The Blue Mask is the eleventh studio album by singer-songwriter Lou Reed. It was the first album released after Reed left Arista Records and returned to RCA Records. It returns to the stripped-down sound of his previous group, the Velvet Underground, with only guitars, bass and drums. It also follows the Velvet Underground stylistically by counterpointing and transposing jarring feedback-driven rock with tough and tender ballads, melodic distortion of a magnitude not heard since the "Sister Ray" days. Reed and Robert Quine's guitars were mixed separately in the right and left stereo channels respectively.
Quine, who years earlier followed the Velvet Underground across the country and taped several of their early shows (they were later released as Bootleg Series Volume 1: The Quine Tapes), was a perfect complement to Reed. Quine also toured in support of the album and can be seen on the recorded Bottom Line show titled A Night with Lou Reed. The album contains no instrumental overdubs with the exception of Reed's guitar on "My House", but all vocals were overdubbed with the exception of "The Heroine".
Longtime Reed collaborator Fernando Saunders plays the bass and adds backing vocals to this critically acclaimed album and can also be seen in A Night with Lou Reed. In 2000, a remastered version of The Blue Mask was released. Quine and Reed share the distinction of being named to Rolling Stone's Top 100 Guitarists of All-Time List.
The drummer for the album was the studio ace Doane Perry who later joined Jethro Tull.
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Lou Reed practically invented rock perversion. With the Velvet Underground, he wrote pioneering songs about S&M, drag queens and "Heroin." So by 1982, what was the only shocking stance left for him? "I'm just your average guy," Reed sang. "I'm average-looking/And I'm average inside."
The mundane suited Reed. On The Blue Mask, he sings about domestic bliss at his country home ("My House"), remembers what he was doing on a November 1963 afternoon ("The Day John Kennedy Died") and even declares himself as a bread-and-butter heterosexual ("Women").... Read More
He transforms "Heroin" into "The Heroine," praising the bravery of a woman rather than the pleasures of shooting up. Wiping clean a decade of ever-more-desperate provocation, Reed lets the casual poetry of his songs shine again.
The album's offhand sound matches its conversational lyrics. Reed had finally found the musical foil he had needed since John Cale quit the Velvets: Robert Quine. Also famed for his work with Richard Hell (and later Matthew Sweet), Quine, who died earlier this year, was an inventive, electrifying guitarist -- and he had grown up bootlegging Velvet Underground shows. He encouraged Reed to play more guitar; The Blue Mask is almost all live takes, with Quine's guitar on your left speaker, Reed's guitar on the right.
"One thing that's crucial is that I listen to the lyrics," said Quine. " 'Waves of Fear,' if it had been about making an egg cream, my solo would be different than a guy having a nervous breakdown." In fact, "Waves of Fear" is four astounding minutes of psychosis: While Reed shouts, "Crazy with sweat/Spittle on my jaw," the band finally cuts loose, swooping on the song like a hawk on its prey. The paranoia feels as real and specific as the Canada geese at Reed's country home, which makes it twice as scary.
CD Track List
The Blue Mask (1982) 1. My House 2. Women 3. Underneath The Bottle 4. The Gun 5. The Blue Mask 6. Average Guy 7. The Heroine 8. Waves Of Fear 9. The Day John Kennedy Died 10. Heavenly Arms
Only after the last tree has been cut down, Only after the last river has been poisoned, Only after the last fish has been caught, Only then will you find money cannot be eaten.
