This is the album that completed Lou Reed’s ‘transformation’ to the mainstream.

“Transformer” gave him his first significant hit single with “Walk on the Wild Side,” and Reed’s subsequent adoption of the glam style that had been popularized by David Bowie and his ilk only helped to broaden Reed’s impact with record buyers who may not have previously heard of Lou Reed or his now-legendary band, The Velvet Underground.

As influential as they most certainly were, nobody would have accused that band of being overly slick. If anything, The Velvet Underground were known as one of the least polished rock and roll groups of all time. From the start, though, Reed’s solo career veered onto a very different path than his group work.

His first release featured ringer musicians, including Steve Howe and Rick Wakeman from the progressive band Yes(!). When Bowie and guitarist Mick Ronson double-teamed to produce that record’s follow-up, Reed found himself immersed squarely in the middle of the era’s most popular musical form. “Berlin” followed, a theme album that combined the extraordinarily lush production of Bob Ezrin with some of the most harrowingly depressing music of Reed’s career – which is really saying something.

Despite the significant improvement in production techniques on his studio efforts, Reed’s live shows during this era remained roughshod and unpolished, so when “Rock ‘n’ Roll Animal” hit the stores, it came as something of a surprise to hear arrangements of Reed’s classic songs polished to shimmering perfection, buttressed by a strong band fronted by Steve Hunter and Dick Wagner, a pair of extraordinary guitarists. Wagner and Hunter had been recruited by Bob Ezrin to obtain the big sound he envisioned for “Berlin,” and they remained on board for the tour that followed that album’s release, and the resultant live album is extraordinary by just about any standard.

In the seventies, live albums were ubiquitous and dull - usually double albums that were extraneous and boring, serving no particular purpose except to cash in by recycling previously released material with inferior performances. These live ‘double albums’ were coming out with a regularity that was both predictable and artistically pointless – even David Bowie succumbed with the lamentably horrible “David Live”, so there was no reason to expect that a live Lou Reed album would be any better.

 “Rock ‘n’ Roll Animal” was the exception to the mid-‘70s live album rule. It was a live album that reinvigorated the base material, and reinvented the familiar by adding muscularity and an instrumental focus that almost eclipsed the star himself. The musical introduction to “Sweet Jane” had a sense of grandeur that bordered on the anthemic. On the other tunes, the band polished away the rough edges of “Heroin” and “Rock and Roll” without watering down their intrinsic intensity. It was as if Lou Reed traded in his Peugeot for a Lamborghini, and the added horsepower only made the ride that much more exciting. As the title states, this album proved that if he wanted it, Lou Reed was certainly capable of becoming a full-blown ‘rock ‘n’ roll animal’.

Featured Tracks:

SWEET JANE

HEROIN

WHITE LIGHT/WHITE HEAT

LADY DAY

ROCK ‘N’ ROLL

February 1974 - Billboard Charted #45