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Lou Reed (1942-2013)

The death of a 71 year old former Rock n Roll star and heroin addict shouldn’t come as a surprise, but Lou Reed was a man who lived to shock. After all, the artist who thrust the deepest pits of the underground into the public domain and released a ‘screw you’ 2 hour album of pure feedback was hardly going to give the people what they wanted.

Lou Reed was an outsider from the start. 1967’s The Velvet Underground and Nico was released within a year of classics such as Pet Sounds, Blonde on Blonde and Sgt Pepper; albums that would define an era of flower-power imagination and love. The Velvets instead – with their tales of nihilistic excess – would come to define the future of rock n roll. Where other groups experimented with orchestras and overdubs, Reed and Cale’s band stripped rock n roll back to its raw potential. David Bowie, Morrissey, Iggy Pop, The Ramones, The Smiths, Joy Division, The Strokes, Arctic Monkeys and countless others have all professed the direct influence Lou Reed’s music had on their own. The whole landscape of modern music would be unrecognisable without the impact Reed had on Glam, Punk and Pop. With 45 years of hindsight, his influence truly was profound.

Reed implemented a fresh kind of honesty to rock n roll music with often unnervingly candid lyrics and simply structured, three chord songs. It was this talent as a song writer that enabled The Velvets to seamlessly switch between the full-bloodedness of White Light/White Heat to the more tender tracks such as Pale Blue Eyes without ever seeming contrived.

His solo work will always be remembered for two of the greatest all time pop classics in Walk on the Wild Side and Perfect Day though he was never a pop artist. Reed was always selfish in his work, only writing for himself. He would frequently disregard the desires of critics, fans and record labels. Berlin was hardly the pop follow up to Transformer that was anticipated at the time but it’s rediscovery as a forgotten great this last decade has cemented Reed’s legacy as a timeless songwriter. For better or worse, he was always original (at least that’s a way to excuse Metal Machine Music).

Reed’s death has impacted the music community unlike many others before him. Once they survive past 27, these rock legends seem like almost eternal figures, a continual reference point for generation after generation. No one saw one of alternative culture’s corner stones being removed so suddenly. After years shaping alternative culture whilst remaining so enigmatic, it’s strange to think that Reed was mortal after all. It even casts into doubt the other worldly magic of his surviving contemporaries, and who could ever replace such figures as Reed, Dylan and Bowie. If Reed started an alternative revolution, perhaps his death also symbolises its end.

In tribute to Reed, Morrissey wrote that “his music will outlive time itself”, it had started to feel that rock’s ultimate survivor would do too. 

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