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Lewis Allan Reed (March 2, 1942October 27, 2013) was an American musician, songwriter and poet. He was the guitarist, singer, and principal songwriter for the rock band the Velvet Underground and had a solo career that spanned five decades. Although not commercially successful during its existence, the Velvet Underground came to be regarded as one of the most influential bands in the history of underground and alternative rock music. Reed's distinctive deadpan voice, poetic and transgressive lyrics, and experimental guitar playing were trademarks throughout his long career.
Reed, John Cale, Sterling Morrison, and Angus MacLise formed the Velvet Underground in 1965. After building a reputation in the avant garde music scene, the Velvet Underground gained the attention of Andy Warhol, who became the band's manager. The Velvet Underground became something of a fixture at The Factory, Warhol's art studio, and served as his "house band" for various projects. The band released its first album, now with drummer Moe Tucker and featuring German singer Nico, in 1967, and parted ways with Warhol shortly thereafter. Following several lineup changes and three more little-heard albums, Reed quit the band in 1970.
After leaving the Velvet Underground, Reed embarked on a successful solo career, releasing twenty solo studio albums. His second album, Transformer (1972), was produced by David Bowie and arranged by Mick Ronson; it brought him mainstream recognition. The album is considered an influential landmark of the glam rock genre, anchored by Reed's most successful single, "Walk on the Wild Side". The less commercial but critically acclaimed Berlin peaked at No. 7 on the UK Albums Chart. Rock 'n' Roll Animal (a live album released in 1974) sold strongly, and Sally Can't Dance (1974) peaked at No. 10 on the Billboard 200. When Reed's work ceased to sell well, his drug addiction and alcoholism intensified. Reed achieved sobriety in the early 1980s, gradually returning to prominence with The Blue Mask (1982) and New Sensations (1984). He reached a critical and commercial career peak with his 1989 album New York.
Reed participated in the re-formation of the Velvet Underground in the 1990s. He also made several more albums, including a collaboration album with John Cale titled Songs for Drella which was a tribute to their former mentor Andy Warhol. Magic and Loss (1992) would become Reed's highest-charting album on the UK Albums Chart, peaking at No. 6. He contributed music to two theatrical interpretations of 19th-century writers, one of which he developed into an album titled The Raven. Reed was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the Velvet Underground in 1996 and as a solo act in 2015.
Biography
1942–1957: Early life
Lewis Allan Reed was born on March 2, 1942, at Beth-El Hospital (later Brookdale) in Brooklyn and grew up in Freeport, New York. Reed was the son of Toby (née Futterman) (1920–2013) and Sidney Joseph Reed (1913–2005), an accountant. His family was Jewish; his grandparents were Russian and Polish Jews who immigrated to the United States in the first decade of the 20th century, fleeing antisemitism; his father had changed his name from Rabinowitz to Reed.
Reed attended Atkinson Elementary School in Freeport and went on to Freeport Junior High School. His sister Merrill, born Margaret Reed, said that as an adolescent, he suffered panic attacks, became socially awkward and "possessed a fragile temperament" but was highly focused on things that he liked, mainly music. Having learned to play the guitar from the radio, he developed an early interest in rock and roll and rhythm and blues, and during high school played in several bands.
Reed was dyslexic. He began using drugs at the age of 16. the group was given the chance to record an original single "So Blue" with the B-side "Leave Her for Me" later that year. While the single did not reach any music hit parade, notable saxophonist King Curtis was brought in as a session musician by the producer Bob Shad to play on both songs, Visiting a psychologist, Reed's parents were made to feel guilty as inadequate parents, and they consented to giving him electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). Reed later recalled the experience as having been traumatic and leading to memory loss. He believed that he was treated to dispel his homosexual feelings. After Reed's death, his sister denied the ECT treatments were intended to suppress his "homosexual urges", asserting that their parents were not homophobic but had been told by his doctors that ECT was necessary to treat Reed's mental and behavioral issues.
Reed played music on campus under numerous band names (one being L.A. and the Eldorados) and played throughout Central New York. Per his bandmates, they were routinely kicked out of fraternity parties for their brash personalities and insistence on performing their own material. In 1961, he began hosting a late-night radio program on WAER called Excursions on a Wobbly Rail. Named after a song by pianist Cecil Taylor, the program typically featured doo wop, rhythm and blues, and jazz, particularly the free jazz developed in the mid-1950s. Reed said that when he started out he was inspired by such musicians as Ornette Coleman, who had "always been a great influence" on him; he said that his guitar on "European Son" was his way of trying to imitate the jazz saxophonist.
