Programme Index

Discover 11,128,835 listings and 281,498 playable programmes from the BBC

Johnnie Walker's Long Players

Series 1

Episode 3: Lou Reed and Paul Simon

Duration: 57 minutes

First broadcast: on BBC Radio 2Latest broadcast: on BBC Radio 2

Johnnie Walker looks at his favourite classic albums. This week it's Lou Reed's Transformer from 1972 and Paul Simon's Still Crazy After All These Years from 1975. The show was recorded in February 2012 before Lou's sad death.

'Transformer' was produced by Mick Ronson and David Bowie (both of whom were influenced by the Velvet Underground) and contains some of Reed's best work - 'Walk on the Wild Side', 'Perfect Day' and 'Satellite of Love', some written in the VU days. Novices could be forgiven for thinking it was Lou Reed's 'Greatest Hits'.

'Still Crazy' was Paul Simon's fourth solo studio album, winning the Grammy Award for Album of the Year in 1976. It also reunited him with his former partner Art Garfunkel (on the track 'My Little Town') for the first time since 1970.

Simon also recruited a veritable 'Who's Who' of english speaking (and Belgian) world class players and singers (including Patti Austin, Toots Thielemans, Valerie Simpson, Tony Levin, Ralph McDonald, Phoebe Snow, David Sanborn, Hugh McCracken, Bob James and Michael Brecker) for the tracks which included '50 Ways To Leave Your Lover' and 'Gone At Last'.

The programme features highlights from the albums with comment and cultural history from Johnnie and broadcaster and critic David Hepworth alongside archive interviews with many of the key players. Show less

About this data

This data is drawn from the data stream that informs BBC's iPlayer and Sounds. The information shows what was scheduled to be broadcast, meaning it was/is subject to change and may not be accurate. More