Keith Richards, Joan Jett, Lucinda Williams and More Tapped for Lou Reed Tribute LP

The Power of the Heart due out on April 20th

March 1, 2024March 1, 2024 Ron Hart 0 Comments 2024, Angel Olsen, Automatic, Bill Bentley, Bobby Rush, Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, Keith Richards, Light in the Attic Records, Lou Reed, Lucinda Williams, Mary Gauthier, Maxim Ludwig, Rickie Lee Jones, Roseanne Cash, Rufus Wainwright, The Afghan Whigs, The Power of the Heart: A Tribute to Lou Reed

Lou Reed (Image: Timothy Greenfield-Sanders)

Tomorrow would have been the 82nd birthday of New York’s legendary rock laureate Lou Reed.

But today the indelible Seattle reissue imprint Light in the Attic Records has announced the release of a brand new tribute album honoring the resonant influence of Lou and his music. Entitled The Power of the Heart: A Tribute to Lou Reed, the collection brings together a colorful array of the late singer-songwriter’s friends, fans and associates to interpret material spanning the entirety of Reed’s five-decade-long career.

The album was put together by Lou’s longtime publicist and trusted friend Bill Bentley, who sought to honor his friend by enlisting artists from a range of generations and genres to interpret their favorite works from his incomparable career. Among the participants include Keith Richards, Rosanne Cash, Lucinda Williams, Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, The Afghan Whigs, Bobby Rush, Maxim Ludwig & Angel Olsen, Mary Gauthier and Automatic, each of whom selected songs that range from his biggest hits to more obscure deep cuts that’ll appeal to his most ardent fans. The CD and digital version of the album, meanwhile, includes a bonus track featuring rising Bay Area artist Brogan Bentley. He offers a stirring rendition of “The Power of the Heart,” which would be Reed’s final pop composition, written for his wife Laurie Anderson after they got married in 2008.

Various Artists The Power of the Heart: A Tribute to Lou Reed, Light in the Attic Records 2024

The Power of the Heart: A Tribute to Lou Reed will be available on Silver Nugget vinyl exclusively for Record Store Day (April 20th) at participating independent retailers. Additionally, the album will arrive on CD and digital platforms on the same day. All physical formats include photos of Reed by Mick Rock and Timothy Greenfield-Sanders, plus extensive liner notes written by Bentley himself, who says, “Lou Reed offered a sensuous despair doubled-up with a powerful danger in all his songs.”

“There are many moments when Lou Reed’s soul still rushes through me like a warm wind on a motionless day,” Bentley continues. “It might be a certain chord I hear, a word spoken with his distinct New York accent, or even just a glancing memory of the way he smiled when he was happy followed by a restrained cackle which assured all was right in Reed’s world… His spirit is there, undiminished with a worldly peaceful wisdom he had never quit seeking.”

Ahead of the album’s release, several tracks will be made available as digital singles, beginning with Keith Richards’ ripping rendition of The Velvet Underground’s proto-punk classic “I’m Waiting for the Man.” You can watch the video for the song below, along with the album’s tracklist.

In the meantime, all of the artists who appear on The Power of the Heart made public statements about their participation in the project.

“To me, Lou stood out,” says Richards. “The real deal! Something important to American music and to ALL MUSIC! I miss him and his dog.”

“Lou Reed is why I write songs, why I read books, and why I stand up for myself,” says Maxim Ludwig, who duets with Angel Olsen on the classic VU rocker “I Can’t Stand It.” “Country music is three chords and the truth. Lou only needed two chords to do that.”

“Lou Reed is my earliest influence, my introduction to punk rock,” adds Olsen. “This song was a great opportunity to creatively work with Maxim.”

“Lou Reed has been gone now for many years,” laments Rufus Wainwright, adding a new layer of vulnerability to the eternal ballad “Perfect Day.” “He’s one of the few people whom I miss as much now as when he left. There are so many instances where I wonder what he would say or what he would think. His general aura would always lend something really unique to the room. Thank God he left his great music and recordings. His personality is sorely missed. Love you, Lou.”

“I bought Lou Reed’s Transformer album after buying the single, ‘Walk on the Wild Side,’ in the mid 70s, wanting to learn more about that wild side,” explains Joan Jett, who does the Transformer deep cut “I’m So Free” with her longtime band The Blackhearts. “I fell in love with Lou’s vocal style, his descriptive, poetic, real life lyrics, and his song, ‘I’m So Free.’ And I learned something, too, as I wanted to know the meaning of St. Germaine in this context.”

