Lou Reed

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 Velvet's songwriter, Reed wrote about such taboo subjects as S&M Venus in Furs, transvestites and transsexuals Sister Ray and Lady Godiva's Operation, prostitution There She Goes Again, and drug addiction I'm Waiting for the Man, White LightWhite 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, though had a major commercial sucess with the live "Rock 'n Roll Animal" LP wich received vast FM airplay in the mid-to late '70s due in no small part to the superb guitar solos of Steve Hunter. A most notable example of critic's distain 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 wide recognition by the late 1980s as an essential elder statesman of rock. For decades he has written about intense subjects including heroin, transexuals, and S&M - not to mention the horror stories on Berlin - which had never been presented in rock and roll before. 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 evokes the city, earning the singer comparisons which he has encouraged to William Faulkner and James Joyce as writers of regional interest. He also cites the poet Delmore Schwartz as a great influence. Reed studied creative writing under Schwartz at Syracuse University in the early 60s. The song My House tells the story of a Ouija board which spells out Delmore, and how this event inspired Reed.