Reed's sister said that during her brother's time at Syracuse, the university authorities had tried unsuccessfully to expel him because they did not approve of his extracurricular activities. At Syracuse University, he studied under poet Delmore Schwartz, who he said was "the first great person I ever met", and they became friends. One of Reed's fellow students at Syracuse in the early 1960s (who also studied under Schwartz) was the musician Garland Jeffreys; they remained close friends until the end of Reed's life.
Jeffreys recalled Reed's time at Syracuse: "At four in the afternoon we'd all meet at [the bar] The Orange Grove. Me, Delmore and Lou. That would often be the center of the crew. And Delmore was the leader – our quiet leader." In 1982, Reed recorded "My House" from his album The Blue Mask as a tribute to his late mentor. He later said that his goals as a writer were "to bring the sensitivities of the novel to rock music" or to write the Great American Novel in a record album. Reed met Sterling Morrison, a student at City University of New York, while the latter was visiting mutual friend, and fellow Syracuse student, Jim Tucker. Reed graduated from Syracuse University's College of Arts and Sciences with a BA cum laude in English in June 1964.
1964–1970: Pickwick and the Velvet Underground
thumb|upright=0.75|The Velvet Underground, 1968 (left to right: Reed, Tucker, Yule, Morrison)
Reed moved to New York City in 1964 to work as an in-house songwriter for Pickwick Records. He can be heard singing lead on two cuts on The Surfsiders Sing The Beach Boys Songbook. For Pickwick, Reed also wrote and recorded the single "The Ostrich", a parody of popular dance songs of the time, which included lines such as "put your head on the floor and have somebody step on it". His employers felt that the song had hit potential, and assembled a supporting band to help promote the recording. The ad hoc band, called the Primitives, consisted of Reed; Welsh musician John Cale, who had recently moved to New York to study music and was playing viola in composer La Monte Young's Theatre of Eternal Music, on bass; Tony Conrad, violinist in the Theatre of Eternal Music, on guitar; and sculptor Walter De Maria on percussion. Cale and Conrad were surprised to find that for "The Ostrich", Reed tuned each string of his guitar to the same note, which they began to call "ostrich guitar" tuning. This technique created a drone effect similar to their experimentation in Young's avant-garde ensemble. Disappointed with Reed's performance, Cale was nevertheless impressed by Reed's early repertoire (including "Heroin"), and a partnership began to evolve. Reed was the main singer and songwriter in the band.
The band soon came to the attention of Andy Warhol. One of Warhol's first contributions was to integrate them into the Exploding Plastic Inevitable. Warhol's associates inspired many of Reed's songs as he fell into a thriving, multifaceted artistic scene. Reed rarely gave an interview without paying homage to Warhol as a mentor. Warhol pushed the band to take on a chanteuse, the German former model and singer Nico. Despite his initial resistance, Reed wrote several songs for Nico to sing, and the two were briefly lovers.
The Velvet Underground & Nico was released in March 1967 and peaked at No. 171 on the U.S. Billboard 200. Václav Havel credited the album, which he bought while visiting the U.S., with inspiring him to become president of Czechoslovakia.
By the time the band recorded White Light/White Heat, Nico had quit the band and Warhol had been fired, both against Cale's wishes. Warhol's replacement as manager was Steve Sesnick. In September 1968, Reed told Morrison and Tucker that he would dissolve the band if they did not let him fire Cale; they agreed, and Reed had Morrison inform Cale of his firing. Morrison and Tucker were discomfited by Reed's tactics but remained in the band. Cale's replacement was Boston-based musician Doug Yule, who played bass guitar and keyboards and would soon share lead vocal duties with Reed. The band now took on a more pop-oriented sound and acted more as a vehicle for Reed to develop his songwriting craft. They released two studio albums with this lineup: 1969's The Velvet Underground and 1970's Loaded. Reed left the Velvet Underground in August 1970. The band disintegrated after Morrison and Tucker departed in 1971, and their final album Squeeze was almost entirely Yule's work.
1970–1975: Glam rock and commercial breakthrough
After leaving the Velvet Underground, Reed moved to his parents' home on Long Island and took a job at his father's tax accounting firm as a typist, by his own account earning $40 a week ($ in dollars). He began writing poetry, which was published later in 2018 by Anthology Editions through the Lou Reed Estate. He signed a recording contract with RCA Records in 1971 and recorded his first solo album at Morgan Studios in Willesden, London with session musicians including Steve Howe and Rick Wakeman from the band Yes. The album, Lou Reed, contained versions of unreleased Velvet Underground songs, some of which had originally been recorded for Loaded but shelved. This album was overlooked by most pop music critics and did not sell well, although music critic Stephen Holden, in Rolling Stone, called it an "almost perfect album. ... which embodied the spirit of the Velvets." Holden went on to compare Reed's voice with those of Mick Jagger and Bob Dylan and praise the poetic quality of his lyrics.
