Lou Reed & Michael Jackson's Lost Single

(Insert fun Photoshopped Sleeve - Michael circa 1988, Lou circa 1974)

Michael and Lou's lost single - an angular and choppy disco near-version of 'Life's a Gas' - was a missed opportunity for both of them. The resulting album would have been great. It would have blown stuff away and yet seemed perfectly of it's time. It would have been released in 1977 and it wouldb have changed Punk. And Disco. And both of them.

It seems odd they didn't even manage a single together. Lou's dry guitar sound would've suited Jacko's (correction: Michael's - see comments) yelping and boy-child vocals perfectly. Michael was the right kind of weirdo and it seems odd that him and Lou didn't meet up and understand their affinity somewhere along the way. They must have been in the same room together at some point. Or perhaps maybe they did and they both turned away, a little repulsed. Jacko (correction: Michael) and Lou seem like (distorting) mirrors of each other and perhaps that's the key to this loss...

I think the fact that this imagined collaboration is hidden in plain view ( did Jacko ((Michael)) not even sample Lou?) is partly the problem. You could imagine them going through the motions of adding each other to their lives (or even just to their music) and building some tracks in their imaginations that, while impressive, seemed almost too obvious and yet... at the same time others would see this as an unusual / unlikely collaboration and this would no doubt irritate them even further (I think Lou would have beamed if this collaboration had been suggested to him) because it would have driven them deeper into themselves...

And Let's face it; they are archetypal collaborators masquerading as singular solo artists and they know it. Maybe one day, I'll get around to my evidence for this but, for now, just look a little more closely into Lou's face and let yourself see: