The Blue Mask is the eleventh solo studio album by American musician Lou Reed. It was the first album released after Reed had left Arista Records and returned to RCA Records. The album was released around Reed's 40th birthday, and covers topics of marriage and settling down, alongside themes of violence, paranoia, and alcoholism.
Production and recording
Reed and Robert Quine's guitars were mixed separately in the right and left stereo channels respectively. To differentiate his guitar's sound from Reed's, Quine used D tuning, playing each song as if it was one major second higher. For example, "Heavenly Arms" is in G major, so Quine used fingerings for A major to play the song. Quine, who years earlier followed the Velvet Underground across the country and taped several of their early shows, made for a suitable complement to Reed. Quine also toured in support of the album and can be seen on the recorded The Bottom Line show titled A Night with Lou Reed. Quine later described the album as, "a record that I'm particularly proud of. We had never played together before going into the studio. There were no rehearsals and most of it was done in one or two takes. I like all the things that I've done with Lou but that will always be special for me." Quine and Reed share the distinction of being named to Rolling Stone's Top 100 Guitarists of All-Time List. Fernando Saunders, who subsequently became a longtime Reed collaborator, plays the bass and adds backing vocals to this album and can also be seen in A Night with Lou Reed. Saunders later said, "it was like a dream come true. Lou wanted me to play the things no one would ever let me play, the things I would sit in my bedroom and play. Suddenly I was glad I hadn't quit music for my uncle's insurance company." The album contains no instrumental overdubs with the exception of Reed's guitar on "My House", but all vocals were overdubbed with the exception of "The Heroine". The drummer for the album was studio musicianDoane Perry, who later joined Jethro Tull. The album cover was designed by Reed's then wife, Sylvia, and features a blue version of a photograph by Mick Rock from the cover art of 1972's Transformer. In 2000, a remastered version of The Blue Mask was released.
Critical reception
In 2010, Jess Harvell off Pitchfork wrote: "1982's The Blue Mask, featuring guitarist Robert Quine's virtuoso blend of post-Reed skronk and speed-folkie melodicism, is still the one to slot alongside Transformer and Street Hassle. The album realigned Reed with the punk and new/no wave movements he helped sire, and it was helped into the canon by Reed's strongest batch of songs in years." NME said, "What made The Blue Mask Lou Reed’s watershed album was his choice of musicians, a new wave super-set of them – Fernando Saunders on bass, Doane Perry on drums, and the legendary Robert Quine on guitar. Alternately, Barney Hoskyns said, "What grated on this was the smug sententiousness, the smarmy self-satisfaction that said: I may have been a bit of a jerk when I strutted around on stage with a needle in my arm, but I am now a bona fide Artist and you will treat me as such."
