Songfacts®:

• The personal nature of this 19-minute meditation is made evident by the fact that Lou Reed didn't want to talk about it. He told Mojo magazine: "It's very difficult that one. I'll leave that one alone, for us. You heard it, it does what it does, some things you don't explain."
  
  The song is part of the album Lulu, Reed's collaboration with Metallica.
• On hearing the completed song for the first time, both lead guitarist Kirk Hammett and singer James Hetfield were reduced to tears.
  
  "I had just lost my father literally three or four weeks previously," Hammet explained to Mojo. "I had to run out of the control room, and I found myself standing in the kitchen, sobbing away. And something else extraordinary happened right after that. James came into the kitchen in the same condition - he was sobbing too. It was insane. He managed to take out both guitar players in Metallica in one fell swoop, with his amazingly poetic lyrics. And he came into the kitchen and he was laughing. He looked at James and I, and said: 'That's a good one, huh?'"
• Radio personality Howard Stern was one of many who originally dismissed the Lulu album when it dropped. He was subsequently won over by this epic track. "It is fantastic. The whole thing is just very moving," he raved. "The music is as good as any symphony. I think if you sit and listen to it for 19 minutes it will just wash over you. I'm telling you this is a great song."
  
  Stern concluded: "I listened to it at least ten times and it got better and better and better."
• After Lou Reed died in 2013, his widow, Laurie Anderson, put together a Deezer playlist of his songs which she feels best represent him. "Junior Dad" is among them. She wrote:
  
  "Who other than Lou could write a song of such purity? And who other than Lou has the nerve to describe these emotions without watering them down? Rage, anger, despair and vulnerability. And great great great guitar drones!"
• Though Lulu polarized Metallica fans and critics, guitarist Kirk Hammett remains proud of what they accomplished, in particular this song.
  
  "It's not for everyone," he admitted to Marin Independent Journal. "But 'Junior Dad,' I think, is one of the best things we've ever been associated with, in terms of real art and literature and music coming together. That, to me, is a real accomplishment, just as much as 'Ride The Lightning' is."
• Steffan Chirazi, who edits Metallica's So What! magazine, was there when Metallica and Lou Reed got together for their first rehearsal. It was an odd pairing, but each had something to gain. "I always felt Lou Reed was very good at picking the energy to feed off, and I think at that point of his life he wanted that renegade energy," Chirazi told Songfacts. "Metallica have an insatiable energy and hunger about them to do stuff. They do it because they have no choice: They're not going to sit around and count their money, it's not what they do. Their heads are always ticking with something, there's always a riff. There's always something. It's insatiable. He loved that energy and wanted it, so that's how Lulu came together."