Reed's commercial breakthrough album, Transformer, was released in November 1972. Transformer was co-produced by David Bowie and Mick Ronson, and it introduced Reed to a wider audience, especially in the UK. The single "Walk on the Wild Side" was a salute to the misfits and hustlers who once surrounded Andy Warhol in the late '60s and appeared in his films. Each of the song's five verses describes a person who had been a fixture at The Factory during the mid-to-late 1960s. The five individuals described in the song are Holly Woodlawn (verse one), Candy Darling (verse two), "Little Joe" Dallesandro (verse three), "Sugar Plum Fairy" Joe Campbell (verse four), and Jackie Curtis (verse five). The song's transgressive lyrics evaded radio censorship. Though the jazzy arrangement (courtesy of bassist Herbie Flowers and saxophonist Ronnie Ross) was musically atypical for Reed, it eventually became his signature song. It came about as a result of a commission to compose a soundtrack to a theatrical adaptation of Nelson Algren's novel of the same name; the play failed to materialize. "Walk on the Wild Side" was Reed's only entry in the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart, at No. 16.
Ronson's arrangements brought out new aspects of Reed's songs. "Perfect Day", for example, features delicate strings and soaring dynamics. It was rediscovered in the 1990s and allowed Reed to drop "Walk on the Wild Side" from his concerts.
In 1979, Bowie and Reed fell out during a late-night meeting which led to Reed hitting Bowie. Bowie had reportedly told Reed that he would have to "clean up his act" if they were to work together again.
Reed hired a local New York bar-band, the Tots, to tour in support of Transformer and spent much of 1972 and early 1973 on the road with them. Though they improved over the months, Reed (with producer Bob Ezrin's encouragement) decided to recruit a new backing band in anticipation of the upcoming Berlin album. He chose keyboardist Moogy Klingman to come up with a new five-member band on barely a week's notice.
Berlin (July 1973) was a concept album about two speed-freaks in love in the city. The songs variously concern domestic violence ("Caroline Says I", "Caroline Says II"), drug addiction ("How Do You Think It Feels"), adultery and prostitution ("The Kids"), and suicide ("The Bed"). Reed's late 1973 European tour, featuring lead guitarists Steve Hunter and Dick Wagner, mixed his Berlin material with older numbers. Response to Berlin at the time of its release was generally negative, with Rolling Stone pronouncing it "a disaster". Reed found the poor reviews it received very disheartening. Since then the album has been critically reevaluated, and in 2003 Rolling Stone included it in their list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. Berlin peaked at No. 7 on the UK Albums Chart.
Following the commercial disappointment of Berlin, Reed befriended Steve Katz of Blood, Sweat & Tears (brother of his then-manager Dennis Katz), who suggested Reed put together a "great live band" and release a live album of Velvet Underground songs. Katz would come on board as producer, and the album Rock 'n' Roll Animal (February 1974) contained live performances of the Velvet Underground songs "Sweet Jane", "Heroin", "White Light/White Heat", and "Rock and Roll". Wagner's live arrangements, and Hunter's intro to "Sweet Jane" which opened the album, gave Reed's songs the live rock sound he was looking for, and the album peaked at No. 45 on the Billboard 200 for 28 weeks and soon became Reed's biggest selling album. It went gold in 1978, with 500,000 certified sales.
Sally Can't Dance which was released later that year (in August 1974), became Reed's highest-charting album in the United States, peaking at No. 10 during a 14-week stay on the Billboard 200 album chart in October 1974.
In October 2019, an audio tape of publicly unknown music by Reed, based on Warhol's 1975 book, "The Philosophy of Andy Warhol: From A to B and Back Again", was reported to have been discovered in an archive at The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
1975–1979: Addiction and creative work
thumb|right|upright=0.75|Reed in 1977
Throughout the 1970s, Reed was a heavy user of methamphetamine and alcohol. In the summer of 1975, he was booked to headline Startruckin' 75 in Europe, a touring rock festival organized by Miles Copeland. However, Reed's drug addiction made him unreliable and he never performed on the tour, causing Copeland to replace him with Ike & Tina Turner. many critics interpreted it as a gesture of contempt, an attempt to break his contract with RCA or to alienate his less sophisticated fans. Reed claimed that the album was a genuine artistic effort inspired by the drone music of La Monte Young, and suggesting that references to classical music could be found buried in the feedback, but he also said, "Well, anyone who gets to side four is dumber than I am." Lester Bangs declared it "genius", though also psychologically disturbing. The album, now regarded as a visionary textural guitar masterpiece by some music critics, was reportedly returned to stores by the thousands and was withdrawn after a few weeks.