The Velvet Underground & Nico at 50

Beyond the banana: The inner gatefold of The Velvet Underground & Nico

There was a time in the late 1970's when the first album by The Velvet Underground seemed to be more talked and read about than listened to. The radio only played Sweet Jane and Rock And Roll from their last album, Loaded, which was the easiest of their albums to find - and the most conventional. When discussing The Velvet Underground & Nico, their first album, the most common words were along the lines of "dark," "gritty," "uncompromising," even "scary." So for those of us who were freighted with all this baggage when finally dropping the needle on side one, the initial shock was how unexpectedly gentle it was.

The first song, Sunday Morning, starts with a childlike glockenspiel melody straight out of Buddy Holly's Everyday, accompanied by a sliding bass line soon joined by a viola drone and drums that were more of a hint than a rhythm track. Lou Reed enters, practically whispering: "Sunday morning/Brings the dawn in/It's just a restless feeling/By my side." THIS was the fearsome VU, this was Lou Reed, who taught us to walk on the wild side? Sunday Morning is an absolutely gorgeous study in optimistic melancholy - and love at first listen for me - but clearly, this legendary record was more complicated than we had been led to believe.

Musical pioneer and producer extraordinaire Brian Eno famously said that almost no one bought The Velvet Underground & Nico, but that everyone who did formed their own band. This is partly why the album sounded so different than expected - after living with its influence for 15 years, with some of the resulting music pushing the envelope even further in terms noise and volume, the incredibly nuanced original was bound to take some getting used to.

Now, the second song, I'm Waiting For The Man, was more as advertised. Over a pounding two chord vamp, in an unmistakable New York accent, Lou speak-sings a tale of meeting a drug connection on "Lexington, 125." This was a level of cool that is still, even at this late date, mostly only being attempted and approximated. In March 1967, when the album was released (on the heels of The Beatles Strawberry Fields Forever/Penny Lane single), it must have sounded utterly bizarre. I grew up less than two miles away but Reed might as well have been singing about another planet. Besides Dylan, whose producer Tom Wilson worked on this album (and the follow-up, White Light/White Heat), perhaps the only preparation for what was going on here came from The Doors debut, which had come out about six months earlier, and which drew on some similar strains of dark poetry, but with a more radio-friendly sound and image.

Also like The Doors, The Velvets never turned their back entirely on the blues, which is how Jimmy Page was able to fit I'm Waiting For The Man in to the set list of The Yardbirds in their final days. Another early adopter was David Bowie, whose manager had brought a test pressing of the album back from New York. While the gestation was long, Bowie's love of the VU came out in Queen Bitch from Hunky Dory in 1972, and in the many performances of I'm Waiting For The Man (and White Light/White Heat) in the Ziggy Stardust era. The circle was finally complete when Reed joined Bowie to perform both songs at Madison Square Garden in 1997.

One thing that makes the Velvet Underground & Nico so astonishing is that the entire album was in the can and ready to go in April 1966, before The Doors album even came out. Release was delayed for nearly a year by their label, Verve Records, which was more familiar with marketing jazz and was also caught up in putting out the first album by Frank Zappa's Mothers Of Invention. It's a compelling mind game to imagine the album coming out in an even more innocent context. Maybe it would have made a bigger splash, like a hand grenade in a Disney film, but it's just as possible that it would have been actively suppressed rather than benignly neglected. One thing that is unquestionable, that the VU were consciously going head to head against the Summer of Love ethos. "We were pretty much appalled by what was going on on the West Coast," John Cale has said. "The hippie scene was not for us. They were scruffy, dirty people."

So how did The Velvet Underground come together to create such a unique and prescient sound? The core of the band was made up of Long Islanders Lou Reed (guitar, vocals, lyrics) and Sterling Morrison (rhythm guitar, bass, backing vocals), who had met and played music together at Syracuse University in the 1950's. Out of college and trying to make it in music as a staff songwriter and session player at Pickwick Records, Lou met Welsh violist John Cale (also bass, keyboards, backing vocals) at a recording session and they hit it off. Cale was classically trained, had written symphonies now lost to time, and had washed up in NYC after a scholarship at Tanglewood Music Center brought him to the States. When original drummer Angus Maclise quit on the eve of their first live performance, Maureen Tucker, also from Long Island and the sister of one of Morrison's roommates, was brought in on drums.

