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Artist News Obituaries
Lou Reed 1942-2013
By Andy Malt | Published on Tuesday 29 October 2013
Lou Reed died on Sunday at his home in New York, following several bouts of ill health relating to liver failure this year, and a liver transplant back in May. He was 71.
Born in New York in 1942, Reed began playing guitar while at school and after attending Syracuse University, where he studied film directing, creative writing and journalism (the latter either ironic or understandable, considering his noted contempt for journalists), he became a songwriter and session musician for novelty record label Pickwick Records. Here he met John Cale, with whom he formed the band which would become The Velvet Underground.
After coming to the attention of Andy Warhol, The Velvet Underground became the house band at the artist’s Exploding Plastic Inevitable events in the late 60s. Under Warhol’s guidance, model and singer Nico was added to the line-up of the group – though the title of their debut album, ‘The Velvet Underground & Nico’, suggested the resistance to this.
The album was not a great commercial success on its release, but has gone on to be one of the most influential rock albums of all time – Brian Eno famously said that everyone who bought a copy had gone on to form a band.
Reed left The Velvet Underground in 1970, ahead of the release of the group’s fourth album, ‘Loaded’. After a brief stint working at his father’s accountancy firm, he recorded his first solo album, ‘Lou Reed’, which consisted mainly of songs originally recorded by his former band for the ‘Loaded’ record. However, it was with his second solo effort, the David Bowie and Mick Ronson produced ‘Transformer’, that his solo career really took off, the album featuring two of his best known songs, ‘Walk On The Wild Side’ and ‘Perfect Day’.
Following the critical and commercial success of ‘Transformer’, Reed grew more experimental, first with ‘Berlin’, a concept album about two heroin addicts in love, and then ‘Metal Machine Music’, a double album of feedback. The latter was largely met with derision and confusion, along with some acclaim (which grew retrospectively). When Reed worked on another controversial project, his 2011 collaboration with Metallica, ‘Lulu’, he told USA Today: “I don’t have any fans left. After ‘Metal Machine Music’, they all fled. Who cares? I’m essentially in this for the fun of it”.
Turning out to be his final release, and one he claimed was the best album he (or anyone else) had ever recorded, it bookends a career which was never predictable. Although many would perhaps not wish ‘Lulu’ to be his final work, it seems fitting for him to go out on a record that challenged both him and, even more so, his audience.
Meanwhile, after Reed’s wife Laurie Anderson revealed in an interview with The Times earlier this year that he had undergone a liver transplant, he issued a statement in June saying: “I am a triumph of modern medicine, physics and chemistry. I am bigger and stronger than ever”.
Reed did then return to public life later that month, performing at the Cannes Lions International Festival Of Creativity, but was hospitalised again shortly afterwards with dehydration.
Following the announcement of his death, many former collaborators and friends paid tribute to Reed, with John Cale saying: “The world has lost a fine songwriter and poet… I’ve lost my ‘school-yard buddy'”.
