'We were just made for each other' US based musician Lou Reed talks about his collaboration with Metallica for their latest album

'We were just made for each other'

US based musician Lou Reed talks about his collaboration with Metallica for their latest album

How did the album Lulu happen? What went into the making of it? How difficult or easy was it? I've had certain ideas for a while and wanted to execute them to a certain point. First of all, I think it was the best thing I ever did. Two, I did it with the best guys I could find on the planet. There they were and we happened to really meet by accident (but there's no such thing as accidents) and we were there… I don't know that we ever disagreed about anything, it wasn't that kind of thing, or even anybody being in charge of anything. It was just like five guys trying to do this thing, whatever it was. Everybody in there was honest, so it wasn't a matter of keeping it honest, it was to push as hard as you possibly could within the realms of reality. That's the rough-wait till you hear the real one. Considering that the album is inspired by the 'Lulu' plays, how did you manage to translate it into music? What do you do with 'Lulu' to make 'Lulu' come to life in a sophisticated way using rock? And I mean the hardest power rock you could come up with which would have to be Metallica. I knew they can do that. I'd been submerging my psyche in 'Lulu', various points of view of 'Lulu'; there's Lulu, then the guy she does it to, the guy under him, the woman who falls for it, on and on and on it goes and I was trying to figure, and we did this in the studio. We said 'who is singing this one and why?' and go over the plot again, like 'this is so and so singing it so and so'. I was doing the vocal with James backing me up so that it was, in my mind, switching gears. Are you a big fan of Frank Wedekind's works? How did the idea of dedicating a whole album to it spring up? I had this thing I'd worked on for quite a while. It was not an original idea for me either, it was something to be done with the Berlin Theatre Ensemble and it went back to an original opera by Berg of two plays by Frank Wedekind. He didn't get it right the first time either. Robert Wilson, the director, sat with a dramaturge to make yet another version and then one time in Berlin, they said there's 14 versions of this floating but the main thrust of it is like Pandora's Box: Lulu, the great femme fatale, and in those days, I suppose, shocking for the bourgeois, which is why it was written, in the sense of conceiving her as immoral, or amoral. I got my paws on it, trying to make sense out of the script. The psychology of Lulu, the basic plot, who she did what with was pretty good, except now you wouldn't think of that as amoral. Tell us about your experience working with Metallica? Do you guys look forward to doing more stuff in the future? We had a great time working together; we were just made for each other. Lulu has got some scathing reviews? Does that bother you? Or you're just indifferent and happy producing what you wanted to? I think that Lulu has been the way it should be.