Lou Reed

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Image:Lou reed 1983.jpgLewis Allen "Lou" Reed (born March 2, 1942), is an American rock and roll singer-songwriter, originally from Brooklyn, New York. Especially while a member of the The Velvet Underground in the 1960s, Reed broke new ground for the rock genre in several important dimensions, influencing rock music in general, introducing more mature and intellectual themes to what was then considered a music genre for children and teenagers.

Reed first found prominence as the guitarist and principal singer-songwriter of The Velvet Underground. The band, which lasted from 1965 until 1973 (with Reed departing in late 1970 during the Loaded sessions), gained relatively little notice during its life but is often considered the seed from which most alternative traditions of rock music sprang. As the Velvets’ songwriter, Reed wrote about such taboo subjects as S&M ("Venus in Furs"), transvestites ("Sister Ray"), transsexuals ("Lady Godiva's Operation"), prostitution ("There She Goes Again"), and drug addiction (“I’m Waiting for the Man”, "White Light/White Heat", “Heroin”). As a guitarist, he made innovative use of abrasive distortion, volume-driven feedback, and nonstandard tunings. Reed's flat, New York voice, stripped of superficial emotions and, like Bob Dylan's, flaunting its lack of conventional training, was no less important to the music's radical effect.

Reed began a long and varied solo career in 1972. He scored a hit that year with Walk on the Wild Side. For more than a decade he then seemed purposely to evade mainstream commercial success. One of rock's most volatile personalities, Reed made inconsistent albums that frustrated critics who wished for a return of the Velvet Underground. The most notable example is 1975's infamous double LP of recorded feedback loops, Metal Machine Music, upon which Reed later commented, "no one is supposed to be able to do a thing like that and survive."

Despite erratic turns, Reed's work won him by the late 1980s wide recognition as an essential elder statesman of rock. He had for decades written frankly on subjects more intense than the genre had seemed capable of handling. The industry had matured, to the extent that his commercial position as an "art rocker" was secure.

Reed has lived in New York City for most of his life and much of his music invokes the city, earning the singer comparisons (which he has encouraged) to William Faulkner and James Joyce as writers of regional interest.

1 Career
2 Discography
3 Singles
4 External links

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Career

His name at birth is sometimes given as Lewis Allen Firbank, but this is disinformation he himself once provided an interviewer; he was born Lewis Allen Reed. Born into a Jewish family (originally Rabinowitz) in Brooklyn, then growing up in Freeport on Long Island, New York, Reed as a child was a fan of rock and roll and rhythm and blues. During high school, he played in bands, and his first recording was a doo wop-style single as a member of The Shades.

Reed attended Syracuse University and graduated with a degree in English. Delmore Schwartz, then in the last years of his life, taught at Syracuse and befriended Reed, who would later sing, "My Dedalus to your Bloom was such a perfect wit." Schwartz's greater influence on the aspiring writer seems to have been general encouragement, but Reed also credits him for insisting on colloquial language in writing. At college, Reed also developed a taste for free jazz and experimental music. Reed said later his goals were "to bring the sensitivities of the novel to rock music," or to write the Great American Novel in a record album.

In 1965, Reed moved to New York City, working as an in-house songwriter for Pickwick Records, where he came up with "The Ostrich," a parody of then-popular dances. His employers felt the song had hit record potential, and arranged for a band to be assembled around Reed to promote the recording. The ad hoc group, called The Primitives, included John Cale. Cale, born a week after Reed, was then playing with the avant-garde composer La Monte Young, after coming to the United States from Wales to study avant garde music under Aaron Copeland. Cale was surprised to find that for the would-be novelty song, Reed tuned each string of his guitar to the same note. This technique created a drone effect similar to that which Cale's avant-garde ensemble was experimenting with. When Cale heard the rest of Reed's early repertoire, including "Heroin," the songs convinced him to join Reed as a collaborator.

The pair rented an apartment on the Lower East Side and, adding Reed's college acquaintance Sterling Morrison and Maureen Tucker to the group, launched The Velvet Underground. Though internally unstable (Cale left in 1968; Reed in 1970) and never commercially viable, the V.U.'s reputation as one of the most influential underground bands in rock history has only grown.

Playing in downtown clubs, the group soon caught the attention of Andy Warhol, who raised their profile immeasurably, if not their immediate fortunes. Reed fell into a thriving, multifaceted artistic scene, and rarely gives an interview today without paying homage to Warhol as another mentor figure. Still, conflict emerged when Warhol had the idea for the group to take on a "chanteuse," the German former model Nico. Reed and the others registered their objection by titling their debut album The Velvet Underground and Nico. Despite his resistance, Reed wrote several delicate songs for Nico to sing, which have since become classics, and the two were briefly lovers.

By the time the band recorded White Light/White Heat, Nico had been dropped and Warhol fired. Warhol's replacement as manager, Steve Sesnick, was a more typical industry figure who in a bid for control next convinced Reed to drive out Cale.

In 1972 Reed, now a solo artist, released the career-making glam rock album Transformer. David Bowie and Mick Ronson produced the album and introduced Reed to mainstream pop audiences. The hit single was "Walk on the Wild Side," a salute to (or swipe at) the misfits, male hustlers and transvestites at Andy Warhol's Factory. It rapidly became Reed's signature song, and only in recent years has he regularly performed concerts without its inclusion. The song was a result of Reed having been commissioned to compose a soundtrack for a film adaptation of Nelson Algren's novel of the same name that failed to materialize.

"Perfect Day" features a string arrangement by Mick Ronson which was lauded by Reed in the Transformer episode of the BBC's "Classic Albums" series. The song was later included on the soundtrack to Trainspotting (specifically used in protagonist Mark Renton's heroin overdose scene) and used in an extensive promotional campaign by the BBC. In his chosen material Reed followed, and updated, such authors as Allen Ginsberg and Jean Genet.

