Lou Reed
Born into a wealthy New York Jewish family, Lewis Allen Reed's
parents were not best pleased when he began to forsake academia
for pop music. Somewhat drastically, they sectioned the
18-year-old for electro-shock treatment. Rather than
"cure" him, it merely turned Lewis into Lou.
Six years later, Reed made 1967's supremely influential The
Velvet Underground and Nico, reinventing the rock 'n' roll
wheel as much through his Dylan-on-smack sneer and poetic New York
street jive as its cacophonic melee of feedback and viola.
Had he
never drawled another note, that one record would still have made
him a role model for everyone from David Bowie (who wrote Queen Bitch
for his album Hunky Dory in tribute) to Joey Ramone and
Patti Smith.
By contrast, 1969's third (self-titled) Velvet Underground LP
was a more sensual affair, setting a wistful vocal template that
innumerable 80s indie bands would strive in vain to emulate.
For many, 1972's Transformer is Lou Reed's 'Greatest
Hits'. He and producer David Bowie unveiled Perfect Day, Satellite
Of Love and his lone American hit, Walk On The Wild
Side. Complete with a transvestite, a male prostitute and a
speed casualty - not to mention explicit oral sex - Walk On
The Wild Side is the stencil of deviance against which all
other solo Lou Reed songs were measured.
His song writing masterpiece came with 1973's Berlin -
a harrowing diary of a junkie couple's collapse amid prostitution
and domestic violence, sung in a voice that had seemingly lived
its protagonist's pain many times over. while in order to
listen to Metal Machine Music (1975) you have to
love feedback. So much that you want nothing else for 64 minutes!
RCA were apparently so annoyed with the album that Reed recorded
1976's Coney Island Baby to atone for it.
In 1980, Reed got married and things changed (he named wife
Sylvia as his fount of joy on 1982's The Blue Mask). By
1990 he had patched things up with former Velvet Underground
colleague John Cale to the point that they recorded the album Songs
For Drella together. The album was a tribute to their late
media mentor, Andy Warhol (the name 'Drella" was a Warhol
nickname combining Dracula and Cinderella).
The new millennium found the 58-year-old Reed diving into
divorce, drugs and a dozen shades of dark beyond on Ecstasy. A
trio of songs referred graphically to ejaculation as something
unsatisfying at best and humiliating at worst, while Rock
Minuet presented a noir story of Oedipal rage,
self-destruction and sexual assault.
In later years Reed was less likely to sing than to recite - as
illustrated on 2003's Edgar Allan Poe homage, The Raven.
Perhaps that is fitting though, for a man cited by the New
York Times as the city's "unofficial poet laureate"
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