Far Out Facts: Everything you need to know about Lou Reed
Lou Reed has the rare distinction of being recognised both among the most important solo artists of modern music and as the leader of one of the most influential rock bands of all time. His art, as well as the subject matter of many of his songs, pushed before the accepted norms of his age and helped forge a path for other innovative artists to follow.
In the opinion of David Bowie, it is Reed’s body of work, alongside that of other “fringe, strange” artists, that “actually have created modern music”. Quite the compliment from one of the most revolutionary artists in pop and rock history.
“Tomorrow’s culture is always dictated by the artists,” Bowie would go on to explain. And it was as though, between the mid-1960s and early 1970s, Lou Reed had a direct line to that cultural tomorrow. Today, everyone from Patti Smith to The Strokes cites his music as integral to theirs. And we’ve seen him pop up everywhere, from Pixies lyrics to BBC commercials to house remixes.
But who was Lou Reed? It’s difficult to answer that question a lot of the time, as his public persona was as chameleon-like as his artistry. Perhaps that’s one of the reasons Bowie was such a big fan. Reed was also renowned for making up and altering his backstory when it suited.
Despite these difficulties, we’ll give it our best shot at getting to the bottom of what this seminal, world-changing artist was all about by answering your most searched questions…
Was Lou Reed from New York?
Reed’s songs are littered with tales of the Big Apple—more specifically, its frayed edges and seedy underbelly. As is common knowledge, he learned the ropes of music and poetry by hanging out with the city’s transgressive avant-garde in 1964.
It’s important to note, though, that Lou Reed was a native New Yorker, too. He was born in Brooklyn in 1942, grew up in Freeport, a suburban commuter town on Long Island, and spent most of his life in the city that never sleeps.
No wonder so many of his lyrics centre on New York’s nighttime activities, often hidden away in dark, underground rooms or shady alleyways. He certainly seemed to know his way around the city’s streets, as various references throughout his songs attest.
How did Lou Reed get into music when he was young?
A sensitive kid with issues focusing on most things in life, from reading a book to doing his homework, Reed found solace in music from an early age. His story is very much akin to the little girl in his song ‘Rock and Roll’. There was “nothing happening at all” until one day, listening to a New York radio station, his “life was saved by rock ‘n’ roll”.
Into his teenage years and young adulthood, his mood swung between the extremes of hyper-focus and depressive withdrawal. He may well have had what is commonly diagnosed today as ADHD. Only playing and writing music made him happy.
From the moment he had some success performing a doo-wop song with a group of friends in a school talent competition aged 16, he seemed destined for a life in music. That song soon made it onto a record. Although it didn’t gain any traction, it gave Reed the first taste of what he wanted in life.
After completing his studies at Syracuse University in upstate New York, where he bonded with his tutor and acclaimed modernist poet Delmore Schwartz overwriting, Reed moved back to the big city in 1964. He got his first full-time job writing songs for a small record label. And from there, the rest was history.
How is Lou Reed connected to the Andy Warhol print of a banana?
Lou Reed was the driving creative force behind the album, whose cover is arguably the thing for which pop artist Andy Warhol is now most recognised. Warhol met Reed in 1965, by which time he and Welsh avant-garde musician John Cale had already started their own band called The Velvet Underground.
The group had already recorded demos of what would become the four centrepiece songs for their debut album, all written by Reed. Plus two other songs, including the Bob Dylanesque ‘Prominent Men’.
Warhol liked Reed and Cale’s experimental approach to music and immediately appointed himself the band’s manager. His 1966 series of multimedia events, the Exploding Plastic Inevitable, helped promote the band, and he got them signed to Verve Records to record an album.
Warhol instructed the band to include the German baroque pop singer and actor Nico on some of the album’s songs, and some of his quotes inspired Reed’s new songs. ‘Femme Fatale, for instance, is based on Warhol’s description of Edie Sedgewick.
He also credited himself as producer, even though Reed’s main recollection of him in the studio was simply, “He just sat there.” While the sound engineer helped with the technical aspects of the production, Reed himself directed the music and produced the arrangements for the songs.
Nevertheless, the album’s printed banana cover art, with its Andy Warhol signature and the suggestive “Peel slowly and see” feature included in the first print run, helped to make it Reed’s most iconic musical achievement. There is an apocryphal saying that although The Velvet Underground & Nico album only sold a few thousand copies initially, everyone who bought one went on to make their own record.
What are the best-known songs by The Velvet Underground?
The four Reed-penned songs demoed in 1965 and later included on The Velvet Underground’s debut album rank among the best-known and most significant in the band’s repertoire. ‘Venus in Furs’, ‘Heroin’, ‘I’m Waiting for the Man’, and ‘All Tomorrow’s Parties’ are each wildly different from one another.
This range of songwriting is a key reason for Reed’s breadth of influence on modern music. Within these four songs, you somehow catch glimpses of punk rock and prog rock, noise pop and confessional singer-songwriting, anti-folk and rave music. They contained the seeds of multiple rock and pop music revolutions at the same time.
In addition to those four tracks, the album opener, ‘Sunday Morning’, with its sweet melody and drug-infused vocal delivery, is one of The Velvet Underground’s most recognised. Then there’s the follow-up album’s blues-inflected title track, ‘White Light/White Heat’, and their third record, ‘Pale Blue Eyes’, which was written about Reed’s first girlfriend.