That first gig was not a success - they only performed three songs before being given the hook - but they persisted and landed a residency at a Greenwich Village club. The night they were fired from there was also the night Andy Warhol was in the audience and they were soon under his wing and providing a soundtrack to his performance art piece, the Exploding Plastic Inevitable. Warhol is credited with producing the album, which seemed to consist mainly of insisting the engineers not clean anything up. After Warhol died, Reed and Cale reunited to record Songs For Drella, a richly emotional exploration of their time with the pop art master, which also illuminated his involvement in the VU's early days. It seems that, besides providing the instantly iconic album cover, the other important thing Warhol did for the nascent band was model an incredible work ethic and indomitable self-belief. His example forced them to sharpen their craft and push their art further, so by the time they were in the studio their material was honed to a fine point. There is nothing on The Velvet Underground & Nico that is not meticulously planned and prepared; even the exploratory freak-outs had a roadmap.

The other element Warhol brought to the band was German "It Girl" Nico, essentially untrained as a singer (her credit on the album is "Chanteuse," which is somehow perfect), but with a spectacular look and natural charisma. Lou wrote three classic songs for her that provide crucial variety to the album and in their sensitivity belie his reputation for misogyny. Femme Fatale comes third on the album and demonstrates Reed's complete absorption of 1950's ballad style, down to the backing vocals on the chorus. Of course, in the 1950's there were no songs sung by a Teutonic ice-princess about a rapacious woman's sexual conquests - maybe Kurt Weill comes close.

The title of Femme Fatale also hints at the roots of Reed's lyrical interests - hard-boiled American literature by the likes of Raymond Chandler, William S. Burroughs and Hubert Selby, Jr. Incorporating their dark themes of transgression, obsession and betrayal into a rock and roll context is perhaps Reed's greatest inspiration and most revolutionary act. He has often said that he wanted to write the great American novel as an album and, besides Bob Dylan, no one else did as much to singlehandedly expand the vocabulary of rock music than Lou Reed.

The fourth song on the album is a perfect example. Venus In Furs was based on the 19th century novella of the same name by Leopold Von Sacher-Masoch (from whose name the word "masochism" is derived), which explored themes of sexual dominance and submission. Surely, Reed must have thought, nearly 100 years after Venus In Furs was published, the world of rock and roll was ready for lyrics like "Kiss the boot of shiny, shiny leather/Shiny leather in the dark/Tongue of thongs, the belt that does await you/Strike dear mistress, and cure his heart." Not quite ready, Lou, but thank you for forcing the issue!

Run Run Run, which follows, is blues-based bit of Dylanesque rock, mainly distinguished by Reed's distortion drenched six string shamanism, which, like Roger McGuinn's work on Eight Miles High (1966), was likely based on John Coltrane's "sheets of sound" sax solos. All Tomorrow's Parties comes next, a spooky and hypnotic vehicle for Nico, which presages post-punk explorations by Siouxsie & The Banshees and Nick Cave's first band, The Birthday Party.

As great as the album is up to this point, it can seem like mere preamble when it comes to the next song, Heroin, which starts side two. This novelistic look into the mechanism of addiction, and the mindset of an addict, doesn't just realize Reed's literary ambitions - it propels him into the company of his heroes. The fact that it's set to mesmerizing and (yes) melodic music only makes the band's achievement here more impressive. Such is the power of Heroin that not only were other musicians absorbing its lessons, but authors, too - like Denis Johnson, who titled his breakout book Jesus' Son (1992) after a line from the song.

Sequencing There She Goes Again after Heroin was a wise choice. It's a charming, if somewhat slight song that's probably the closest thing to an actual pop song on the album, and it gives listeners a chance to catch their breath. The final Nico song, I'll Be Your Mirror, is the first of Reed's indelible ballads, and one of the most poetic love songs ever written. So much of Reed's achievement over the years is based in acceptance and compassion, so neatly embodied in the lyrics to this song. For example: "When you think the night has seen your mind/That inside you're twisted and unkind/Let me stand to show that you are blind/Please put down your hands/Cause I see you." Nico's restrained delivery is perfect, and, matched by the band's delicate accompaniment of guitars, bass and tambourine, demonstrates what can be accomplished when convention is set aside to pursue artistic truth.

