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Metal Machine Music
Studio album by Lou Reed
Released	July 1975
Recorded	???
Genre	Noise music
Length	64:11
Label	Buddah Records
Producer(s)	Lou Reed
Professional reviews
All Music Guide link Rolling Stone (not rated) RS 193
Lou Reed chronology
Lou Reed Live (1975)	Metal Machine Music (1975)	Coney Island Baby (1976)

Metal Machine Music is a two-disc LP (now audio CD) by Lou Reed. It was released by RCA Records in 1975. The album was re-released by BMG in 1998 and again by BMG reissue label Buddha Records in 2000.

Metal Machine Music is generally considered to be either a joke, a begrudging fulfillment of a contractual obligation, or an early example of noise music. Reed has since contradicted popular sentiment, stating that "I was serious about it. I was also really, really stoned."^[1]. However, as the last sentence in Reed's liner notes to the recording would suggest, some motivation to release Metal Machine Music came as a reaction to restricting contractual obligations from RCA at the time; the sentence, "My week beats your year." Lou Reed claimed in the liner notes to have invented heavy metal music, and that this album was the ultimate conclusion for that genre.

Contents 1 Style 2 Critical reception 3 Influence 4 Track listing 5 References 6 Further reading 7 External links

According to Reed (despite the original liner notes), the album entirely consists of guitar feedback played at different speeds. The two guitars were tuned in unusual ways and played with different reverb levels. He would then place the guitars in front of their amplifiers, and the feedback from the very large amps would vibrate the strings - the guitars were, effectively, playing themselves. He recorded the work on a four-track tape recorder in his New York apartment, mixing the four tracks for stereo.

In an interview with rock journalist Lester Bangs, Reed claimed that he had intentionally placed sonic allusions to classical works like Beethoven's Eroica and Pastoral Symphonies in the distortion. It is not clear whether or not he was being serious. In fact Reed was following the work of artists like Albert Ayler and Ornette Coleman in Free jazz, composer Lamonte Young and fellow ex-Velvet Underground member John Cale.

In its original form, each track occupied one side of an LP record and lasted around 16 minutes, though the fourth side was specifically cut in what is called a "locked groove" to repeat the last few seconds endlessly. The rare 8-track tape version has no silence in between programs, so that it plays continuously without gaps on most players.

On its release, it was reviewed in Rolling Stone magazine as sounding like "The tubular groaning of a galactic refrigerator" and "a night in a bus terminal".^{[citation needed]}

The album was ranked number two in the 1991 book The Worst Rock 'n' Roll Records of All Time by Jimmy Guterman and Owen O'Donnell. [1] Only Elvis Presley's concert byplay album Having Fun With Elvis On Stage ranked worse. The book gives sympathy to legendary record cutting engineer Bob Ludwig for having to listen to the album in its entirety (allegedly, however, Ludwig was "totally into what Lou was doing", he said, comparing the work to that of Xenakis and Stockhausen).^{[citation needed]}

In 2005, Q magazine included the album in a list of "Ten Terrible Records by Great Artists", and ranked number four in Q's fifty worst albums of all time list. However, critic Lester Bangs wrote in Creem that it was "The greatest album ever made", stating that "feedback was the best thing to happen to rock."

Despite this criticism (or perhaps because of the exposure it generated), the album has reportedly sold 100,000 copies in the US.

Today the record is seen as an early form of ambient music and a defining pillar of the noise music and industrial music movements.

• On their 1985 album Bad Moon Rising, Sonic Youth used samples from it in the songs "Brave Men Run (In My Family)" and "Society Is A Hole." Metal Machine Music was highly influential on Sonic Youth member Lee Ranaldo's solo endeavors, particularly his 1987 album From Here To Infinity, composed entirely of tape loops, feedback, and lock grooves.
• The influential German industrial rock band Die Krupps released the anthology "Metall Maschinen Musik" in 1991 and the single "Metal Machine Music" in 1992. The group's singer, Jürgen Engler, stated that the term "metal music" was invented by Lou Reed on Metal Machine Music. Engler has cited Lou Reed as one of his influences. [2]
• Japanese noise artist Merzbow is heavily influenced by this album, even titling his first released cassette Metal Acoustic Music.
• Noise-sculpting band Bailter Space referenced the album in the lyric, "Flying over Pacific Seas in a burning metal machine" in the song "Make," on their album Robot World.
• David Bowie referenced the album in his article for Rolling Stone listing Nine Inch Nails as one of music's "Immortals": "The music is a birthday surprise for Lou. Trent Reznor remixed this version of Metal Machine Music as a present."
• The Smashing Pumpkins reference the album in their song "Heavy Metal Machine" from their 2000 album Machina/The Machines of God.
• TV on the Radio use extended samples of the album for the verses of "Let the Devil In" from their 2006 album Return to Cookie Mountain.
• Metal Machine Music was presented at the Kunstlerhaus art center in Stuttgart as a sound installation in 1999, curated by the artist and then directer, Fareed Armaly.
• The German new music ensemble Zeitkratzer have played Metal Machine Music in concert, with Lou Reed as soloist, using tradition classical concert instruments from a score transcribed from the original recording. A CD release is scheduled for April 2007.

1. "Metal Machine Music, Part 1" – 16:10
2. "Metal Machine Music, Part 2" – 15:53
3. "Metal Machine Music, Part 3" – 16:13
4. "Metal Machine Music, Part 4" – 15:55

On the original vinyl release, timings for sides 1,2 and 3 were stated as "16:01". The timing on the 4th side read "16:01 or ∞" (the symbol for infinity), as the last groove on the LP was a continuous loop.

• Bangs, Lester (1987). "How to Succeed in Torture Without Really Trying.", in Greil Marcus, Ed.: Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 0-394-53896-X. 
• Fricke, David (2000). Liner notes. Metal Machine Music by Lou Reed, 1975. Buddha Records 74465 99752 2 (reissue).
• Guterman, Jimmy and Owen O'Donnell (1991). The Worst Rock 'n' Roll Records of All Time. New York: Citadel Press. 

1. ^ The Stranger interview with Lou Reed.

• Morley, Paul. "Metal Machine Music". Words and Music: A History of Pop in the Shape of a City London: Bloomsbury, 2003. ISBN 0-7475-5778-0

• A humorous essay on the 25th anniversary of Metal Machine Music
• Review at Gyrofrog
• Section on Metal Machine Music from Sangild article about (minimal) noise