In 1975 RCA demanded an LP from Lou Reed and the ex-Velvet Underground frontman gave Clive Davis METAL MACHINE MUSIC.
“I don’t see a single in this.” Clive Davis
I doubt he listened to it all, but supposedly only the sound engineer accomplished that stygian feat.
Rolling Stone’s review said METAL MACHINE MUSIC sounded like “the tubular groaning of a galactic refrigerator” and as displeasing to experience as “a night in a bus terminal”.
Lester Bangs wrote that “as classical music it adds nothing to a genre that may well be depleted. As rock ‘n’ roll it’s interesting garage electronic rock ‘n’ roll. As a statement it’s great, as a giant FUCK YOU it shows integrity—a sick, twisted, dunced-out, malevolent, perverted, psychopathic integrity, but integrity nevertheless.” Bangs later wrote a tongue-in-cheek article on Metal Machine Music titled “The Greatest Album Ever Made”, in which he judged it “the greatest record ever made in the history of the human eardrum.”
METAL MACHINE MUSIC has been listed as LP # 5 in worst records ever recorded by a great musician.
It still sold 100,000 LPs.
I lasted ten minutes.
I doubt many can last longer.
To Hear METAL MACHINE MUSIC please go to this URL
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3-Vy4VRRO30