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After catching the excellent Blue Öyster Cult show in Paris earlier this week, I found myself diving back into some of their classic 1970s albums. Somewhere between the riff-heavy epics and cryptic lyrics, a thought struck me: this is the band Lou Reed should have called when he decided to make Lulu.
The Reed/Metallica collaboration has gone down in history as an artistic failure. I think that judgment is unfair and rooted mostly in the expectations of Metallica fans. Lulu was a Lou Reed record. Metallica wasn’t meant to be a creative equal — they were the instrument. Their job was to deliver a skull-crushing sonic backdrop, and in that sense, they succeeded. But it wasn’t a fun record — and for all its darkness, that’s still something heavy metal usually promises. Instead, Lulu was harsh, abrasive, and uncompromising. It didn’t cater to headbangers' thirst for killer riffs, shifting time signatures, or guitar heroics. It was indulgent — wildly so — but not without moments of brilliance. Still, it’s not an album that fans of Lou Reed or Metallica tend to revisit.
Which raises the question: was metal even the right medium for this story? That’s another debate. The definitive musical version of Lulu remains Alban Berg’s opera — itself a difficult listen. Serial music, like metal, demands a certain aural stamina. Reed understood that the Lulu story was about violence and drama, and metal was a logical choice. But maybe it was the wrong kind of metal.
Reed and BÖC came from the same generation, and even the same region. A collaboration between them wouldn’t have seemed as improbable as Lulu with Metallica. And maybe that’s why it never happened — it lacked the “WTF” headline-grabbing appeal. But musically and artistically, it would have made far more sense.
Both had deep roots in the New York punk and art scenes. Patti Smith was a key figure in BÖC’s orbit, while Lou Reed’s influence on punk is both foundational and inescapable. He was part of the avant-garde from the start — The Velvet Underground’s debut was as much an art project as an album, tied closely to Andy Warhol’s vision.
Aesthetically, both Reed and BÖC embraced a hermetic, often cold sensibility — tinged with S&M vibes and occasional flirtations with fascist imagery. There’s a detached theatricality in their work, a sense of distance and menace.
Both artists drew from literary sources. Reed was a devoted student of Delmore Schwartz and Hubert Selby Jr., while BÖC and their initial lyricist Sandy Pearlman often pulled from fantasy, sci-fi, and horror writers like Michael Moorcock, or H.P. Lovecraft. They made literate rock music — dense with narrative, character, and allusion.
Lyrically, both were storytellers. Whether it was BÖC’s sci-fi fantasias penned by Michael Moorcock or Reed’s junkie street poetry, the songs weren’t just riffs and vibes — they were miniature worlds. Often disturbing, often specific, but always pointing toward larger themes: addiction, war, human nature. These weren’t lyrics thrown together to sound cool. They were vignettes, compact and literary.
They were also both masters of irony. Reed’s deadpan delivery and refusal to moralize echoed BÖC’s love of camp and dark humor. Lulu’s over-the-top violence and absurdity might have come off less clunky — and more tonally cohesive — with BÖC involved.
Where they diverged was musically. BÖC favored complex, layered compositions, while Reed’s solo work leaned toward simplicity — at least structurally. But we know what Reed sounds like when backed by a hard-rocking ‘70s band: just listen to Rock ’n’ Roll Animal or Lou Reed Live. A collaboration with BÖC wouldn’t have been far off. Reed may have disavowed that phase of his career, but it was probably his most — dare I say it — fun.
That tension — between BÖC’s virtuosity and Reed’s minimalism — could have produced something fascinating. BÖC’s complex structures could have sharpened Reed’s lyrical focus. Reed’s uncompromising artistic vision could have pulled BÖC into darker, more theatrical territory. It might’ve been Berlin meets Secret Treaties — heavy, strange, emotionally bruising, and smarter than it had any right to be.
And let’s not forget: both Reed and BÖC had a history of confounding expectations. Albums that were misunderstood, divisive, or simply ahead of their time (Metal Machine Music, Club Ninja). A Lulu-like concept album would have fit neatly into that tradition of ambitious, high-concept risk-taking — only this time, maybe with better results.
Imagine it: Lou Reed and Blue Öyster Cult teaming up to make a concept album about the ultimate femme fatale. Dark, violent, theatrical. Lyrically rich, musically vast. And of course, produced by Bob Ezrin — the man who helped shape Berlin, Alice Cooper’s Welcome to My Nightmare, and Pink Floyd’s The Wall. Ezrin could have bridged the worlds of Reed’s psychological grit and BÖC’s mythic grandeur.
Now that would have been perfect.
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