Of all the tributes to, and stories about, Lou Reed over the past week, this is one of the most fascinating - even though it doesn't directly concern Reed himself, but rather Herbie Flowers , the legendary British bass player who created the immortal bass line that opens Reed's massive solo hit, Walk On The Wild Side. When I first heard Walk On The Wild Side, it seemed the ultimate late night New York song: a transgender story (which apparently radio stations in the 1970s and since didn't even pick up on, despite the line, " Shaved his legs and then he was a she ") featuring characters from Andy Warhol's Factory , which sounded as if it had been recorded at about 1 am in some smoky lowdown basement hangout in the East Village. The video above reveals the immense influence of Herbie Flowers - who had worked with David Bowie , who produced Walk On The Wild Side and the Lou Reed album it came from, Transformer , on Bowie's own classic breakout s...
Thanks Alexander. The hotel actually deserves to be much better known. It was owned by the Moroccan railways and was thus a sister hotel to the Mamounia in Marrakech. In some ways it's better than the Mamounia. The Jamai retains the old palace, rooms in which range from the opulent to the charming. The building's owners have a fascinating history, too. Two brothers, one of whom rose to become Grand Vizier, built the palace. After a predictable fall from grace they were incarcerated in the dungeons of the kasbah at Chefchaouen. Forgotten about for years and manacled to each other, one brother passed away in a hot summer. Too intimidated to release the corpse, the jailer sent to Rabat for permission, and by the time the messenger returned the surviving brother was manacled to a putrid corpse. He was released by the appalled Sultan and installed in a villa in Tanger, where a masseur visited him morning and evening to massage his previously chained wrists and ankles. At least, that's the myth.
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