La Monte Young’s Theatre of Eternal Music (of which fellow Velvet Underground member John Cale was a member),“it was supposed to be on their classical label as electronic music,” Reed said. “Then they started getting into covers, making it rock ‘n’ roll-looking. My fault. But there was supposed to be a big thing on it that said: ‘No songs, no vocals: Buyer beware.’ ”
Indeed, Reed wrote his own warning in the original 1975 liner notes: “Most of you won’t like this, and I don’t blame you at all.” And though the album did receive some of the worst reviews of his career, its discordant feedback eventually found an appreciative audience in subsequent generations. “They said I’d never make another record,” Reed said. “It’s interesting, though, if you listen to Metal Machine Music and [then] listen to industrial rock.”
Such reconsideration caused Metal Machine Music to be reissued in 2000. His inaugural live performance of it came in 2002; he contributed to a classical adaptation of it in Berlin in 2007 and formed his own Metal Machine Trio as a side project. But the prevailing tones of Anderson’s “Lou Reed’s Drones” may more directly have to do with the last solo recording he released, the ambient Hudson River Wind Medications from 2007, which Anderson mentioned in one of her short messages to the audience.
Originally created to accompany the dreamlike, slow motion movements of Tai chi, Anderson encouraged people who knew the Chinese practice to do it alongside more meditative parts of the performance (nobody did). Still, as she added at another point, in a heavily treated voice, “Every single note you’re hearing this afternoon has never really been played before, so everything you’re hearing is music you’ve never heard before.”
“Lou Reed’s Drones“ was one of a number of public performances scheduled in conjunction with the exhibition “Laurie Anderson: The Weather,” which runs through Aug. 7 at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington DC.
The final events are a double feature of Anderson’s films Home of the Brave and Heart of a Dog June 23, and a concert, “Quartet for Sol” July 23 with Anderson and cellist Rubin Kodheli. Admission is free; advance registration is required.
