Happy 75th Anniversary, Lou Reed!

Happy 75th Anniversary, Lou Reed!

Lou Reed would’ve turned 75 today (March 2), and in the pantheon of rock and roll, there’s no other figure that exuded the enigmatic cool of Reed. From the Velvet Underground to his solo work, he was the standard of that unique breed of the rock and roll poet that no one else has really surpassed. Reed is the perfect New York icon, which was echoed by Patti Smith when she inducted him into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2015. Smith opened her speech with the following: “On October 27th, 2013, I was at Rockaway Beach, and I got the message that Lou Reed had passed. It was a solitary moment. I was by myself, and I thought of him by the ocean, and I got on the subway back to New York City. It was a 55-minute ride, and in that 55 minutes, when I returned to New York City, it was as if the whole city had transformed. People were crying on the streets. I could hear Lou's voice coming from every café. Everyone was playing his music. Everyone was walking around dumbfounded. Strangers came up to me and hugged me. The boy who made me coffee was crying. It was the whole city… I realized, at that moment, that I had forgotten, when I was on the subway, that he was not only my friend, he was the friend of New York City.” And he still is. Source: wror.com

Much like the Doors' frustrated poet and failed film student Jim Morrison, Reed, the lover of literature and rock 'n' roll, who was playing in bar bands doing top 40 hits at night and studying for his arts degree during the day (later taking a job writing knock-offs of radio hits for a New York publishing house), saw the Velvet Underground's purpose as being "to elevate the rock and roll song and take it where it hadn't been taken before." Source: www.smh.com.au