1977-10-00 Record Plant, New York City, NY

Bruce drops in on a session for Lou Reed's work-in-progress album and records a Reed-composed, spoken narrative that forms a brief part of Reed's 11-minute song "Street Hassle". In the last line of the narrative Bruce states, "tramps like us, we were born to pay." In an interview with Dave DiMartino in October 1980, Bruce recounted, "He called me up in the studio, it was funny. We were at the Record Plant; I hadn’t really met him and I liked his stuff, I always really liked it. He called me up and said, "I've got this part," and it was related to "Born To Run", I guess, in some way. He said, "Come on upstairs, and he had these words, and I went upstairs…" Bruce read the lyrics, agreed, and recorded his contribution in two takes. "Yeah, and so I did it once, no, I think I did it twice, and he just picked one and I was real happy." Reed said in Chris Roberts's book Walk on the Wild Side: The Stories Behind The Songs of Lou Reed: "I knew Steve Van Zandt, and we asked him if Bruce would do this monologue. And Bruce said sure… but don't use my name. I wish all of Bruce's fans had gone out and bought it, but since we couldn't use his name, they think it's me imitating him." Lou added in Nick Johnstone's Lou Reed Talking: "People expect me to badmouth him because he's from New Jersey but I think he's really fabulous. He did the part so well that I had to bury him in the mix. I knew Bruce would do that recitation seriously, because he really is of the street, you know." Lou added, "Springsteen is alright, by the way. He gets my seal of approval, I think he's groovy. Tramps like us, we were born to pay."

Lou Reed Recording Session

^{Complete lineup of performers is not known. If you have any information or further details regarding the musicians onstage for this date please get in touch.}

^{The string arrangement on "Street Hassle" is by Aram Schefrin, but the actual string players are unknown.}

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