The last two songs, Black Angel's Death Song and European Son, are examples of the VU at their most avant garde, with the former being the reason for their dismissal from the club after the concert Warhol witnessed. Lou's delivery and stream of consciousness lyrics are direct descendants of Dylan's work, but he goes a little further, spouting nonsense syllables for part of the song. European Son is truly psychedelic music, an attempt to alter consciousness rather than describing a state of altered consciousness, as most psychedelic songs do. The full band receives songwriting credit and it is a bit freeform but moves along and doesn't overstay its welcome. Its complete title is European Son to Delmore Schwartz, name-checking another hero, the poet who wrote "In dreams begin responsibilities" and mentored Reed in college. When European Son ends in a nasty haze of amplifier noise, there is a distinct sense that something has happened, which could be said for the whole experience of listening to the album.

If The Velvet Underground & Nico had been the only album they recorded, The Velvet Underground's place in the music firmament would have been entirely secure. It is hard indeed to imagine how bands and performers like The Stooges (Cale produced their first album), Jonathan Richman, Patti Smith, Suicide, Television, The Ramones, Joy Division, The Feelies, The Pixies, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Pavement, My Bloody Valentine, and many others would have even existed, much less gone on to influence so many others on their own, without the example The Velvet Underground provided on this record, which is well worth celebrating 50 years later.

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Out Of The Past 2013: Reissues, Etc.

Just a few of 2013's notable reissues

You don't have to be an industry pundit to know that the music business is in transition (if you're an optimist) or in deep trouble (pessimist). Whatever the case, and whatever the motivation, record companies have grown more and more adept at creating objects of desire in the form of super-deluxe box sets. A-list critics must be drowning in gorgeously produced limited editions, filled with smart liner notes, unseen photos and unreleased music. For those of us who pay for most of their music, many of these items are out of reach, although we can dip a toe in on Spotify and other streaming services. So I will not be going in depth about the latest Bob Dylan Bootleg Series entry ($96), Harry Nilsson's Complete RCA albums ($86), The Band live at The Academy of Music ($76), Skydog, the comprehensive Duane Allman anthology ($85), or volume one of Jack White's exhumation of Paramount Records ($500). I will say that what I've heard of these has ranged from illuminating to revelatory and some of them may yet find a home in my collection.

The Beatles were also on sale again, with a new volume of BBC recordings. Let's just say that I'm on an accelerated schedule when it comes to that material and if you like the Fabs you'll want to grab what I am sure is a beautifully executed selection.

Here are the catalog items I did spend time with, some of which have been overlooked as 2013 ground to a halt. Later, I'll let you in on a secret source of free (and legal) MP3's, which is one way I've kept up.

Bobby Whitlock - Where There's A Will There's A Way: The ABC-Dunhill Recordings Bobby is an ace keyboard player and singer who took a back seat to Duane Allman and Eric Clapton in Derek & The Dominoes but who provided a jolt of energy and passion to the legendary proceedings. This fantastic set from Light In The Attic compiles his first two solo albums and is a blast of 70's goodness. The cast is beyond star-studded (George Harrison, Clapton, Klaus Voorman, Jim Gordon, even the Edwin Hawkins Singers) and the music combines blues, folk, country and soul in a way that will be familiar to fans of Layla, All Things Must Pass and Dave Mason's Alone Together, and many of the songs can hold their own in that illustrious company. Some reviews of this reissue have come down on Bobby for being emotionally profligate - he doesn't hold back - but to me he just sings as though there's something very real at stake and I believe every growling syllable.

Michael Chapman - Wrecked Again Like the above, this is another public service from Light In The Attic and their third Chapman reissue. A genius acoustic guitarist whose voice might be an acquired taste, Chapman's early stuff has interesting overlaps with pre-Ziggy Bowie. On Wrecked Again, he broadened the palette significantly, working with Space Oddity arranger Paul Buckmaster on several songs. When the strings and horns swooped in on the title track, I was admittedly surprised, even though I knew they were coming. However, repeated listens caused everything to gel beautifully. On that song, the orchestration serves as a hedge against Chapman's self-lacerating refrain "Oh, Michael, what have you done," while an epic like Fennario is just made more so thanks to Buckmaster. if you like you folk-rock acerbic and British, get Wrecked Again with Michael Chapman.

The Velvet Underground - White Light/White Heat 45th Anniversary Super Deluxe Edition Coming out around the time of Lou Reed's death, this lavish and deep reissue was another reminder of why we all cared so much. The Velvets come on like a supercharged rhythm & blues band on the third disc, which features a complete concert taped on East 71st street a few months before they recorded the album. In a flash I understood why The Yardbirds were the first group to cover a VU song. And then, as Sister Ray seemed to condense into a black hole of musique concrete, it was hard to imagine the two bands were even from the same planet. The remastering is perfect, the visuals gorgeous, and the essays, featuring new insights from Reed, John Cale and Moe Tucker, make for great reading. "No one listened to it," Reed said, "But there it is, forever - the quintessence of articulate punk. And no one goes near it." A landmark reissue.

