by Mick Wall

ISBN: 9781409153085

Published: 2013

Lou Reed wrote songs about drugs, squalor, transgressive sexuality, honourable prostitutes, visionary gutter queens and dollar-hustlers. He also wrote some of the most moving love songs of the era, from 'Pale Blue Eyes' to 'Perfect Day'. Always a generation ahead, he would never receive his due until later, when it was almost too late. The Velvet Underground, the group he led under the tutelage of Andy Warhol, were despised in their lifetime. Yet all his greatest solo albums - from Transformer to Berlin to his last, the Metallica-collaboration, Lulu - were considered meagre reflections of his best work with the Velvets. The story of Lou Reed is full of such contradictions. From the ECT treatment that scarred him at 17, to the 'thoughtful, meditative' figure Bono now recalls. From his three marriages, to his polysexual relationship with various New York characters, most especially Rachel: a transsexual to whom he dedicated 'Coney Island Baby'. 'He was a master, ' said David Bowie,...