The Velvet Underground’s fourth album, Loaded, though blighted by conflicts within the band and tumultuous recording sessions, is an underrated masterpiece. We hear the band at their most accessible, with ‘Sweet Jane’ the standout song alongside ‘Rock and Roll’.
Who produced the first Lou Reed solo album Transformer?
After Loaded, the band went their separate ways. Reed began his solo career with a self-titled debut album made up of songs shelved during the recording of Loaded, which received little attention at the time and remains largely unknown.
The neglect of Lou Reed probably stems largely from its follow-up, one of the defining records of the glam-rock era – Transformer – which was released in 1972.
Reed brought Velvet Underground uber-fan David Bowie, who was by this time a star in his own right, to produce the album. Bowie also brought along his own guitarist, Mick Ronson, to help with the production.
The album produced three of Reed’s best-remembered songs: ‘Walk on the Wild Side’, ‘Perfect Day’ and ‘Satellite of Love’.
What are the lyrics of ‘Walk on the Wild Side’ about?
While its title refers to a novel of the same name about the Great Depression, ‘Walk on the Wild Side’ is about Reed’s own experience of Andy Warhol’s Factory scene.
The Factory was Warhol’s studio in Midtown Manhattan. It also served as a hangout for stars of the artist’s underground films, members of the city’s underground art scene, and the LGBTQ+ community.
Two of the characters Reed discusses in the song are transgender actors Holly Woodlawn and Candy Darling (also the subject of his earlier song ‘Candy Says’). The others are gay actors Joe Dallesandro and Joe Campbell.
Was Lou Reed gay?
Lou Reed himself undoubtedly displayed a proclivity for same-sex relations from adolescence. He believed this was the reason his parents had him treated with electro-convulsive therapy in his late teens, although his sister has disputed this notion since his death. In any case, the therapy had a traumatic effect on Reed and may have motivated the profound empathy he felt with New York’s LGBTQ+ community.
Certain newspapers have claimed Reed’s deliberately androgynous image in the 1970s was just a stage persona fairly typical of the glam-rock era. He was also married twice and had numerous other heterosexual relationships.
Suffice it to say that his real sexual identity is ultimately a private matter. Nevertheless, the exploratory sexual experiences he may have had as a young adult likely informed his music. And we can clearly the sexually open and diverse New York communities in which he mixed left an indelible mark on his songwriting.
Did Lou Reed move to Berlin?
He may have released a 1973 album detailing the grim lives of junkies in Berlin, but Lou Reed never actually lived there. Unbelievably, he’d never even visited the city at the time, and only did so after his friend David Bowie moved there two years later.
Berlin was an album explicitly about the negative impacts of drug abuse on a family – namely poverty, prostitution and domestic violence. Its most harrowing moment involves real children crying for their mother during the song ‘The Kids’, as Reed narrates the moment social services take them away from their mother.
Unsurprisingly, the album was a commercial disaster. But it has grown in stature in the decades since its release and is now widely viewed as one of Reed’s two greatest achievements outside of The Velvet Underground.
What other music stands out in Lou Reed’s discography?
His 1989 rock-and-roller New York, which critic Robert Christgau described as “a New York conversation” and “the most Velvets of his entire solo career”, is arguably Lou Reed’s third-best solo album. There’s also the odd, unexpected triumph, such as his gritty cover of The Drifters’ doo-wop classic ‘This Magic Moment’ on the soundtrack of David Lynch’s film Lost Highway.
These examples aside, the other standouts in Reed’s extensive discography tend to be spectacular duds. Like his 1975 noise album Metal Machine Music, which wound up the critics like almost nothing else in living memory. Or his final work, the Metallica collaboration Lulu, which borders on criminal.
There are a few pleasant bits in between, though, like 2007’s ambient music record Hudson River Wind Meditations.
Was Lou Reed in the BBC’s production of ‘Perfect Day’?
Yes, Reed happily participated in this celebration of the BBC’s music output, which was both a charity single and a corporate pitch to the Beeb’s global investors. Big names aplenty sang alongside Reed in the project, including Bowie, Bono, Elton John, Tammy Wynette and Tom Jones.
The highlight of the recording is when Heather Small and a bombastic extra, sparkly Christmas-themed gospel choir are drowned out by Reed speak-singing “Oh, what a perfect day” to close the song.
Who was married to Lou Reed?
Lou Reed was briefly married to Bettye Kronstad in 1973. They quickly divorced because, according to Kronstad, Reed had drunkenly abused her while on tour.
He began seeing his second wife, the avant-garde artist Laurie Anderson, in 1992. Anderson had already been a good friend and collaborator of Reed’s for many years prior to that. They married in 2008 and remained together until his death in 2013.
Why did Lou Reed always wear sunglasses?
From the earliest footage of his Velvet Underground days, Reed almost always performed in sunglasses. But this wasn’t just a cosmetic decision with the intention of looking cool.
Reed’s shyness and introversion as a child translated into stage fright when he became a performing musician. His shades helped him overcome this problem. As he told one journalist, “I wear them so I don’t have to see the audience!”