Of all of Reed’s output, this album must surely have the most well known tracks on here. From Walk On The Wild Side, with Herbie Flowers’ iconic sliding bassline, to the sublime Perfect Day, with Mick Ronson on piano.
Ronson and David Bowie share producing credits as well as providing all manner of backing vocals and instrumentation, and in many ways this sounds a bit like a Bowie album, a companion piece tonally to Hunky Dory. Given that Bowie freely acknowledges his debt to Velvet Underground for inspiration, I can see a lot of circular inspiration going on here.
Like a Bowie album, there’s a mix of the serious and the playful. New York Telephone Conversation is a mocking little ditty about the inane chatter of the socialite set. Goodnight Ladies is a slow Dixieland jazz piece that feels like the end of a long night. Make Up could be out of a Kander and Ebb musical (they did Cabaret and Chicago). Satellite of Love feels very much like a Hunky Dory track, especially with Ronson’s piano and Bowie on backing vocals.
Reed covers a lot of his favourite topics including gender identity, sexuality, and drug use, as with earlier Velvet Underground albums, but the lighter tone to the music makes it sound more of a celebration than a fight to be heard (or a fight with himself over questions of identity). It’s a very strong collection of songs – I thought that I used to own this and that it started with Satellite Of Love, only to discover that what I probably owned was a Best Of... compilation which was largely the tracks on this album in a different order. It’s that kind of album.
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