Lou Reed – Hop Farm Festival – July 2011
2/5
By: Narayan Persaud
Back in the 1960’s when a little known New York rock band known as The Velvet Underground formed, it would have been a far stretch for even the wildest imagination to picture their front man performing to an audience tens of thousands strong under the banner of a ‘heritage act’. The Velvet Underground was a band known for experimentation and notorious for their screeching difficulty; for a sound drowned in fuzz and distortion, and for nihilistic lyrics that tapped into the darker recesses of human existence. It then seems almost surreal to find front man Lou Reed performing on a sun drenched Saturday evening to young families, old couples and everything in-between. Yet this is Hop Farm.
With a back catalogue brimming with hits, and an audience buzzing with expectations, Lou Reed’s performance had the potential to be something special. Yet, sandwiched in-between the sporadic insanity of punk icons Patti Smith and Iggy and the Stooges, Reed’s set came off as somewhat of a lull in the otherwise kinetic evening.
The problems first emerged through Reed’s clearly visible annoyance at the less than adequate sound. This lead to persistent bouts of focused aggression – ‘it’s simple!’ – aimed squarely at the seemingly incompetent soundmen, who only seemed to spur Reed’s growing anger. Now while aggression is often a valuable performance tool here Reed’s wrath was restrained to a pissed off brooding that simply came off as disinterest.
This lack of audience interaction was worsened by the dearth of hits. While haphazard bursts of ‘Walk on the Wild Side’ and ‘Perfect Day’ emitted from the clearly roused audience before Reed had even stepped on stage, they failed to materialize. Instead Reed delivered a track list that shirked both his solo and Velvet Underground hits in favour of a more hardcore approach: which at a festival doesn’t really stimulate an audience needing to be won over.
The set, while played proficiently, mostly droned on as the low energy levels caused a void in communication between performers and audience: the more disinterest Reed showed, the less interest the audience could retain.
The ending of the set offered some respite as Reed and his band stripped down to an acoustic arrangement to deliver melancholic renditions of ‘Femme Fatale’ and ‘Sunday Morning’. However, even here the emotion was lost as Reed almost robotically eschewed the melodies, simply speaking the words in uninterested fashion. The finale of ‘Sweet Jane’, probably the Velvet Underground’s biggest commercial ’hit’, was a definite pick up but seemed to fall under the cliché of too little too late. It was a competent finish, but nothing spectacular.
In all honesty the performance was plagued by sound problems yet Reed’s reaction made a bad situation worse. We may hope that what was witnessed was a genius having an off-day rather than the slow death of a legend but whatever the truth, for one of the most influential figures in rock music more is expected.
Artists in this article: Lou Reed
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