Stewart Hurwood

Lou Reed’s guitar tech, who performs Lou Reed Drones with Lou’s own guitars. I have played inside the drones since 2019.

The bill5:00 PM, Lou Reed’s Musical Drones performed by Stewart Hurwood. 8:00 PM, guest performances by Kevin Hearn, Sarth Calhoun, Shahzad Ismaily, Laurie Anderson. Brookfield Place Winter Garden, March 2, 2023.

Stewart Hurwood is a guitar technician and sound engineer from near Cambridge, England, who moved to New York in 1995, toured with Duran Duran, and worked for Lou Reed as guitar tech and right-hand man for roughly the last ten years of Reed’s life. For the Metal Machine Trio tour Reed had him set four guitars and amplifiers feeding back as the foundation of the shows; after Reed’s death, at Laurie Anderson’s urging, he continued the work as Lou Reed Drones, performing with seven of Reed’s guitars and amplifiers at The Kitchen, the Prospect Park Bandshell, MASS MoCA, the Brighton Festival and the New Zealand Festival of the Arts.

Metal Machine Trio and the drones

He was Lou’s tech through all my years in the band, 2008 to 2011; the photograph with Ulrich Krieger’s essay on Lou has the four of us at REDCAT in October 2008, the first Metal Machine Trio show. Since Lou died I have played in his drones three times: at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine on March 13, 2019, for Lou’s 77th birthday, which he curated, with Laurie Anderson, John Zorn, Stan Harrison and Shahzad Ismaily; at the Prospect Park Bandshell on August 3, 2019, International Lou Reed Tai Chi Day; and at the Brookfield Place Winter Garden on March 2, 2023, Lou’s 81st birthday, with Kevin Hearn, Shahzad Ismaily and Laurie Anderson.

The creditStewart Hurwood was Lou Reed’s guitar technician through Sarth Calhoun’s years with Reed (2008 to 2011); Calhoun has played in Hurwood’s Lou Reed Drones at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine (March 13, 2019), the Prospect Park Bandshell (August 3, 2019) and the Brookfield Place Winter Garden (March 2, 2023).

My thoughts

The profile is from public sources, linked where they appear. What we made is the record on this site and the sources cited above.