Most of us simply agree with the fact that Transformer is one of Lou Reed’s greatest albums ever; the more skeptical need proof. And not the highly-acclaimed-by-the-critics’ kind of proof, but tiny details that indicate the supremacy of this Reed’s album among many others of its time and genre.
Although I’ve already written about this subject many times, published reviews and made everything a good shepard must do in order to evangelize his sheep, one can never have too much of the little facts that have built this early 70s masterpiece; one of them is a small track placed on side B called New York Telephone Conversation. Enjoying the fabulous arrangements Bowie provided to the whole album, the track lasts only for a minute and a half with Bowie himself providing the backing vocals. What could appear to be only two people having a laugh during a studio session transforms itself – and here is the “transforming” theme all over again – into a metaphor for Warhol’s shallow interest in glossy cocktails, social vernissages and everything that provided his Factory with a few more Superstars, keeping it rolling through the years as a living machine.
So New York Telephone Conversation comes as a catharsis; Reed is finally set free – as he himself declares one track later – from that 47th street loft, and the goodbye to the Velvet years is politely placed in an album that never denies its roots. Fifteen minutes were not enough, so Reed was taking the first steps to make them last a few hours more.
Lou Reed’s New York Telephone Conversation (Transformer, 1972)
