Written by Lou Waxman
Vinyl Vogue House Writer
Published August 4, 2025
Apparently, there is something like fifteen Lou Reed live albums out in the wild. Rock ‘n’ Roll Animal from 1974, which is the first solo live album is generally considered to be the best. The first track, an extended version of “Sweet Jane” is a classic. I am partial to the thirteen-plus minute version of “Heroin”. The album performed well commercially as it went gold in 1978, and critics love it. It is as good as advertised. The follow-up live album Lou Reed Live from 1975 has its moments as well.
But it is the third live album Live: Take No Prisoners that is the best and the most fun. Recorded in May 1978 at The Bottom Line in New York City, this album captures the Lou Reed experience that we all know and love. This is the Lou Reed that Lester Bangs loved and hated. This is the Lou Reed that inspired Bangs to write some of the most entertaining rock criticism ever written. The highpoint is probably Bangs’ 1975 Creem article “Let Us Now Praise Famous Death Dwarves, or How I Slugged It Out with Lou Reed and Stayed Awake”. This verbal sparring match is epic stuff, some of the best music journalism ever written.
What is so great about Live: Take No Prisoners is that the Lou Reed of Bangs’ infamous article is on full display and captured on vinyl. This is the album where Lou Reed talks as much as he sings. Reed: "[E]verybody said I never talk. I was in my home town of New York, so I talked . . . I thought of even titling it Lou Reed Talks, And Talks, And Talks... but we called it Take No Prisoners.” On the album Reed goes off on rock music critics, Robert Christgau in particular. Christgau would give Take No Prisoners a grade of C+ in his rock guide. Rock ‘n’ Roll Animalgot an A-.
On Take No Prisoners there is an almost eleven-minute version of “Sweet Jane”, which is not out of place since all the songs on the album are over six minutes. The highlight is an almost seventeen-minute version of “Walk on the Wild Street” that is not so much a song as the recounting of an origin story. Many consider this album rambling, loose, and unfocused. But if you like Lou Reed in concert but really love watching Lou Reed interviews on YouTube even more, then Take No Prisoners gives you the best of both worlds. Christgau called it “essentially a comedy album.” It is definitely hysterically funny especially if you are one of those Lou Reed fans who love to hear Lou be nasty. He is cynical, sarcastic, biting, witty, quick. It is truly great stuff. It is like sitting with Lester Bangs and Lou Reed in that hotel room going at it, only you are at The Bottom Line in the audience instead. With Bruce Springsteen!!! A truly unique album and maybe not Reed’s best effort, but one of the most intimate. Many people praise a live performance by saying it was like the artist was singing just for me. In Take No Prisoners, Lou Reed is talking to you like you are sitting in a dive bar in Alphabet City drinking Rheingolds and shooting the shit. The shouts from the audience form a call and response. And few artists in the history of rock had more interesting things to say than Lou Reed. When he felt like talking. In Take No Prisoners Lou Reed is feeling it in every way.
Suggested sites and sounds:
Lou Reed v. Lester Bangs: Looking Back at Lou Reed’s Famously Contentious Relationship With Rock Critic Lester Bangs
Lou Reed Not Talking: GTK: Lou Reed Meets the Press (1974) - YouTube
Lou Reed being Lou Reed: Are You Happy Being A Schmuck? Lou Reed, Sydney 1975 - YouTube
Robert Christgau on Lou Reed: Robert Christgau: CG: Lou Reed