Lou Reed Tour Diary (April-May 1996) Click here to read >> Video Shoot Photos Click here to view >> Tour Photos Click here to view >> Miscellaneous Historical Photos Click here to view >> Sweet Mangled Thing The Sweet Mangled Thing inlay card from October 1988 has become something of a rarity. We have it here for your viewing pleasure. Click here to view >> Flyering Paul Page: "We used to give out these flyers in Dublin to advertise gigs - they would all have an individual handwritten lyric on the back from some of the bands we were into at the time. This one was a lyric from 'Tom Violence' by Sonic Youth." Click here to view >> Some Miscellaneous Whipping Boy Trivia FIRST GIG: First time we played together as a band was in Fearghals hometown Edenderry, Offaly, sometime in 1988. It was a 21st birthday party and we shared a stage with a local cabaret act that were there to appease the older generation. Having played ‘should I stay or should I go’ by the clash, ‘mr pharmacist’ by the fall, it seemed like a good idea to launch into’sister ray’ by the velvet underground. This drew expressions of pain from some of the older partygoers; 2 minutes in the guitarist with the cabaret act, pulled the plug (it was their equipment we were using) and the gig ended abruptedly. FIRST DUBLIN SHOW: We played our first Dublin gig in a place called The Source, a long gone nightclub that used to be a major Goth hangout. Fearghal convinced the club owner that we would bring an extra 200 people, he bought it, and next thing we know, we were playing to an empty dancefloor, with 250 disinterested Goths lining the walls. Needless to say, we were not asked back. THE UNDERGROUND: We played some of our most memorable shows at the legendary Dublin venue, The Underground, now a lap dancing club on Dame Street. The Underground had a magic about it that called to mind places like CBGBs in New York or Maxs in Kansas. Some great Dublin bands started out in this place – it was a most unlikely venue – a long, narrow bar with a tiny stage. During the week, it was populated by drop-outs and a strange assortment of local characters, but at the weekend it was usually buzzing. To get to the toilets, you had to pass the stage and negotiate the neck of a guitar or bass guitar, which usually blocked the path – I seem to remember very few people visited the toilets when we played. To get our first gig in the Underground, we thought we would need a demo tape. Having none of our own, we came up with a scam whereby we would use a recording by some obscure artist, claiming it was our own. We chose an early release by a band from the UK called Pop will Eat Itself, and hoped to pass it off as ours. Much to our surprise, Geoff the manager never asked for the tape, and we got to play the first of many gigs there. I vividly remember standing at the top of the stairs (as you can guess from the name, the venue was below street level) counting the people as they went in. We charged £IR 2.00 at the time – the venue held 150 comfortably, but on a good night, you would cram 220 in there. CHEREE RECORDS: Cheree records probably represents the purest experience we have known in the music business. Nick, the owner put out records by bands that he loved, and by the time we joined they were one of the up and coming labels in the UK. Their biggest act, the Telescopes were very much in the My Bloody Valentine mode, and we could not believe a label such as Cheree were interested in us. We released two EPS, played some shows in the UK, slept on Nicks floor, and got some great reviews, partly because we were seen as part of the Cheree scene, and partly because the journalists for some of the UK mags were up their own arses. RECORDING SUBMARINE: Submarine took eleven days to record and mix. During that time there was a fight between two nameless members of the band on the streets outside the studio, we broke up, reformed and took home what we thought was the best record ever recorded. Pretty much the story of our whole existence really. RECORDING HEARTWORM: With the backing of Sony, we could spend more time and more money on making this record. From an early stage we decided we wanted to record in Dublin, for a variety of reasons. We talked to a number of producers, Gil Norton (The Pixies, Echo and the Bunnymen) was one, but he seemed really busy and we couldn’t get him for the period we wanted. Malcom Burns (Iggy Pop,protege of Daniel Lanois) flew in from Canada to talk to us, pissed off the MD of Sony by taking the front seat of the taxi at the airport) and jumped up on stage to play with us without being asked. He was a good guy, but very much a ‘vibe’ merchant and you got the feeling he could be really great or else a complete disaster. We chose Warne Livesey, who had done House of Love, Julian Cope and Midnight Oil. Warne came across as the most enthusiastic of all of them –we had demo-ed all the songs for Heartworm so he knew exactly what he was working with. We recorded in Windmill Lane Studios, spent six weeks there doing all the backing tracks, overdubs and vocals. It was hard to get used to the idea of spending a half day trying to get a good guitar sound when we had been used to recording so quickly in the past. Then, it was over to London for 4 weeks mixing the album –Warne got in a mixing engineer, Lou Giordano who had produced the Sugar album, Copper Blue to mix. Lou was a lovely guy, but Warne, after an initial period where he handed over the reins, took control again and pretty much mixed the record with some input from Lou. We used to drive Warne crazy, by constantly comparing the recordings to the demos – I think he must have heard the phrase ‘it doesn’t sound like the demos a hundred times. The songs themselves changed very little structurally from the demos. With ‘Twinkle’, we had to lift the violin intro from the demo as we could not find anyone who could play that part again with that feel. ‘We don’t need’ was exactly the same structurally –we just made the guitars on the chorus kick in as big as we could without drowning everything else out. Warne scored the strings for Personality –there had been none on the demo, and for Morning Rise, he made some minor adjustments to the keyboard string arrangement on the demo. ‘Users’ was recorded at a more sluggish pace, so we speeded up the tape which can make things sound thin, but we got away with it. ‘Fiction’ was the most dramatically changed from the demo –the lyrics originally opened with the line ‘I am God’ which was dropped, and the lyrics and melody received a bit of an overhaul. For ‘Honeymoon is Over’ we were watching a spaghetti western in the studio whilst mixing the track, and we tried to give the whole end section a vaguely Ennio Morricone feel. The recording was pretty painless –Sony left us with Warne to our own devices and never tried to influence the way the record was shaping up, which surprised us given the stories we had heard about the ‘big bad majors’. We recorded 12 songs for the album –only the track Plaything was not used on the record, and appeared as a b-side on the single ‘Twinkle’.