--- title: Lou Reed description: Sarth Calhoun on working with Lou Reed: Tai Chi and meditation music, the touring band, Metal Machine Trio, Lulu, and the sounds Lou asked him to invent. url: https://www.sarth.net/conspirators/lou-reed/ credit: Sarth Calhoun played Continuum Fingerboard and live electronics in Lou Reed’s touring band from 2008 through the 2011 European tour, was one third of Metal Machine Trio with Reed and Ulrich Krieger, toured Yellow Pony with Reed and Laurie Anderson in 2009, co-wrote the score for Robert Wilson’s *Lulu* with Reed, and played electronics on the Lou Reed and Metallica album. author: Sarth Calhoun --- [Conspirators](/conspirators/) / Lou Reed Conspirator # Lou Reed We met through Tai Chi and started with meditation music. Then came the song band, Metal Machine Trio, Yellow Pony and *Lulu*. ## Who Lou Reed was Lou Reed (1942 to 2013) was an American songwriter, guitarist and singer. He co-founded the [Velvet Underground](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Velvet_Underground) in 1964 and wrote most of their songs, then made solo records for forty years, among them *Transformer*, *Berlin*, *Metal Machine Music*, *The Blue Mask*, *New York*, *Songs for Drella* with [John Cale](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Cale), and *Magic and Loss*. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with the Velvet Underground in 1996 and as a solo artist in 2015. His last decade included *Hudson River Wind Meditations*, the Metal Machine Trio, the *Lulu* score for [Robert Wilson](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Wilson_(director)), and the *Lulu* album with [Metallica](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metallica). ![Metal Machine Trio on stage: Sarth Calhoun at his laptops, Lou Reed seated with guitar, Ulrich Krieger on saxophone.](/images/mm3-nyc-wide.jpg) Metal Machine Trio in New York: Sarth Calhoun, Lou Reed, Ulrich Krieger. > Lou decided to bring Sarth along at the last minute; he met him at tai chi practice, played with him at home and wanted his electronic sounds for this concert. > > [Ulrich Krieger](/conspirators/ulrich-krieger/), [“Unclassifiable”, The Wire, 2013](https://www.thewire.co.uk/in-writing/essays/lou-reed-1942-2013_ulrich-krieger_unclassifiable) ## Before the noise Lou and I met through Tai Chi, and we decided to do an album of meditation music together; it came out as the music of Master Ren Guangyi’s DVD, [*Power and Serenity*](/conspiracies/power-and-serenity/). That stuff was drones and melodies combined with pure noise, and we had talked about doing some duet shows performing it. ## Lou’s imagination Lou invited me. Lou made all those decisions, but yeah, Lou invited me, and he wanted some fresh sounds. He wanted me to modernize the sound of what we were doing. [Tony Diodore](/conspirators/tony-diodore/) once said that I was Lou’s imagination, when he wanted to just have some wild sound or some completely different kind of sound. That was what I brought. > Reed performed an amazing set including ‘Dirty Blvd.’ and ‘Who Am I’ with Mike Rathke on guitar and Sarth Calhoun on electronic processing. > > Lou Reed’s own site on the Whitney Museum show, [loureed.com, June 25, 2009](https://web.archive.org/web/20091014115819/http://www.loureed.com/00/archivexml.php) ![On a television stage: Kirk Hammett on guitar, Sarth Calhoun at his keyboard and laptop, Lars Ulrich at the drums, James Hetfield on guitar.](/images/lou-reed-metallica-2011.jpg) With Metallica for *Lulu*, November 2011: Kirk Hammett, Sarth Calhoun, Lars Ulrich, James Hetfield. ## The projects I did a tour with Lou’s [rock band](/conspiracies/lou-reed-song-band/) in the [spring of 2008](/conspiracies/lou-reed-spring-2008-tour/), processing and sampling the instruments on stage. That fall Lou called me up about a free improvised noise gig at REDCAT in Los Angeles with [Ulrich Krieger](/conspirators/ulrich-krieger/), and those nights became [Metal Machine Trio](/conspiracies/metal-machine-trio/). In 2009 I did two short tours with Lou and [Laurie Anderson](/conspirators/laurie-anderson/) as [Yellow Pony](/conspiracies/yellow-pony/). Then he called me to go over to his house and make some interstitial music for Robert Wilson’s *[Lulu](/conspiracies/lulu/)*, which turned into co-writing eight more songs, rehearsals in Berlin, and the record with Metallica. [“Junior Dad”](/conspiracies/junior-dad/) began at his apartment with [Rob Wasserman](/conspirators/rob-wasserman/) and Kyma. I was still in the band for the [2011 European tour](/conspiracies/lou-reed-2011-european-tour/), and on stage with Lou and Metallica for the first live performances of the *Lulu* material that November. ## Iced Honey, with Metallica [Embedded player](https://www.youtube.com/embed/6sf5euJJx6o) The credit: Sarth Calhoun played Continuum Fingerboard and live electronics in Lou Reed’s touring band from 2008 through the 2011 European tour, was one third of Metal Machine Trio with Reed and Ulrich Krieger, toured Yellow Pony with Reed and Laurie Anderson in 2009, co-wrote the score for Robert Wilson’s *Lulu* with Reed, and played electronics on the Lou Reed and Metallica album. My account is from an interview on August 25, 2026 and from the Metal Machine Trio, Lulu and Yellow Pony pages of my old WordPress site. Tai Chi and the meditation album are from the biography on that site. The video is *Later... with Jools Holland*, BBC, November 8, 2011.