Lou's statement:
"Robert Quine was a magnificent guitar player -- an original and innovative tyro of the vintage beast. He was an extraordinary mixture of taste, intelligence and rock'n'roll abilities coupled with major technique and a scholar's memory for every decent guitar lick ever played under the musical sun. He made tapes for me for which I am eternally grateful -- tapes of the juiciest parts of solos from players long gone. Quine was smarter than them all. And the proof is in the recordings, some of which happily are mine. If you can find more interesting sounds and musical clusters than Quine on 'Waves of Fear', well, it's probably something else by Robert."
Robert Quine dead?
I politely ask: Why, if Robert was so great, he didn't ask Robert to be his guitar player forever? I read an interview with Quine where he said he was the best guitar player Lou Reed had after Sterling Morrison, but Lou felt envious of the good words about Quine on the press after "The Blue Mask". And I can't but agree.
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MeirRachel
- Beginning to see the light
- Posts: 44
- Joined: 18 May 2004 20:05
You could apply that same logic to John Cale's passage out of the Velvets. Apply this to the events of 1968 and the similar events surrounding the implosion of the reunion. Fact is, whenever Lou feels "threatened", out goes the threatening party. No matter the damage to the band or his career....ractrader wrote:I politely ask: Why, if Robert was so great, he didn't ask Robert to be his guitar player forever? I read an interview with Quine where he said he was the best guitar player Lou Reed had after Sterling Morrison, but Lou felt envious of the good words about Quine on the press after "The Blue Mask". And I can't but agree.
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thekiddrinkingfire
- Posts: 13
- Joined: 30 Apr 2004 15:43
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Guest
and also some words from richard hell:
I want to say something about Bob even though it’s all really too close now to do it clearly.
Quine was complicated and he went through periods of feuding with everyone he knew. Anybody who was close to him would get fed up with him at times and he was the same way about just about everybody he had a strong relationship with. I don’t know why I’m starting this description with this, except that in talking to friends of his in the past few days everybody’s mad at him. I guess that’s natural when somebody kills himself. Everybody’s mad at Bob and he doesn’t give a shit.
I’m kind of stumped about what to say, but I really want to say something. Later I’ll take my shot at trying to get down what was supreme about him as a musician. I mean later on another day. No maybe I have to talk about music. Because really music was absolutely everything to him. It’s where he got almost all his pleasure and where he had about his only hope of doing something he could take pride in (though he seemed to never dream he could reach the level of his idol players, like Miles and Lou Reed). He was into movies (one of the first links we had, before we played together, was the amazement that we’d both discovered Hugo Haas) and books (Nabokov and Burroughs at the top of the list), but when you talked about them with him, as advanced as his taste was, still you couldn’t help picking up that it was ultimately frivolous, because it was music that mattered to him. And that was basically rock and roll from it’s birth through 1961 or so (with a few very important later-date exceptions like the Velvet Underground, the Stooges, and the Byrds), and jazz from the late forties through Miles Davis’s and his top contemporaries’ (and Ornette Coleman’s and Albert Ayler’s) catalogs. (I have a limited knowledge of the range of jazz he loved, so anyone who can be more accurate about his interests there, please correct me.)
Though Bob, of all the “punk” musicians, was the most musically sophisticated (unless you count Verlaine who’d come in pretty close), as much so as anybody who ever played in a rock and roll band in fact, he still belonged beyond a doubt to the genre if you want to discuss that issue, by virtue of his anger and his musical values. He wasn’t interested in virtuosity but in feeling and invention (and aggression). (He didn’t like “punk” bands though. I can’t think of one pure “punk” band that interested him--neither the Sex Pistols, the Ramones, or the Clash, for instance. I thought this was a blind spot, considering how he was into the early Kinks and the Stooges and other related groups.) Shit, I’m losing my place and rambling. I want to cut this short and just post it and try to write something more thought through another day.
Anyway, he was very angry but he was also as much of a gentleman as he could possibly bear to be and he made the anger into entertainment by developing a triple reverse humor that took your breath away. He was the funniest guy I ever knew.
I’m going to leave it at that for now. f***.
I want to say something about Bob even though it’s all really too close now to do it clearly.
Quine was complicated and he went through periods of feuding with everyone he knew. Anybody who was close to him would get fed up with him at times and he was the same way about just about everybody he had a strong relationship with. I don’t know why I’m starting this description with this, except that in talking to friends of his in the past few days everybody’s mad at him. I guess that’s natural when somebody kills himself. Everybody’s mad at Bob and he doesn’t give a shit.
I’m kind of stumped about what to say, but I really want to say something. Later I’ll take my shot at trying to get down what was supreme about him as a musician. I mean later on another day. No maybe I have to talk about music. Because really music was absolutely everything to him. It’s where he got almost all his pleasure and where he had about his only hope of doing something he could take pride in (though he seemed to never dream he could reach the level of his idol players, like Miles and Lou Reed). He was into movies (one of the first links we had, before we played together, was the amazement that we’d both discovered Hugo Haas) and books (Nabokov and Burroughs at the top of the list), but when you talked about them with him, as advanced as his taste was, still you couldn’t help picking up that it was ultimately frivolous, because it was music that mattered to him. And that was basically rock and roll from it’s birth through 1961 or so (with a few very important later-date exceptions like the Velvet Underground, the Stooges, and the Byrds), and jazz from the late forties through Miles Davis’s and his top contemporaries’ (and Ornette Coleman’s and Albert Ayler’s) catalogs. (I have a limited knowledge of the range of jazz he loved, so anyone who can be more accurate about his interests there, please correct me.)
