Laurie Anderson, artist

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 9 February 2025

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Laurie Anderson is an artist and performer who came to fame in the UK with her 1981 hit O Superman. Her work spans music, film and multimedia projects which interrogate our relationship with technology and tell stories about the world we live in.

She was born in Chicago in 1947, the second-oldest of eight children, and started learning the violin when she was five. She studied Art History at Barnard College in New York and took a Masters in Sculpture at Columbia University.

In the 1970s she was part of the downtown New York art scene and her friends and contemporaries included Philip Glass, Gordon Matta-Clark and the choreographer and dancer Trisha Brown. One of Laurie’s first performance art pieces featured a symphony played by car horns.

In 1992 she met Lou Reed, the singer and songwriter who fronted the Velvet Underground. They were together for 21 years until his death in 2013. Laurie is the head of Lou’s archive which is at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts and open to anyone who wants to learn more about his musical adventures.

In 2024 Laurie was awarded a Lifetime Achievement award at the Grammys and a Stephen Hawking Medal for Science Communication.

DISC ONE: Pony Time - Chubby Checker DISC TWO: Gracias a la vida - Violetta Parra DISC THREE: Tusen Tankar - Triakel DISC FOUR: Part 1 - Philip Glass Ensemble, conducted by Michael Riesman DISC FIVE: Flibberty Jib - Ken Nordine with the Fred Katz Group DISC SIX: Doin' the Things That We Want To - Lou Reed DISC SEVEN: Washington, D.C - The Magnetic Fields DISC EIGHT: Is Chicago, Is Not Chicago – Soul Coughing

BOOK CHOICE: Speak, Memory by Vladimir Nabokov LUXURY ITEM: A dog collar CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: Gracias a la vida - Violetta Parra

Presenter Lauren Laverne Producer Paula McGinley

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, I'm Greg Jenner. I'm the host of Your Dead to Me, where the best names in comedy and history
0:05.5	join me to learn about and laugh at the past. You are a traitor. And in the new series, we'll meet
0:11.2	Aristotle. I think he might have been a time traveller. Someone who's like almost a glitch.
0:15.3	We'll dive into the causes of the British Civil Wars in the 1600s. In England at this period,
0:19.8	there's people can't get on the housing ladder.
0:21.5	This sounds familiar.
0:23.2	And we'll discover the arts and crafts movement.
0:25.3	I love the clothes.
0:26.3	I love the vibe.
0:27.1	Yes, we're a comedy show that takes history seriously and then laughs at it.
0:30.5	You're dead to me.
0:31.3	Listen first on BBC Sounds.
0:34.3	BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts.
0:37.6	Hello, I'm Lauren Levern, and this is the Desert Island Discs podcast. BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts.
0:41.4	Hello, I'm Lauren Levern, and this is the Desert Island Discs podcast.
0:46.8	Every week, I ask my guest to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury they'd want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island.
0:49.5	And, for rights reasons, the music is shorter than the original broadcast.
1:21.1	I hope you enjoy listening. My castaway this week is the artist and performer Laurie Anderson.
1:29.3	For over 50 years, she's been using every medium imaginable to, as she puts it, tell stories. She was born in Chicago in 1947 and first came to prominence in the UK with her 1981 hit, Oh Superman. Eight
1:35.8	minutes long and inspired by an opera, its popularity was a surprise to her as much as anyone else.
1:42.2	Originally an anthem for the dawning technological age,
1:45.2	the song has found new resonance,
	...

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