So, while the Velvet Underground were just about the only band of the Sixties to demonstrate that the Beatles didn't cover absolutely all of the angles, Reed's invention tonight goes as far as strumming some of the chords on an acoustic guitar rather than an electric. He plays basic arrangements of basic songs, and if his voice is not monotone, it's tetratone at the outside.It would perhaps be unfair to judge him on his past peaks, Himalayan as they are, except that a glance around at the audience confirms that the long-serving fans outnumber the teenage recruits 10 to none. There's nothing upsetting about this concert, except perhaps Lou himself, who is a dead ringer for a tortoise in a David Essex wig.It's not that he doesn't enjoy music any more. He can jam for hours - and does - and nothing brings a smile to that Victor Meldrew face quicker than a chance to take a bow with his band, stroll off-stage, and return for an encore or seven No, rock'n'roll amuses him, all right It's a leisure activity. But gone is the indecent, dishonourable Reed of legend, who would pretend to inject heroin on stage. "Sex With Your Parents" is a deadpan jibe at Bob Dole and friends; "Egg Cream" is an uncomfortable but fun union of Stonesy music, Jonathan Richman-esque subject matter, and two lines of self-parodic, lurid Lou Reed: the milk-shake "made it easier to deal with knife fights / Kids pissing in the street".Make no mistake, this is decent stuff, and he acquits himself honourably.

He's not taking hard drugs, he's taking it easy.Consequently, the new songs are hardly momentous, though they have their moments: the gospel refrain of "Hang On to Your Emotions", the pretty chorus of "Trade In", the funky drum beat of "NYC Man", the heads-down rock of "Hooky Wooky". Maybe in a few years time they'll be "women". Whether it's the love of a good performance artist (Twilight is dedicated to his latest flame, Laurie Anderson), or whether he's trying to disprove the recent, damning biographies, the new Lou is in evidence, PC and settled. On "Walk on the Wild Side", the "coloured girls" are now plain "girls". On an "I Love You, Suzanne" that sounds more like "La Bamba", he adopts two voices that we never imagined he had: a falsetto, and a voice even lower and gruffer than his usual one. Tonight, he and his three-piece band kick off with "Sweet Jane", and, over the next two hours plus, they rock through most of the songs from his new album, Set the Twilight Reeling (Warner), and some purist-worrying versions of old favourites.

Reed races over "Waiting for the Man" so fast that he obviously doesn't want to wait for long. The shirt may be a little too tight around the middle, but its presence hints that a rock'n'roll heart beats beneath it. Two hours of him is about as much as anyone could take, but they're two hours of awesome artistry. Ecstatic, not to say addictive.'Nabucco': ROH, WC2 (0171 304 4000), continues Wed & Fri.. AT THE Shepherd's Bush Empire, Lou Reed comes on stage in black leather trousers and a tight black T-shirt It has to be a good sign. And what makes him so right for Sondheim is the sheer intensity of his delivery, which swerves somewhere between exhilaration and neurosis. The voice isn't so lovely - there's a wide spread on sustained notes - but it's unmistakable, floating mostly in a falsetto-like high tenor but with an almost self- contained capacity to plumb a rich bass depth.

Critically for music theatre where the words count, his diction is immaculate. It was a no-frill night: just him and piano, with a chair, a hand-towel and a lot of sweat the only props. And for two hours, without interval, he was the centre of the world: magnificent, electrifying, generating enough energy to run the Underground (and they could do with it). Patinkin played George in Sunday in the Park when it premiered on Broadway in 1984, and since then he has become a Sondheimite icon: one of the composer's most loyal and most effective interpreters, as well as a big name in the other classic Broadway repertory.But it takes a while for Broadway reputations to cross the Atlantic, and so it was only this week that modestly, in the small, decidedly off- Broadway circumstances of the Almeida Theatre, Islington, he launched himself in London with a one-man cabaret. It may be that salvation for the British organ does indeed lie in Manchester.Another superlative musician who defies categorisation is Mandy Patinkin: not, as yet, a household name in Britain - when he turned up for an appointment at the BBC last week they were apparently, and not entirely unreasonably, expecting a woman - but known to anyone with an interest in Stephen Sondheim as part of the package.

Designed by the Danish firm Marcussen & Son, the final pipes were fitted last week. They are being voiced at this moment.And in a calculated gesture of audience outreach, the hall has appointed an organist-in-residence, Wayne Marshall, who is everything most organists are not: sleek, stylish, laid-back, charismatic, young, and black. Last month I heard him play the piano at Smith Square, accompanying the clarinettist Richard Stolzman, and it was the only BBC Lunchtime Concert I've ever known to turn into a jam session - delivered with the sort of musicianship that commands superlatives but defies categorisation of any kind. The single item of good news here is that Manchester's new Bridgewater Hall, which opens in September, has just completed the installation of an organ which is clearly regarded as central to the life of the building.