Lou Reed, John Cale & Nico - 2003

Lou Reed, John Cale & Nico
2003
Le Bataclan '72

01. Waiting For The Man
02. Berlin
03. Black Angels Death Song
04. Wild Child
05. Heroin
06. Ghost Story
07. The Biggest, Loudest, Hairiest Group Of All
08. Empty Bottles
09. Femme Fatale
10. No One Is There
11. Frozen Warnings
12. Janitor Of Lunacy
13. I'll Be Your Mirror
14. All Tomorrows Parties (Encore)

Bonus Tracks: Rehearsals
15. Pale Blue Eyes
16. Candy Says

Extra Bonus Rehearsals
17. Conversation
18. Instrumental Check
19. Pale Blue Eyes Check
20. Pale Blue Eyes False Start
21. Pale Blue Eyes Restart
22. Candy Says
23. Black Angel's Death Song
24. Heroin

Recorded live at Le Bataclan, 50 Boulevard Voltaire, 75011 Paris, 29 January 1972

Acoustic Guitar, Vocals – Lou Reed
Guitar, Piano, Viola, Vocals – John Cale
Harmonium, Vocals – Nico

CD Liner Notes:

Lou Reed and John Cale formed the Velvet Underground in late 1965, recording their influential debut with Nico the following year. She was never regarded as a full member of the band, however, and ceased to work with them in mid-1967. Cale quit in the fall of 1968, leaving Reed to lead the quartet until his own departure in August 1970..There after a version of the band led by Cale's replacement Doug Yule (with Maureen Tucker the only original member) continued to perform, though by all accounts they were a pale imitation of the band's former self.

It therefore delighted their still small coterie of loyal fans when rumors began to circulate in January 1972 that Reed, Cale and Nico were planning to perform together again. At the time all three participants were in London - Reed was there making his solo debut, Cale was recording with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, and Nico had flown in from Paris (where she was living with the filmmaker Philippe (Jarrel.) to work on an abortive fourth solo album, supposedly to be produced by Cale.

She was also under the impression that the trio would be performing together in the city mid-month, the putative show being promoted by rock journalist Geoffrey Cannon (one of the Velvet Underground's few champions in the British press). In fact, Cale was due to play a gig at the Bataclan club in Rue Voltaire, Paris on Saturday 29th, and it was there that the former collaborators publicly reunited.

A rehearsal tape likely to date from mid-January finds Nico a little rusty on the songs she used to perform with the band - All Tomorrow's Parties, Femme Fatale and I'll Be Your Mirror - and not much better on three songs from her own debut album, Chelsea Girl (which ended up being performed at the gig).

Another tape apparently finds Reed and Cale rehearsing for the reunion, and runs contrary to the received wisdom that they struggled to be civil to each other. On it they seem relaxed and friendly, and Reed even divulges his delight at having had an album signed for him by Jerry Lee Lewis. They run through Pale Blue Eyes and Candy Says (the originals of which post-dated Cale's tenure with the band, and which did not end up being played at Bataclan,, though they're included here as bonus tracks), as well as Heroin and Black Angel's Death Song (which were performed at Bataclan).

The concert itself, played in front of about 1000 people (with, according to Melody Maker at the time, twice that number unable to get in), was a triumph. Performed acoustically, unlike the vast majority of the Velvet Underground's material, the trio conjured a sparse yet warm sound, well captured by the soundboard recording. Cale played viola and piano over Reed's acoustic guitar, while Nico contributed harmonium. The bulk of the material dates from the VU days, but Reed also contributed his lesser-known gem Wild Child and an unusually lugubrious rendition of Berlin, which he later described as "a real nightclub torch thing... kind of a Billie Holliday trip."

Cale, meanwhile, offered Ghost Story from his Vintage Violence album, as well as a strange tune called The Biggest, Loudest, Hairiest Group Of All (no studio version of which was ever released). Most surprisingly, he also played Empty Bottles/which he'd written for Jennifer Warnes (whose solo debut he produced soon afterwards).

Nico's harmonium is prominent on three tracks from her albums The Marble Index and Desert shore (No One Is There, Janitor Of Lunacy and Frozen Warnings), but inevitably it's the Velvet Underground material on which all three originally appeared that received the most enthusiastic response – Femme Fatale/I'll Be Your Mirror and the encore. of All Tomorrow's Parties. Clearly all three musicians enjoyed the experience, but a report in Melody Mater that a further performance by them was to take place in London in February was sadly mistaken, and the closest most people came to seeing them was via a partial film of the Bataclan show (offering Berlin, I'm Waiting For The Man, Heroin, Ghost Story and Femme Fatale that was screened on the French TV show Pop Deux on June 10th 1972.

