Bad Once, Bad Twice: ‘Metal Machine’

Twenty-five years after its release, Lou Reed’s notorious “Metal Machine Music” still holds its reputation: worst album ever.

Sixty-four minutes of squealing guitar feedback, it was certainly the most unexpected thing to come from Reed, then at his commercial peak.

“People think I made that record to get out of a record contract. It’s really funny,” Reed told me in 1998. “It was supposed to be on their classical label as electronic music. Then they started getting into covers, making it rock ‘n’ roll-looking. My fault. But there was supposed to be a big thing on it that said: ‘No songs, no vocals: Buyer beware.’ ”

Reed did write his own warning of sorts, in the original liner notes: “Most of you won’t like this, and I don’t blame you at all.”

Still, critics savaged the work. Rolling Stone said it sounded like “the tubular groaning of a galactic refrigerator.” When it came to recommended cuts, Billboard said: “None.” Many returned the album to stores, assuming what they got was a mistake.

“They said I’d never make another record,” Reed said. “It’s interesting, though, if you listen to ‘Metal Machine Music’ and [then] listen to industrial rock.”

It’s precisely in that spirit that “Metal Machine Music” is receiving its first official domestic CD reissue now, 25 years later, in a special numbered limited edition with liner notes by Rolling Stone critic David Fricke, who says “Metal Machine Music” “makes more sense with each passing pop-music era.”

Maybe. But the squall of 1975 becomes the digitized noise of 2000: waves of electronic assault, blips of pulses accelerating on tape machines interrupted by dog whistle screeches and piercing notes. For more than an hour.

Reed’s old band the Velvet Underground used to end shows by leaning guitars against their amps, producing feedback. “Metal Machine Music” grew out of that practice. Reed created it alone in his loft, capturing tapes of feedback and blending its layers.

With two tracks of guitar noise on each stereo channel, the piece was cut into four 16-minute segments to fit on each side of the original double album. The movements are preserved as Parts 1 through 4 on the reissue.

There’s no melody on the album, no structure and no rhythm until the final two minutes, when it hits the groove on the fourth side, cut so the tone arm wouldn’t rise unless someone picked it up.

Reed was not the first major rocker to confound fans with noise (Beatles John Lennon and George Harrison each issued experimental or electronic albums). And he certainly wasn’t the last (though when Neil Young did it with “Arc” in 1991, it was hardly noticed).

But only “Metal Machine Music” has gained in notoriety over the years, perhaps because of its rarity and perhaps because it was championed by critic Lester Bangs, who called it “the greatest record ever made in the history of the human eardrum. No. 2 spot: ‘Kiss Alive!’ ”