Pierre Boulez - Oeuvres Completes - Complete Works Sometimes sparkling, sometimes challenging, always rewarding, the music of Boulez is essential listening. This collection, drawn from several labels and cheekily subtitled "Work In Progress," features pretty much everything the 88 year old composer is satisfied with at this point.

Sly & The Family Stone - Higher A long time coming and very nearly gives the full measure of the man and band.

Elvis Presley - Elvis At Stax After listening to this thorough investigation of the music Elvis recorded at Stax in 1973, I am more convinced than ever that calling him the King Of Rock & Roll does him a disservice. It's far too limiting - he's more like the king of American song. Comprising funk, folk, pop, balladry and rock & roll, when assembled together, these sessions prove that Elvis was at a peak of talent and engagement. Some of the alternate takes are superior to the released versions, with Elvis cruising to victory over his crack band. Note that it is his band and not Booker T. & The MG's - he wasn't THAT adventurous. These sessions were his last sustained work in the studio in his legendary career and, while not all the material is top-notch, Elvis At Stax is further proof that when given his head, there was no one better.

The Miles Davis Quintet - Live In Europe 1969: The Bootleg Series Vol. 2 Speaking of giants of American music, Sony Legacy follows up Vol. 1 with another spectacular release. Worth it just for the DVD of this short-lived band onstage.

Rodion G.A. - Lost Tapes This Strut compilation features the wild and wonderful (and occasionally wayward) music Rodion Rosca recorded between 1978 and 1983, never before released sounds of young electronic Romania. Think you've heard it all? You're so wrong.

Killing Joke - The Singles Collection 1979-2012 Even if you can't find the three disc version (with demos and rare tracks), this overview of the unstoppable post-punk band is fairly definitive. For now.

Buffalo Daughter - Rediscover. Best. Re-Recordings And Remixes Everyone knows the 90's are back, so what better time to delve into the witty and Krautrock-infused sounds of this Japanese trio? First heard on these shores via the Beastie Boys's Grand Royal label, this collection will bring you up to speed on some really fun stuff.

Finally, a word about Jimi Hendrix. While I wish his half-sister Janie seemed to be a nicer person, there is no doubt that she helped last year be a banner year for the ultimate guitar hero. People, Hell & Angels collected a dozen studio tracks Hendrix recorded at various times and places without the Experience. While some of the remastering is slightly aggressive, the songs burst out of the speakers, crackling with fire and life. If this is indeed the last new release of unreleased Hendrix studio material, it's a more than worthy ending point. 

2013 also saw the release of Hear My Train a Coming, a lovingly produced documentary made in collaboration between the Hendrix family and PBS's American Masters. Featuring spectacular live footage and a wealth of new interviews, it's hard to imagine bettering this film. Show it to anyone who doesn't understand - and even those who think they do. The DVD has some great bonus features, including footage filmed at the New York Pop Festival and the Love & Peace Festival in Germany - his last ever performance. There's also a generous selection from the Miami Pop Festival, which is also the subject of its own release including a complete set from the 1968 concert. The Experience burn their way through a mostly standard setlist, heavy on Are You Experienced? material. However, there was rarely anything standard about a Hendrix concert and there are many inspired and transcendent moments. 

Make sure you watch this performance of Foxey Lady all the way to the end. Hendrix dishes out a number of dazzling effects to finish off the song - scraping the strings, abusing the whammy bar, swinging the guitar against the mic stand, and pounding the strings with his fist. His expression of wicked delight is something to see and a perfect capper to a great year in reissues.

Out Of The Past 2013: Reissues, Etc. from Murgatroyd on 8tracks Radio.

Now, about those free MP3's…Do you have a library card? Then you are entitled to access Freegal Music and download three tracks each week. Is there more than one library card in your household? Do the math - and tell them AnEarful sent you.

