Street Hassle

Production

The studio tracks on Street Hassle were recorded in New York City, while the live recordings were made in Munich and Ludwigshafen, West Germany. Unlike most live albums, the audience is completely muted from the mix during the concert recordings.

Bruce Springsteen contributed spoken vocals during the "Slipaway" section of "Street Hassle", alluding to his own Born to Run album in the final line. At the time, the singer was enduring a three-year forced hiatus from releasing any of his own work due to legal disputes with his former manager, although he was in the process of writing and recording music for his forthcoming album Darkness on the Edge of Town, to be released in June 1978. Springsteen was not credited for his performance in the liner notes to Street Hassle, possibly due to his ongoing legal battles.

Binaural recording

The recording of Street Hassle was notable in that Reed and his co-producer chose to employ an experimental microphone placement technique called binaural recording. In binaural recording, two microphones are placed in the studio in an attempt to mimic the stereo sound of actually being in the room with the performers/instruments. In the case of the recording sessions and concerts that composed Street Hassle, engineers used a mannequin head with a microphone implanted in each ear. Binaural recordings are generally only effective when the user listens to the album through headphones, and do not generally translate correctly through stereo speakers.

Reed's particular binaural recording system was developed by Manfred Schunke of the German company Delta Acoustics; Schunke is credited as an engineer on Street Hassle. Lou Reed would continue to use the binaural recording style on two more releases: the 1978 concert album Live: Take No Prisoners and the 1979 studio album The Bells.

Songs and composition

As was common on early Reed solo albums, Street Hassle contained a song originally written during Reed's days in the Velvet Underground—in this case, "Real Good Time Together", which had been previously released in 1974 on 1969: The Velvet Underground Live.

AllMusic has written that "the title cut, a three-movement poetic tone poem about life on the New York streets, is one of the most audacious and deeply moving moments of Reed's solo career."

Reviews

Street Hassle was met with some positive reviews such as from Rolling Stone. Robert Christgau of The Village Voice, however, was lukewarm calling the album "self-serving" with muddled production and remarking, "like so many of his contemporaries, maybe he’d be better off not aiming for masterpieces." AllMusic's later review was more positive. Christgau later remarked that soon thereafter, starting with The Blue Mask, he did indeed start "churning out masterpieces."

Track listing

All songs written by Lou Reed.

Side One:

1. "Gimmie Some Good Times" – 3:15
2. "Dirt" – 4:43
3. "Street Hassle" – 10:53

Side Two:

1. "I Wanna Be Black" – 2:55
2. "Real Good Time Together" – 3:21
3. "Shooting Star" – 3:11
4. "Leave Me Alone" – 4:44
5. "Wait" – 3:13

Personnel

Produced by Lou Reed and Richard Robinson
Engineered by Manfred Schunke (live recording, Delta Studios, Berlin) and Heiner Friesz (live recording, Delta Mobile Studios, Berlin)
Engineered and mixed by Rod O'Brien
Gray Russell and Gregg Caruso - assistant engineers
Mixed by Lou Reed
Mastered by Ted Jensen at Sterling Sound