Rock 'n' Roll Animal
| Rock n Roll Animal | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
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| Live album by Lou Reed | ||||
| Released | February 1974 | |||
| Recorded | December 21, 1973 | |||
| Venue | Howard Stein's Academy of Music, New York | |||
| Genre | ||||
| Length |
40:32 (original) 48:12 (remaster) |
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| Label | RCA | |||
| Producer | Steve Katz, Lou Reed | |||
| Lou Reed chronology | ||||
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Singles from Rock n Roll Animal |
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| Professional ratings | |
|---|---|
| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic |
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| Chicago Tribune |  |
| Robert Christgau | A− |
| Rolling Stone | (not rated) |
| The Rolling Stone Record Guide | |
Rock n Roll Animal is a live album by Lou Reed, released by RCA Records in 1974. In its original form, it features five songs, four of which are Velvet Underground songs. The musicians were Pentti Glan (drums) and Prakash John (bass), Ray Colcord (keyboards), and Dick Wagner and Steve Hunter on guitars. (The two guitarists would later form the basis of the second Alice Cooper band, beginning on Welcome to My Nightmare, which also features Glan and John.)
The album was recorded live on December 21, 1973, at Howard Stein's Academy of Music in New York City. A sleeper hit, it peaked at #45 on the Billboard album chart during a twenty-eight-week stay before earning Reed's first RIAA gold certification in 1978.
Paul Nelson of Rolling Stone magazine was in attendance that night and recalls: "As it happens, I had seen Reed and a mediocre pickup band at Lincoln Center some months earlier in his first New York non-Velvets appearance and he was tragic in every sense of the word. So, at the Academy, I didn't expect much and when his new band came out and began to play spectacular, even majestic, rock & roll, management's strategy for the evening became clear: Elevate the erratic and unstable punkiness of the centerpiece into punchy, swaggering grandeur by using the best arrangements, sound and musicians that money could buy; the trimmings, particularly guitarists Dick Wagner and Steve Hunter, were awesome enough so that if Reed were merely competent, the concert would be a success."
"And it was, as one can judge from the resultant albums. The band does not emulate the violent, hypnotic, dope-trance staccato power and subway lyricism of the Velvet Underground, but rather opts for a hard, clean, clear, near-royal Mott the Hoople/Eric Clapton (Layla) opulence and Reed sings out most of the songs in his effective street-talk style. Animal, coming first, naturally contains the best performances ("Intro/Sweet Jane," "White Light/White Heat," the first half of "Rock 'n' Roll")."
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Wikipedia