Exclusive interview with Reinhold Friedl from Zeitkratzer
1. When did you first hear about the original Metal Machine Music
I think when I was 12 or so. Just friend of my father had it at home. I only discovered it really, when I listened to it at the age of fifteen or so, and was really convienced, that this was electro-acoustic music and Lou Reed was a kind of strange contemporary music composer. I loved it as a tape piece, like I listened to Xenakis or Stockhausen.
2. Why did you decided to perform Metal Machine Music live.
I thought it would be a real interesting social experiment, to confront this Rock'n'Roll animal with contemporary music players. (I did never listen to Rock'n'Roll of pop-music till my mid-twenties, so I did not realize, that Lou Reed was somebody known from Velvet Underground or so). It runed out to be an interesting and even dangerous experiment. Lou started to speak about his "composition" and said things like "please play it, like I wrote it", even he had never written down this music. On the other hand, two members of zeitkratzer have been so impressed by his Rock'n'Roll appearance, that they decided after the performances to leave zeitkratzer and to start their own Rock'n'Roll carriers.
3. How did you convert the original Metal Machine Music to this classical version?
Luca Venitucci, our italien accordion player, heard out, what Lou had played, even the tuning of his guitars in the original. Then some of us wrote it down (especially the saxophone-player), we then checked it out the next day, if it sounds and corrected it. At the end of one week, we had a kind of "material-list" of the whole piece and followed this list improvising with the given materials. So the whole work was done and presented in the concert.
4. What was it like to work with Lou Reed?
He came the day before the concert, had some remarks concerning the music. It was for sure funny to work with a Rock'N'Roll-legend so close, as I had never seen one before. I only can tell you, it's not the same as working with classical-music-legends, even if his drug-consume in the meantime seems to be reduced.
5. Is there any other Rock album that you would like to make into a classic piece?
No
6. Are there plans to perform Metal Machine Music live again?
Yes, we are performing the new more precisely transcribed version of part 4, that is not recorded yet, late September in Dijon France and in Budapest, November 17.
7. How do you place Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music in music history?
It's a funny and interesting piece, showing that noise can also come out of a Rock'n'Roll context and not finish your carreer, but even make some crazy contemporary music group trying to play it live, a few decades later…
8. Any chance to work with Lou Reed again in the future?
Why not.
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