Though Bob, of all the “punk” musicians, was the most musically sophisticated (unless you count Verlaine who’d come in pretty close), as much so as anybody who ever played in a rock and roll band in fact, he still belonged beyond a doubt to the genre if you want to discuss that issue, by virtue of his anger and his musical values. He wasn’t interested in virtuosity but in feeling and invention (and aggression). (He didn’t like “punk” bands though. I can’t think of one pure “punk” band that interested him--neither the Sex Pistols, the Ramones, or the Clash, for instance. I thought this was a blind spot, considering how he was into the early Kinks and the Stooges and other related groups.) Shit, I’m losing my place and rambling. I want to cut this short and just post it and try to write something more thought through another day.
Anyway, he was very angry but he was also as much of a gentleman as he could possibly bear to be and he made the anger into entertainment by developing a triple reverse humor that took your breath away. He was the funniest guy I ever knew.
I’m going to leave it at that for now. f***.
The better you serve him, the faster his boot is up your ass. I think most great artists have an ego, but this has definately been a flaw for Lou.Hellcat wrote:Fact is, whenever Lou feels "threatened", out goes the threatening party. No matter the damage to the band or his career....
Anyway, thanks for the Hell comments, Guest, that was pretty revealing... such a shame...
"For one human being to love another: that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks; the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but preparation." - Rainer Maria Rilke
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Guy FormerlyKnown AsGuest
No problem, Chance, i tought it might be interesting after printing here Lou Reed's word.
I took it from official http://www.richardhell.com site
I took it from official http://www.richardhell.com site
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The Groover
from CNN news
Tuesday, June 8, 2004 Posted: 8:50 AM EDT (1250 GMT)
LOS ANGELES, California/NEW YORK (Billboard) -- Guitarist Robert Quine, one of punk rock's most daring soloists, was found dead Saturday in his New York apartment. He was 61.
According to close friend and guitar maker Rick Kelly, who discovered Quine's body, the musician died of a heroin overdose Memorial Day weekend. He had been despondent over the recent death of his wife.
Born in Akron, Ohio, Quine was heavily influenced by the Velvet Underground, whose music he recorded obsessively while living in San Francisco. He moved to New York in 1971 and became the lead guitarist for bassist Richard Hell's important group the Voidoids, with whom he recorded two albums. His skittering, unpredictable work with Hell defined the possibilities of punk guitar.
During the '80s, he recorded and toured frequently with Lou Reed and played on saxophonist/composer John Zorn's best-known albums. Quine made key guest appearances on Tom Waits' "Rain Dogs" (1985) and Marianne Faithfull's "Strange Weather" (1987). In 1989, he began a long association with Matthew Sweet; he also worked regularly with Lloyd Cole.
In 2001, Universal released a three-CD box of Quine's live 1969 recordings of the Velvet Underground, "The Bootleg Series Volume 1: The Quine Tapes."
"Robert Quine was a magnificent guitar player -- an original and innovative tyro of the vintage beast," Reed said in a statement released to Billboard.com. "He was an extraordinary mixture of taste, intelligence and rock'n'roll abilities coupled with major technique and a scholar's memory for every decent guitar lick ever played under the musical son. He made tapes for me for which I am eternally grateful -- tapes of the juiciest parts of solos from players long gone.
"Quine was smarter than them all. And the proof is in the recordings, some of which happily are mine. If you can find more interesting sounds and musical clusters than Quine on 'Waves of Fear' (from Reed's 1982 album "The Blue Mask"), well, it's probably something else by Robert."
"He was a marvelous guitarist, a soulful music lover with high standards and had an eviscerating wit," Patti Smith Band drummer Jay Dee Daugherty told Billboard.com. "He did not suffer fools gladly, but made up for it with a thinly disguised generosity of spirit."
Tuesday, June 8, 2004 Posted: 8:50 AM EDT (1250 GMT)
LOS ANGELES, California/NEW YORK (Billboard) -- Guitarist Robert Quine, one of punk rock's most daring soloists, was found dead Saturday in his New York apartment. He was 61.
According to close friend and guitar maker Rick Kelly, who discovered Quine's body, the musician died of a heroin overdose Memorial Day weekend. He had been despondent over the recent death of his wife.
Born in Akron, Ohio, Quine was heavily influenced by the Velvet Underground, whose music he recorded obsessively while living in San Francisco. He moved to New York in 1971 and became the lead guitarist for bassist Richard Hell's important group the Voidoids, with whom he recorded two albums. His skittering, unpredictable work with Hell defined the possibilities of punk guitar.
During the '80s, he recorded and toured frequently with Lou Reed and played on saxophonist/composer John Zorn's best-known albums. Quine made key guest appearances on Tom Waits' "Rain Dogs" (1985) and Marianne Faithfull's "Strange Weather" (1987). In 1989, he began a long association with Matthew Sweet; he also worked regularly with Lloyd Cole.
In 2001, Universal released a three-CD box of Quine's live 1969 recordings of the Velvet Underground, "The Bootleg Series Volume 1: The Quine Tapes."
"Robert Quine was a magnificent guitar player -- an original and innovative tyro of the vintage beast," Reed said in a statement released to Billboard.com. "He was an extraordinary mixture of taste, intelligence and rock'n'roll abilities coupled with major technique and a scholar's memory for every decent guitar lick ever played under the musical son. He made tapes for me for which I am eternally grateful -- tapes of the juiciest parts of solos from players long gone.
"Quine was smarter than them all. And the proof is in the recordings, some of which happily are mine. If you can find more interesting sounds and musical clusters than Quine on 'Waves of Fear' (from Reed's 1982 album "The Blue Mask"), well, it's probably something else by Robert."
"He was a marvelous guitarist, a soulful music lover with high standards and had an eviscerating wit," Patti Smith Band drummer Jay Dee Daugherty told Billboard.com. "He did not suffer fools gladly, but made up for it with a thinly disguised generosity of spirit."