Lou Reed

"Lou was a prince and a fighter and I know his songs of the pain and beauty in the world will fill many people with the incredible joy he felt for life. Long live the beauty that comes down and through and onto all of us." - from Laurie Anderson's obituary for her husband, Lou Reed

Thanks to the ongoing slow-motion train wreck tragedy that is classic rock radio, it is all too possible that a majority of the people in this country associate Lou Reed with one song, the canny concoction known as Walk On The Wild Side. This is not an entirely bad thing as it is a brilliant song, and one that that managed to get both "head" and "colored girls" - i.e. transgression - on radios across the land. However, it is also shameful when you consider the gratitude we owe Lou Reed, both for his music specifically and for his ambitions for rock music in general. In countless interviews, Reed made it plain that his "life was saved by rock and roll," and that he wanted to return the favor by creating music that would align what was seen as teenage fare with the literary and artistic movements of the day, i.e. the great American novel in song.

For this reason, The Velvet Underground and Nico, the first album by his seminal band, is at least as important as Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band in affecting the transformation of rock music into an art form on the same level as books, movies, paintings, etc. What's more remarkable, he was able to accomplish this without losing sight of the blues and soul that made the music great to begin with. And why should we thank him for this? Simply because it meant that he made the rock and roll that saved the lives of a new, more sophisticated audience while inspiring some of the finest music of the seventies and beyond.

Even if he had burnt out and faded away after Loaded and being forced out of his own band, the songs he wrote for the four Velvet Underground albums (not to mention others released later) would have established him as one of the finest songwriters of the century. His novelistic eye for detail, ability to deal with multiple viewpoints and the compassion he almost always had for the characters he created and often portrayed in his songs enlarged the parameters of what a song could do. While he was sometimes accused of misogyny, it's remarkable how many songs he wrote from the point of view of women, from Nico's songs on the first album to Candy Says, Lisa Says, Stephanie Says and Caroline Says. That's not to mention She's My Best Friend and the tongue-half-in-cheek rebuttal of Women ("I love women, I think they're great") from 1982's The Blue Mask.

I'm not going to spend any more time defending him - as a man he was more complex than most, which fed into his complexity as an artist. I will say that the one time I encountered him face-to-face, at a Tower Records autograph event, he was friendly and patient with the long line of fans. Funnily enough, while people love to attack him for being a bit of a bastard, there are few figures outside of hip hop besides Lou whose street cred depends on them being the hard man. Concerns about him going soft are ridiculous, in any case, when you consider that the first track on VU's debut was the achingly beautiful Sunday Morning. By the time that record ended, Lou (and his cohort of John Cale, Sterling Morrison, and Mo Tucker) had cleared so much artistic space for himself that to try to put a simple box around his talent was a fool's errand.

Defying expectations was a big part of his m.o., driven partly by the joy of taking on new creative challenges and the satisfaction of keeping people guessing. But to those of us who followed along closely, there was the excitement of being shown new perspectives on truth and beauty on a fairly regular basis. Here are a couple of snapshots of my own personal thrills of being a Lou Reed fan.

1983: I can distinctly remember the night air on Central Park West as I walked down to catch what was then the CC train for an important errand: a trip to the Bottom Line on West 4th Street to acquire Lou Reed tickets for me and my friend, Leo. This was a crucial concert and I was not leaving anything to chance. I was especially happy that Leo could join me as he was a bit of a project of mine where music was concerned. Just a few years earlier, he had called The Beatles "just a lot of loud guitar," so the fact that I had been able to move him off that and then get him into the Velvets and Lou Reed (not to mention a lot of punk, post-punk and new wave) was quite gratifying. Once the tickets were purchased, all we had to do was wait a few weeks, which time we spent listening to The Blue Mask, his complete return to form that had been released about a year earlier, as well as as much of the back catalog as we could get our hands on.

Anticipation was high by the time the night rolled around, and even a little anxiety. Which Lou would we get? The one capable of putting on a devastatingly effective rock show or the rapier-witted and sometimes downright nasty stand up comedian who appeared on Take No Prisoners, a live album recorded at the Bottom Line just five years earlier. In short, would he mug us on the way out, as he threatened to do on that album, or would he move us to tears with fragile and carefully observed songs like The Day John Kennedy Died?

We lined up outside the legendary club, our excitement immunizing us from the frigid February air. What passed for conversation was Leo saying, "Lou Reed, Lou REED," and me saying, "I know, I know!" Finally we were let in and grabbed a couple of spots at one of the long tables that abutted the stage. Since the drinking age had recently been changed to 19 I ordered a screwdriver by using the fake ID I bought in the back of a Times Square arcade. This was Lou Reed's New York, and we did dangerous stuff like that.