Extra Extra Bonus: Video:

Lou Reed, John Cale, Nico
January 29, 1972
Bataclan, Paris

POP2 22.01.1972
01. Janitor Of Lunacy
02. Interview
03. You Forgot To Answer

POP2 29.04.1972
04. I'm Waiting For The Man

POP2 10.06.1972
05. Berlin
06. I'm Waiting For The Man
07. Heroin
08. Ghost Story
09. Femme Fatale

POP2 04.11.1972
10. I'm Waiting For The Man

POP2 22.09.1973
11. Walk On The Wild Side
12. Heroin
13. White Light / White Heat

The legendary show recorded at the Bataclan Club in Paris, on January 29th, 1972, Lou Reed is accompanied by John Cale & Nico, on stage for the first time since the break up of the Velvet Underground.

Broadcast on June 10, 1972, Pop 2, Antenne 2, France.

The show is presented by Patrice Blanc Francard and includes reports about Robert Wyatt's Matching Mole,Lewis Caroll and 23 minutes devoted to the Reed, Cale & Nico concert at Le Bataclan in Paris, on January 29, 1972.

It offers 5 songs filmed by Claude Ventura (Berlin, I'm Waiting For The Man, Heroin, Ghost Story, Femme Fatale) intersected with French journalists discussing.

In January of 1972, before any of them had established themselves as solo performers, the three semi-estranged principles of the disbanded Velvet Underground found themselves in Europe at the same time and played a legendary one-off "unplugged" concert at a thousand-seat venue in Paris called Le Bataclan. The set they played that night has long been available on poor-quality bootlegs, and though I've never heard any of those bootlegs, I cannot imagine how the sound quality could be any worse than on this official release. Sometimes it actually sounds as if the tape were slowing down, and various instruments have that weird, warbly sound that one associates with old cassette tapes well along the way to becoming spaghetti. Still, the novelty of hearing these by-now overly familiar songs in these lo-fi, round-robin, coffee-house renditions has a certain charm that is at times both poignant and illuminating. And the stage banter, always a key selling point with any live Velvets album, is suitably deadpan and entertaining.

"Waiting for My Man" opens the set. The traditional, scene-setting Moe Tucker drum kick-in being unavailable, Cale opts for traipsing in with an almost comically earnest school-recital piano figure. Reed, the star pupil, seems to be concentrating on his Sinatra-esque phrasing at the expense of his strumming, but he's in rare form with the quips. Before "Berlin", he tells the French people, "This is my Barbra Streisand song." Before "Wild Child", he explains, "This is about a wild child, funnily enough." The mandatory "Heroin" is given a decent read, Cale sawing away on his viola, and "Black Angel's Death Song", arranged for viola and acoustic guitar, turns out to be laugh-out-loud funny.

Cale takes center stage after some extended tuning, and some frustratingly inaudible off-mike conferencing with Reed (this is often better than the stage banter), before running through a song off Vintage Violence, and two previously unreleased numbers: "The Biggest, Loudest, Hairiest Group of All", which sounds like one of those old Peter, Paul & Mary sing-along children's songs, and "Empty Bottles", a stately love song he originally wrote for Jennifer Warnes. This last song is the first genuinely moving moment of the entire set. Of course, Lou pipes up: "Anybody got a straw?"

The boys kick in with "Femme Fatale" soon after, without Nico, as if they didn't trust her to talk on-mike, but they have to stop as she misses her cue. You can hear her sigh audibly and give a little embarrassed laugh before the song restarts. Her singing is so careful, it's clear that she's terrified. She doesn't have Reed's above-it-all snottiness, or Cale's formal detachment to hide behind. Her gift, such as it is, is pure human sadness unadulterated by irony. The song ends, the crowd finally goes nuts, and rightfully so. She is the evening's entrée.

She does three of her own songs next, ending with a literally gut-wrenching version of "Janitor of Lunacy": She erupts in a fit of coughing for almost a full-minute after the song ends. Then, Reed, as if he didn't deign to speak directly to Nico, instructs Cale, "Uh, John, have Nico tell them this is the last song." More coughing, then finally Nico recovers and is back at the mike. The crowd cheers her on. "I want to sing the last song now. If I can," she says in her halting English, "I try my best." After a beat, she feels compelled to add, "I don't smoke cigarettes.""I'll Be Your Mirror" is the song. Nico's voice is wrecked, the sound is crummy, but somehow, with Reed and Cale propping her up with two-part harmonies, and finally wrenching substantial sounds from their acoustics, it's an incredibly affecting, heroic rendition. The encore ("All Tomorrow's Parties") can't touch it, but gives the audience a chance to exhale.

If you collect fine-art photography, you probably won't care much for this record. It's under-rehearsed, poorly recorded, and the uneven performances range from the sublime to the incoherent. But if you appreciate the fleeting revelations to be found in snapshots, then this may be just the bit of quicksilver for you, a unique moment in musical history just before these three erstwhile Jekylls became forever Hydes.

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