Conspirator
Laurie Anderson
Laurie Anderson is an American artist, composer and musician, born in Chicago in 1947. She trained in violin and sculpture, made performance work in New York through the 1970s, and reached number two on the UK singles chart in 1981 with “O Superman”. She builds her own instruments, among them the tape-bow violin of 1977, which replaces the horsehair of the bow with recorded magnetic tape and puts a tape head in the bridge.
She met Lou Reed in 1992 and was married to him from April 2008 until his death in 2013. I played with the two of them on the Yellow Pony tours in 2009.
Yellow Pony
I first toured with Laurie as a trio along with Lou doing “The Yellow Pony and Other Songs and Stories”. It was a lovely two part tour that included outdoor performances in northern Spain, as well as my first visit to Copenhagen where I bought a really awesome plaid jacket that I wore until it was in tatters.
My role on that tour was to act as a bridge between the wildness of Lou and the grace of Laurie.
What the room looked like
Dave Simpson reviewed the Manchester night for The Guardian on July 20, 2009: The two titans faced each other – Anderson (standing) on violin and electronics, and Reed (seated) on various guitars – with electronic sound manipulator Sarth Calhoun between them. Over two hours, his expression transformed from enthusiastic glee to that of a baffled marriage counsellor, as Reed barked instructions.
The Paris house program at Salle Pleyel billed me as “claviers et électronique.” The full run is on Sightings.
Vivid LIVE
Anderson and Reed curated the 2010 edition of Vivid LIVE at the Sydney Opera House, running May 27 to June 11. Their program included Anderson’s own Transitory Life, a Noise Night, a tai chi event called Power and Serenity, and Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Trio, which played the Opera Theatre on May 30, with me on Continuum and laptops.
Afterwards
Since then every time I have joined her I think it was for a noise thing, in Sydney, or at some of the drone shows. My favorite venue was the St. John the Divine show, I’ve always loved that cathedral, but my favorite show was probably the Winter Garden.
The creditSarth Calhoun played Continuum Fingerboard between Laurie Anderson and Lou Reed on the Yellow Pony tours of 2009, resampling their voices live, and has played with Anderson since: Vivid LIVE 2010, and the Lou Reed drone concerts at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, 2019, and the Winter Garden, 2023.