Over the past month or so, two seemingly bizarre musical collaborations have been much ballyhooed on the internet: Lulu, Lou Reed’s record with Metallica and— more perversely—“Leck Mich am Arsch,” Jack White’s collaboration with the Insane Clown Posse. What could possibly have fueled such collaborations? Has Reed finally lost it? Did White wake up from a four-day Faygo binge seeking to understand the last joker card?
Or did they simply want to try something new? Both Reed and White (which sounds like the name of a law firm) have long prided themselves as innovators impossible to nail down. In this sense, then, these collaborations are not that hard to fathom: they are the unexpected we should expect from them.
Reed has shocked audiences his entire career. He used to pretend to shoot up on stage in the 70s and has recorded several surprising records. He followed up his most successful project, 1972’s Transformer, with a concept record called Berlin. It tanked commercially and just when he began to have hits again, he released Metal Machine Music, a double album of guitar feedback. (Unlike Berlin, Metal Machine Music is far from wonderful.)
So is it really that weird to think of him recording Lulu with Metallica? Reed has publicly called his collaboration with the band “the best thing I ever did.” (He also said the same thing about Metal Machine Music when it was released.) Still, the tracks that have been leaked from Lulu aren’t terrible, especially if you’re a Metallica fan (which I am not).
I wish I could say the same thing about ICP with Jack White producing. The song they recorded samples Mozart’s “Leck Mich im Arcsh,” which is fairly easy to translate (and reminds one that the portrayal of Mozart in Amadeus as an immature goon was rooted in reality). Unlike Reed, who made a serious album, White, it seems, merely wanted attention. One member of ICP told Billboard that White “told us that nobody got the kind of reaction he got from his friends in the industry when he told them he was going to do a song with us.” So for White, this is not one of his more serious production efforts (unlike his collaborations with Loretta Lynn and Wanda Jackson) but something closer to a publicity stunt.
Still, even as a stunt, it shouldn’t be that surprising for White. This is a man who married his now-ex-wife on a canoe in the Amazon in a ceremony officiated by a shaman, then threw a divorce party with her on their sixth anniversary. He’s crafted himself an image rooted in being weird and eccentric right down to his look (very similar to the young Severus Snape in the last Harry Potter movie if Snape wore Western wear). If the intended effect of working with Detroit’s second worst musical act (Kid Rock is the worst) was to get people talking, mission accomplished.
