Lou Reed was an acquired taste. Many hipsters will shout their devotions to The Velvet Underground and tell tales of how Andy Warhol “found” the group, but those stories barely scratch the surface of what Reed was all about. He wrote some awesome stuff and he wrote some awesome-ly bad stuff. That was the real beauty of Lou Reed, he took chances. Take the album he and Metallica put out, ‘LuLu’. Not many peoples cup of tea and boy did they take backlash, but at least they had the balls to try something different and new. Sometimes those things work and sometimes they don’t, but great art takes chances.
Some of the craziest tales of Lou Reed can be found in the book, “Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk”. It’s definitely worth a read on not just Lou but The Ramones, Iggy, Debbie Harry, et. al. I will be the first to admit that I am not a huge Reed fan as far as his musical contributions go, but I damn well admire what he did and who he inspired, especially the gay and transgender community. I still love many of his hits and a few oddball tunes, but I really loved his mystique more and a few film appearances in movies like, “Coffee and Cigarettes”.
Peter Noble, Reed’s publicist, confirmed Reed’s death but did not release any details as of this writing. Reed had underwent a liver transplant in May. He is survived by his wife, Laurie Anderson who is a musician and performance artist. Reed moves on to join some excellent company in the hereafter. The music world will greatly miss him.