Conspiracy · Dream
Lulu
Lulu is an album by Lou Reed and Metallica, released on October 31, 2011. Its songs began as the score Lou Reed and I wrote for Robert Wilson’s staging of Frank Wedekind’s Lulu plays, which premiered at the Berliner Ensemble on April 12, 2011.
I co-wrote the theater score, directed its rehearsals in Berlin, and played electronics on the album.
long drones on cello and an electronic instrument, the Continuum, played by Reed and Sarth Calhoun, a member of Reed’s band. (Calhoun also appears on Lulu.)
David Fricke on the original tapes, Rolling Stone, September 30, 2011
Go over to Lou’s house
I got a call from Lou one day to go over to his house and make some “interstitial” music for a theater production. Robert Wilson was staging Lulu with the Berliner Ensemble. This turned into co-writing 8 more songs with Lou Reed. Hells yeah.
The tapes we made before Berlin were Lou’s guitar, long cello drones and Continuum, which is what David Fricke describes in Rolling Stone. This was before Metallica.
Berlin without Lou
Lou was not in Berlin for the rehearsals. I went, and directed the music with the theater’s band.
The band was Stefan Rager on drums and musical direction; Ulrich Maiß on keyboards and cello; Dominic Bouffard on guitar; Friedrich Paravicini on bugle, cello, and harmonica; Andreas Walter on bass; and Joe Bauer on sound effects. Later programs list Ulf Borgwardt and Ofer Wetzler in the keyboard/cello and bass chairs.
Lulu premiered at the Berliner Ensemble on April 12, 2011 and stayed in its repertoire through 2014, with guest runs in Paris, Spoleto, and São Paulo.
Composer/performer Sarth Calhoun is directing rehearsals of Lou Reed’s music for Frank Wedekind’s Lulu directed by Robert Wilson at the Berliner Ensemble theater in Berlin. The score features Kyma processing, Continuum/Kyma playing, and dual Continuum fingerboard improvisations accompanied by a live string section.
Symbolic Sound, April 2011
the concept was abandoned late in the game, when Lou heard metal riffs Calhoun had added to the more ambient work they’d created for Robert Wilson’s stagings of Wedekind’s plays.
Jason P. Woodbury, Stereogum, 2021
Then Metallica
After I got back from Berlin, we took the project to San Francisco and recorded it with Metallica. What a blast. They completely reinterpreted all the stuff, of course. They were awesome. Of course.
The first live performances of the material were in November 2011: Later... with Jools Holland in London, Taratata in Paris, and five songs in Cologne. I was on stage for those.
The Wire wrote that against all the odds, ‘Lulu’ functions as the ultimate realisation of Reed’s aesthetic of Metal Machine Music: cruel, vulgar, half in love with power and pain but with a bruised, beating heart at its centre.
I kept that line on my old site.
Robert Wilson’s production premiered April 12, 2011. The Festival d’Automne program documents the live ensemble; David Fricke documented the earlier Continuum-and-cello tapes in Rolling Stone. My account is from the Lulu page of my old WordPress site, and the November 2011 shows from my posts there.
The record
The recordReleased October 31, 2011, by Lou Reed and Metallica. Ten songs; the last is “Junior Dad”. On Apple Music and Discogs.
The creditSarth Calhoun co-wrote the score for Robert Wilson’s Lulu with Lou Reed and directed its rehearsals at the Berliner Ensemble, 2011. On the Lou Reed and Metallica album he composed and performed electronics; “Junior Dad” grew from his Kyma session with Rob Wasserman at Reed’s apartment.