He followed Transformer with the much darker Berlin, which tells something like a love story of two junkies in the city of the same name. The album includes themes of violence ("Caroline Says II"), prostitution and drug addiction ("The Kids"), and suicide ("The Bed.")

Reed's persona and image were also far advanced. He preferred black leather, cropped his hair and dyed it blonde (and even silver) and dressed in S&M-like gear even in the paisley and tye-dye-saturated 1960s. For many years Reed affected a deliberately "camp" manner and image, sometimes colloquially referred to as his "junkie fag" look.

Frustrated and bored by the types of questions the press typically asked him, Reed's idiosyncratic media persona solidified during this period. His style was no doubt influenced to some extent by Bob Dylan's famously provocative approach to press conferences and interviews (cf D.A. Pennebaker's Dont Look Back), and Reed rapidly became known in the 1970s as one of the most difficult of all rock personalities to interview (a reputation he has maintained.)

In 1975, he produced a double studio album of pure guitar feedback, Metal Machine Music. Some regarded it as an attempt to break his record company contract, although Reed has stated on several occasions that the album was a genuine artistic effort. The rock journalist Lester Bangs declared it "genius," but the album was reportedly returned to stores by the thousands by fans. Though admitting that the liner notes' list of instruments used is fictitious and parodistic, Reed maintains that MMM was and is a serious album. His albums of the late 1970s are often regarded as a mixed affair by rock critics, owing at least partly to the addictions that were then overtaking Reed, although some of his work from this period (including his late '70s LP Street Hassle) is well-regarded by critics and fans.

He married Sylvia Morales in 1980; they later divorced. Reed showed political concerns in 1986 when he joined the Amnesty International A Conspiracy of Hope Tour. Reed then fired a salvo at his hometown's political problems on the hit 1989 album New York, denouncing crime, high rents, Jesse Jackson, Kurt Waldheim, and even Pope John Paul II; the album's "Dirty Blvd." gained fresh radio airplay.

When Warhol died after a routine surgery in 1987, Reed ended a 25-year estrangement to collaborate with fellow ex-V.U. John Cale on Songs for Drella, a Warhol biography in minimalist pop music, which Reed and Cale first performed as a duo stage performance in New York; the songs were subsequently recorded in the studio and released on CD. On the album, Reed both sings of his love for his late friend and attacks the doctors who couldn't save his life and would-be Warhol assassin Valerie Solanas.

In 1990, after a 20-year hiatus, the Velvet Underground played again at a Cartier benefit in France - performing 'Heroin" to a stunned crowd of 500 fans. In 1993, the band reunited and performed throughout Europe, but plans for a North American tour were scrapped due to another (and presumably irrevocable) falling out between Reed and Cale. Cale has since been quoted as saying that he could not understand how Reed who could write such "tender and heartfelt" songs, and yet "could be the complete opposite as a human being."

Reed continued on those dark notes with Magic and Loss, an album about mortality, inspired by the death of a close friend. In 1997, over 30 artists covered "Perfect Day" for the BBC's "Children in Need" appeal. Incorrect reports of his death were broadcast by numerous US radio stations in 2001, caused by a hoax email (purporting to be from Reuters) which said he had died of an overdose. In 2003, he released a 2-CD set, The Raven, based on the works of Edgar Allan Poe. In 2004, a Groovefinder remix of his song, "Satellite of Love" (called "Satellite of Love '04") was released. It reached #10 in the UK singles chart.

In 1996, the Velvet Underground were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. At the induction ceremony, Reed performed a song entitled "Last Night I Said Goodbye to My Friend" with former bandmates John Cale and Maureen Tucker, in dedication to VU guitarist Sterling Morrison, who had died the previous August.

A tribute album, After Hours, was released by Wampus Multimedia in 2003.

He has been in a relationship with the artist Laurie Anderson for many years.

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Discography

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With The Velvet Underground

For full discography, please see the Velvet Underground article.

The Velvet Underground and Nico (1967)
White Light/White Heat (1968)
The Velvet Underground (1969)
Loaded (1970)
Live at Max's Kansas City (1972, recorded 1970)
1969: The Velvet Underground Live (1974, recorded 1969)
VU (1985, recorded 1968-1969)
Another View (1986, recorded 1967-1969)
Live MCMXCIII (1993)
Peel Slowly and See (1995 box set, recorded 1965-1970)
Bootleg Series Volume 1: The Quine Tapes (2001, recorded live 1969)
The Very Best of the Velvet Underground (2003, recorded 1966-1970)

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Appears on

Sweet Relief: A Benefit For Victoria Williams (1993)
The 30th Anniversary Concert Celebration, Bob Dylan (1993)
Bright Red, Laurie Anderson (1994)
Till The Night Is Gone: A Tribute To Doc Pomus (1995)
September Songs (The Music Of Kurt Weill) (1997)
Rockin' on Broadway (The Time/Brent/Shad Story) (2000, includes first recordings with The Jades [1958] and solo [1962])
And All That Could Have Been (Nine Inch Nails tour documentary) [2002] (Uncredited)
I'm a Bird Now, Antony and the Johnsons (2005)
Black Building, Kashmir (2005)

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Singles

Year	Title	Chart positions				Album
Year	Title	US Hot 100	US Modern Rock	US Mainstream Rock	UK Singles Chart	Album
1973	"Walk on the Wild Side"	-	-	-	#10	Transformer
1989	"Dirty Blvd."	-	#1 (4 weeks)	-	-	New York
1989	"Busload of Faith"	-	#11	-	-	New York
1990	"Nobody But You" (with John Cale)	-	#13	-	-	Songs for Drella
2004	"Satellite of Love 04"	-	-	-	#10