There was little fanfare before the man himself and his crack band appeared before the sold out house and launched into Sweet Jane. A shiver went through me as I took in every detail of the performance. The way his eyes would almost shyly rake the crowd, as if he was taking it all in. The precision of his guitar playing, locked tight with Robert Quine (the other genius on stage that night). The glances to Quine, bassist Fernando Saunders and drummer Fred Maher - communicating what looked like satisfaction and pride.

Before Sweet Jane had even ended, it was clear that Lou was in full command of his powers, excited and in total control all at once. The rest of the concert, a concise hour, did nothing to disabuse us of this first impression. The set list was well chosen between Velvet Underground classics and more recent material, with everything sounding homogenous due to the distinctive sound world of the quartet. There was Lou's guitar, dark and powerful, and Quine's trebly jangle, which could go into full on skronk at a moment's notice. Underneath was Saunders's very distinctive bass patterns, all swoops and glides, and Maher's drumming, which was both flawless and explosive.

Leo and I were hypnotized for the whole show, bobbing our heads like most of the crowd (maybe not Andy Warhol, whose table was not visible to us), in a perpetual state of joy and wishing it would never end. One moment that stood out was Lou's solo during Women; prefaced by some careful adjustments to his amp and axe, Lou uncoiled long, gorgeous notes, masterfully matched with overtones, the result sounding more like a viola than a guitar. It was jaw-dropping and I tried to hold it in my mind for as long as possible.
I made a tape of the concert, which was unnecessary as they were filming the whole thing. It was later issued as a video called A Night With Lou Reed and it is well worth watching. At the end of the video, we get to follow Lou backstage, where he greets well wishers (including his then-wife, Sylvia Morales, who deserves a lot of credit for his resurgence at that time), and makes a few telling comments about the show. "That was short and delicious," he says, and then "I hit one note that actually caused me to levitate about half a foot. I'm not sure if it was pain or pleasure that did it." Watching this a few days ago, I simply thought: I can relate.

I was lucky enough to see Lou four other times, and except for one over-amped sonic travesty at The Ritz, they were all great shows, especially the pioneering concerts where he played New York and Magic and Loss in their entirety.

1983, part 2: In September 1982 I became a believer in love at first sight when I met the woman who later became my wife. About a year after that, I transferred to her college and, after dealing with the end of her previous relationship, we became an item. When November was on the horizon, all I wanted was that we could be together over Thanksgiving break. However, it was not to be: I was laid low by a bad case of mono and was not able (or allowed) to travel to Syracuse (Lou's college town) to be with my love. I was lonely, wiped out and miserable. I did not want to listen to any music, which is very unusual for me, when a half-remembered sound came to me, a sound that might be the only thing to fit my mood.

A couple of years earlier, I had paid a pretty penny for a copy of Metal Machine Music, Lou Reed's fifth solo album. I had done my reading so I had some idea what to expect but bought it anyway, partly as a completist act and partly out of curiosity. At the time, I dropped the needle down on a few spots on the album's four sides and thought it was both a noble experiment and a brilliantly conceived fuck you. I loved the liner notes ("My week beats your year") and appreciated the irony of seeing RCA's Red Seal label - normally reserved for classical releases - applied to Lou's evil slabs of wax.

Now, however, my black mood called those little snippets back to my mind and I knew that no other record would do. I played all four sides and it fit my psyche like a glove. While I can't say I listen to Metal Machine Music frequently, I have always been grateful to Lou for helping me through that tough time. And fortunately, I didn't ruin everything when I played Berlin for my girlfriend some time later, even though she was actually angry at me for exposing her to such a depth of sadness. In the fullness of time, both albums, denigrated upon release, have become classics. That was Lou's final reward for staying true to his vision.

In the end, that is one of the central messages of Lou Reed's career: don't believe what you read, don't believe what people say about you, hone your internal compass and let it guide you. The same can be said for the artists who inspired him, from Hubert Selby, Jr. and William S. Burroughs, to Doc Pomus and Dylan. As a thought to end this, I urge you to follow Lou's example and find your own points of reference in his remarkable body of work. Don't believe the obituaries with their lazy shibboleths and bits of received wisdom. Transformer is not perfect (in fact, it's quite uneven), The Bells is not the great lost album (that might be Rock And Roll Heart), Take No Prisoners is not just a comedy album (stunning versions of Berlin and Pale Blue Eyes put the lie to that view), Lulu, his collaboration with Metallica, does not suck (it's a brave and bloody album, worth it for Iced Honey and Junior Dad alone). Listen for yourself. Do it for Lou.

"Take me for what I am, a star newly emerging." - Lou Reed, Set The Twilight Reeling (1996)