Lewis Allen Reed, known as Lou Reed (born March 2, 1942), is a rock'n'roll singer-songwriter who has had a lasting musical
influence on punk rock and alternative rock. Reed has toured and recorded
almost continuously since 1965. He lives in New York City.
Reed was born in Freeport, Long Island, New York. Reed was a fan of rock and rhythm and blues, playing in several high school rock bands, and had recorded a doo wop-style single as a member of The
Shades. Reed attended Syracuse University where he met poet Delmore Schwartz, who Reed credits for his simple
poetic vernacular and the encouragement to become a
writer. 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.
Reed moved to New York City, working as a songwriter for Pickwick Records, and
co-formed The Velvet Underground as lead guitarist/vocalist/lyricist.
Though internally unstable (breaking up in 1970) and never commercially viable, the
VU's reputation as the ultimate, most influential underground band has remained intact.
In 1972 Reed, now a solo artist,
released the glam rock album Transformer, produced by David Bowie. He followed this with
Reed's chosen subject matter was
far ahead of its time. Popular music would not catch up to him until
the punks in the mid- to late-1970s, but even then his songs were
unique: whether drenched in feedback or gently melodic, Reed usually sang about the
disturbing, if not sordid, things other lyricists left out. "Walk on the
Wild Side" is a wry and graphic salute to the misfits, male hustlers and transvestites at Andy Warhol's Factory. "Perfect Day" is an elegiac paean to Reed's addiction to heroin, later included on the soundtrack to Trainspotting. In his chosen material Reed
followed, and updated, such authors as Allen Ginsberg and Jean Genet. Reed's persona was also far
advanced, preferring black leather and S&M-like gear even in the hippie-infested 1960s.
In 1975, he produced the double
studio album of pure guitar feedback Metal Machine Music. Some regarded it as an attempt
to break his record company contract. Lester Bangs declared it genius. 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.
In the early 1980s, Reed gave up the drugs and
depravity, both in his work and in his private life, to address more serious
concerns, notably on his acclaimed comeback album The Blue Mask. He
married Sylvia Morales (later divorced). Reed fired an angry salvo at his
hometown's political problems on the hit album New York, denouncing crime, high rents, Jesse Jackson, even Pope John Paul II and Kurt Waldheim. When one-time Velvet Underground
patron and producer Andy Warhol died after a routine surgery, Reed closed a 25-year hiatus to
collaborate with fellow ex-VU John Cale on Songs for Drella, a Warhol
biography in minimalist pop music. Touchingly affectionate and painfully
confessional, often witty, Reed's vocals blister when singing of alleged
medical errors and Valerie Solanas' 1968 assassination attempt on
Warhol.
Reed continued on those dark notes
with Magic and Loss, an album about mortality. In 1997 over thirty artists covered
"Perfect Day" for the BBC's "Children in Need" appeal.
In 2001 he was the victim of a hoax
claiming he had died of a heroin overdose. In 2003, he released a 2-CD set, The Raven, based on the works of Edgar Allan Poe. In 2004, a remix of his song, "Satellite of
Love" (called "Satellite of Love '04") was released. It reached
#10 in the UK singles chart.
He is often seen in the company of
fellow artist Laurie Anderson.