David Bowie: Lou Reed's masterpiece is Metallica collaboration Lulu

It was reviled by critics on release and baffled fans of both acts, but Lou Reed and Metallica’s collaborative album Lulu has at least one high-profile fan: David Bowie.

At Lou Reed’s posthumous induction to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on 19 April, his widow Laurie Anderson told the audience at the ceremony about Bowie’s regard for the record. “One of [Reed’s] last projects was his album with Metallica,” she said. “And this was really challenging, and I have a hard time with it. There are many struggles and so much radiance. And after Lou’s death, David Bowie made a big point of saying to me, ‘Listen, this is Lou’s greatest work. This is his masterpiece. Just wait, it will be like [Reed’s 1973 album] Berlin. It will take everyone a while to catch up.’”

Anderson added: “I’ve been reading the lyrics and it is so fierce. It’s written by a man who understood fear and rage and venom and terror and revenge and love. And it is raging.”

Elsewhere at the ceremony, artists including the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Beck and Nate Ruess performed Reed songs, and Patti Smith also delivered a speech honouring him, saying they had “a complex friendship, sometimes antagonistic and sometimes sweet”.

She also recalled spending time together on tour: “He spoke compassionately about the struggles of those who fall between genders. He spoke of pre-CBS Fender amplifiers and political corruption. But most of all, he talked about poetry. He recited the great poets – Rupert Brooke, Hart Crane, Frank O’Hara. He spoke of the poets’ loneliness and of the poets’ dedication to the highest muses. When he fell into silence, I said, ‘Please, take care of yourself, so the world can have you as long as it can.’ And Lou actually smiled.”

With chugging classic rock blended with Reed’s poetry riffing on the plays of Frank Wedekind, Lulu sparked a surprisingly vitriolic response in critics on release in 2011. The Quietus wrote that “rarely has one record induced such feelings of anger and utter revulsion”, while Pitchfork gave it a 1.0 score, saying: “Audacious to the extreme, but exhaustingly tedious as a result, its few interesting ideas are stretched out beyond the point of utility and pounded into submission.” The Guardian’s Alexis Petridis meanwhile said “the collaboration doesn’t gel”, but admitted it succeeds as “a defiant, up-yours gesture”. The Wire magazine, however, named it one of the 10 best albums of the year.

Writing in the Guardian following Reed’s death, Metallica’s drummer Lars Ulrich said: “I played the record for my kids yesterday in the car, and it sounded as relevant and more intense than ever; it sounded incredibly potent, very alive and impulsive ... Twenty-five years from now, you’re going to have millions of people claiming they owned the record or loved it when it came out, of course neither will be true. I think it’s going to age well – when I played it yesterday it sounded fucking awesome. In some ways it’s almost cooler that people didn’t embrace it, because it makes it more ours, it’s our project, our record, and this was never made for the masses and the masses didn’t take to it. It makes it more precious for those who were involved.”