“Lou Reed was a great artist and writer,” says 90-year-old blues legend Bobby Rush, who covers the title cut from Lou’s underrated 1976 LP Sally Can’t Dance. “I feel blessed to be a part of a tribute to him. I’m glad that I was able to contribute ‘Sally Can’t Dance,’ as a man that came from a dancing family and background. Most black men and women dance a lot. If Sally can’t dance, let me be the one to teach her how to dance. Like the title track of my album from twenty years ago, Undercover Lover, I want to be the undercover teacher… to teach her to dance underneath the covers. Sally will know how to dance when I get through with her.”

“It was not easy to find a new way into his song,” admits the great Rickie Lee Jones, who tackles his signature hit “Walk on the Wild Side. “It evolved one night—an old woman at an old out-of-tune piano and turned a page of her life. The limerick passages of ‘Walk on the Wild Side.’ A nasty schoolboy’s scribble on a wall. I changed the chords, added a bar or two, emphasized the dark conclusion of each verse. That double bass line is not only the most recognizable instrument on the original track, it is the only melodic instrument, so I opted for no bass, only a faint rumor of that mesmerizing line. Mike Dillion came in to play percussion and vibes. I called upon the spirit of James Booker and I, way back in the old days—or rather the old nights—in the French Quarter of New Orleans, singing whatever we wanted, to whoever was listening until the hour we could run off and get high somewhere in solitude. In this version I hear whistles, trains, voices in the night. There is noise. Yes, there, that is where ‘Walk on the Wild Side’ lives, and can be made new, through the evolution of the spirit.”

Rickie Lee Jones delighting the audience at The Big Ears Festival at Bijou Theatre on April 1, 2023 (Image: Alisa B. Cherry)

“I learned to play guitar listening to The Velvet Underground and learned about New York before I ever got there from his unique poetic perspective,” says Greg Dulli of The Afghan Whigs, who does wonders to “I Love You, Suzanne” from 1984’s New Sensations, another underrepresented gem from the Lou canon. “A phenomenal lyricist and true visionary, Lou Reed left an indelible mark on not just music but culture itself.”

“Lou Reed’s music was vital to young people like me who felt stranded in the middle of nowhere,” proclaims Mary Gauthier, who delivers a bluesy spin on “Coney Island Baby.” “A rough urban song poet of astounding vulnerability and brutal honesty, he saw—and described—the world as it was. Pure emotion. Pure reality, immense compassion. I love ‘talk-singers.’ That was Lou—his words were raw and real. But there was always melody. And always a (heart) beat. It would be impossible to count the small town dreamers like me who followed his voice to find their own.”

“Several years ago, we did a series of shows in New York where we did a different album of mine each night and then had special guests in the second half of the show,” explains Lucinda Williams, who performs the title track to another unsung Lou Reed classic, 1983’s Legendary Hearts. “Our late friend Hal Willner asked if I wanted him to reach out to Lou Reed, and of course I did. It ended up that Lou wasn’t able to do it, but he had picked a song for us to do that I thought was perfect. That song was ‘Legendary Hearts.’”

“This song is about sobriety,” admits the Los Angeles trio Automatic in reference to their choice, the title cut from 1984’s New Sensations. “The same way Lou was able to describe with intense detail, the feeling of doing heroin, he does with this song about the feeling of being sober: the heightened senses, enjoying simple pleasures, experiencing new sensations. This song captures that feeling of heading out on a journey of discovery, whether you’re on drugs or sober, it’s two sides of the same coin.”

The Power of the Heart on vinyl (Image: Light in the Attic Records)

“Lou seemed fearless to me; like he’d rather die than be a people-pleaser,” states Roseanne Cash, offering up a haunting rendition of “Magician” from 1992’s Magic and Loss. “I took inspiration from that.”

“‘The Power of the Heart’ is Lou’s love song to Laurie Anderson,” Brogan Bentley says about his selection. “I aimed to embody the vulnerability and softness of Lou’s love for her and the love we’ve all experienced for another person at some point in our lives. When we access the Power of the Heart, we access an infinitely loving spiritual intelligence that has the power to transform anything and everything.”

The Power of the Heart is the latest offering from Light in the Attic, which follows close on the heels of several releases in their Lou Reed archive series, produced in partnership with Laurie Anderson and the Lou Reed Archive, including the multi-GRAMMY® nominated Words & Music, May 1965 and the recent re-release of Lou’s final solo album, Hudson River Wind Meditations.

Tracklist (LP):

Side A