The Lou Reed Songbook: Six Strings and the Words

As a huge Velvet Underground and Lou Reed fan I was unfortunately let down by this chord book. It is needlessly large in size, lacks a huge amount of important songs (After Hours, All tomorrows parties, Black angels death song, Beginning to see the light, Candy says, European Son, Femme Fatale, Hangin Round, Guess I'm falling in love, Here she comes now, I'm set free, I'm so free, Jesus, I heard her call my name, Lady Godivas Operation, NY Telephone Conversation, Oh sweet nuthin, Run run run, Sister Ray, Some kinda love, That's the story of my life, There she goes again, The Bed, The Gift, Who loves the sun, Vicious, What goes on), some wrong chords (Sunday Morning, Sattelite of Love), and it is padded with huge amounts of guitar tab which is ABSOLUTELY USELESS. Why? Because it's tab of crappy live versions of songs with endless band improvisations that leads nowhere. I will instead opt to buy a lyrics book containing all or most of Lou's songs, and just scribble some chords down as I please, and will proceed to throw this book in the trash where it belongs.

Great idea to not have a limiting, plodding vocal melody line, which would be a terrible bondage for Lou's genius Piscean fluidity. He's trying to help us express ourselves. But how are you going to do a Lou Reed song justice without that voice? He gives you everything in the recorded and re-recorded versions. So write a new song of your own. Lou is helping us do that. But just imagine if anyone messed with his song. Bowie straightened a few of them up and did them justice, singing identifiable melody. Probably quite a lot of work for Lou, but one or two approximations of melody just to show the limitations of classical notation, and how far he's gone with vocal expression and identity may help.And he IS very specific when he sings notes nobody else has thought of. You can get them in single sheets for specific songs, but not one melody line here.

Excellent all round

As a fairly novice player this Christmas present has been excellent. The chord arrangements seem to be as the writer intended and there are lots of well known songs on here making it very good value. The tabs and sheet music are all there if you are a more advanced musician. I have enjoyed extending my repertoire and appreciating Lou's genius.