Lou Reed was at Cal State Long Beach to premiere his Metal Machine Music art/music installation. Since he was in Long Beach, he stopped off for a rare in-store appearance at Fingerprints Music. He was promoting his new collaboration with Metallica, Lulu (which, after listening to it all afternoon, is not as bad as people have said… it's actually quite good). Finally, at Long Beach he had a unmoderated conversation with Bob Ezrin, the producer of his legendary, if not much maligned, album “Berlin”. It was really unstructured and while most of us enjoyed it, there was a heckler who probably wanted to hear “Walk on the Wild Side”. It was a very enlightening conversation and if you get a chance to go to the exhibit, do not pass it up. The concept behind the exhibit was to give the spectator the opportunity to experience what it is like on stage for the musicians. Many speakers are set up throughout the room and provide an atmosphere much like a musician experiences.
As can be seen by Fingerprint's Photostream, he has a wide variety of fans, and his influence seems to cut across a wide swath of people. You really can't pinpoint a textbook "Lou Reed fan".
Fingerprints Flickr stream
Here is the interesting, albeit geeked out, discussion between Reed, Ezrin, and the sound team behind the installation.
Information about the exhibit here: Metal Machine Trio @ CSULB
And here is video of Lou reading selections from Lulu:
