Lou Reed

by Anthony DeCurtis

  The event was structured enough to bear the weight of its meaning and intent, and casual enough to do so without pretension. Performances by the likes of Deborah Harry, Paul Simon, and Patti Smith alternated with spoken remembrances by Hal Willner; Julian Schnabel; Lou’s sister, Bunny; and, most affectingly, Anderson herself. Speakers, friends, family members, and some colleagues were casually seated onstage to the left, including Elisabeth Weiss, a dog trainer who was there to tend to Will, Reed and Anderson’s beloved rat terrier, who barked in participation from time to time throughout the evening. A number of the people who spoke noted the appropriateness of the setting, given Reed’s lifelong love for black music. Master Ren and some of the friends with whom Reed had practiced tai chi demonstrated the elegance and force of the martial arts discipline that had become such an important part of his life. The lyricism and sheer physical power of their movements echoed both the beauty and brutality of his songs and the vulnerability and ferocity of his personality. “I finally see why tai chi is called a moving meditation, and what tai chi must have really meant to Lou as he studied it with his friends and his beloved teacher,” Anderson said.

  Understandably, the evening evoked a vision of Reed that, for the most part, smoothed his abrasive edges and offered rationales—the usual ones—for his explosive anger: his perfectionism, the impenetrability of critics and record company executives, the philistinism of others’ expectations of him. Anderson came closest to offering a more comprehensive portrait of this most troubling aspect of Reed’s personality. “People who knew him also sometimes experienced his anger and his fury,” she said. “But in the last few years, each time he was angry, it was followed by an apology, until the anger and the apology got closer and closer, until they were almost on top of each other. Lou knew what he was doing and what he was going for, and his incredible complexity and his anger was one of the biggest parts of his beauty.”

  Her remarks made a powerful impression. “I don’t think anyone was ready for her speeches at the memorial service,” said Reed’s friend the musician Richard Barone. “They were just the most touching and beautiful things that I’ve ever heard. It transcended their own relationship, and really was about relationships in general.”

  In a moving remembrance that depicted her brother as the pride of a family that both loved and was a little frightened by him, Bunny revealed the strange coincidence that, ten days after Reed’s death, their mother, Toby, died at age ninety-three from what an obituary described as “a ravaging, devastating illness.” In his will, Reed had left 75 percent of his estate to Anderson, and the other 25 percent to Bunny, with half a million dollars specifically earmarked for the care of his mother until her death. How somehow fitting that Reed and Toby would leave this world so close together.

  It later came to light that Reed’s estate, including his song publishing, was worth approximately $30 million, an extraordinary sum for an artist who had complained about money throughout his career. The apartment on West Eleventh Street in Greenwich Village was worth $7 million, and their Hamptons home was estimated to be worth $1.5 million.

  Anderson spoke twice at the memorial, once at the beginning and once near the end, and performed a beautiful solo violin piece titled “Flow” that she had written for Reed’s birthday a few years earlier. “I wasn’t really ready for this,” she said during her first remarks. “I wasn’t ready for all the crazy things that have happened since Lou died. I’ve learned more in the last fifty days than I have in my whole life, things I could never have predicted or imagined, things about time and energy and transformation, and about love and life and death and compassion. I began to see things as if for the first time, bound together. It’s as if the world has suddenly opened and everything is illuminated and transparent and utterly fragile.”

  Anderson’s eulogies, particularly the final one, were very much in the spirit of her performance art pieces: smart, precisely observed, funny, affectionate, gracious, and strangely detached. “Lou and I were meditators,” she stated at one point. “We were students of Buddhism and also artists, so we had lots of reasons to try to understand how life and death can illuminate each other.”

  Understandably and characteristically, she wanted to emphasize the joy she and Reed had experienced together, and the sense of spiritual deliverance that his death represented for them. She claimed that The Tibetan Book of the Dead forbade crying when someone dies, “because it’s supposedly confusing to the dead, and you don’t want to summon them back, because they actually can’t come back. So no crying.” True, many eulogies discourage mourning, but Anderson’s were notable for their distinct lack of expressed sadness. She mentioned that Mingyur Rinpoche had presented her and Reed with the emotional challenge of attempting to “feel sad without being sad,” which, she said, the couple “worked on all our lives.” She further claimed that, since her husband’s death, she “had the great experience of actually living in the present, a state of the greatest possible happiness that I’m sure will take me the rest of my life to understand and fully realize.” Rinpoche had also taught them about grief. According to Anderson, he told them, “Whenever you think of that person you’re grieving for, instead of giving in to grief, do something kind or give something away. ‘But,’ you say, ‘grief is terrible and it’s constant! I’d be giving things away nonstop.’ And he said, ‘So?’”

  At their most moving, Anderson’s remarks emphasized what she and Reed had found in each other and experienced together. “As a partner in both work and love, Lou was true,” she said, “and he was completely transparent. I never had a single doubt that we loved each other beyond anything else from the time we first met until the moment he died. And almost every day we said, ‘And you, you are the love of my life,’ or some version of that in one of our many private and somewhat bizarre languages. We knew exactly what we had, and we were both beyond grateful.” In Rolling Stone, Anderson wrote after Reed’s death, “At the moment, I have only the greatest happiness, and I am so proud of the way he lived and died, of his incredible power and grace.

  “And death? I believe that the purpose of death is the release of love.”

  That “release of love” seems to mean the transformation of a human being into energy. “Living in the present, I see him and the way his life has turned to energy everywhere I look.… I see how people turn into light and into music and eventually into other people, and how fluid the boundaries really are.”

  AND SO LOU REED and his music continue to find their way out into the world. After his death, it was announced that a Velvet Underground archive was being assembled at Cornell University, and some of his beloved gear was auctioned off to help fund it. Anderson also arranged for Reed’s extensive personal archive to be housed at the New York Public Library, where it will eventually be available to the public.

  Reed’s work with the Velvet Underground remains the most significant music of his career, but his importance in the twenty-first century extends well beyond the songs he wrote either with that band or as a solo artist. As Laurie Anderson suggested in her eulogy, Reed had become a symbol of artistic freedom, the willingness to try anything regardless of what record executives, critics, or even his own fans might think. For thousands of musicians and artists, he had become an avatar of personal freedom as well. His bisexuality and fascination with transsexualism now feel very much a part of the cultural moment, a rejection of gender orthodoxy as stark as his refusal to conform to aesthetic expectations of any kind. In a culture that rewards success above all else, Reed stood for an insistence on succeeding on his own terms or not at all. The violence of his anger—the least attractive aspect of his personality—came to be seen as an expression of frustration with the limited options offered to artists. It can be viewed as cathartic, a necessary purging of the inessential, rather than offensive. If Reed occasionally went too far, personally or artistically, that was just the price that had to be paid for everyone else not going far enough. What Reed attempted was at least as
significant as what he accomplished; his failures are marks of his integrity. As time passes, he will increasingly be judged, as all artists are, by the greatness of his best work. By that standard, there is little chance that he will ever be forgotten.

  But as always, Reed maintained a pragmatic view of what his legacy would be. Speaking about a track on Magic and Loss in 1992, an interviewer said to Reed, “‘Cremation’ could stand as your elegy. When you die, radio stations will play that.”

  “When I die,” Reed coolly responded, “they’ll play ‘Walk on the Wild Side.’” And they certainly did.

  Lou Reed (with guitar) at his high school talent show, March 1959, along with (from left) Richard Sigal, Judy Titus, and Johnny DeKam. (Courtesy of Richard Sigal)

  Reed’s senior year high school yearbook photo, inscribed to his friend Richard Sigal. Reed “naturally” likes girls, and intends to “take life as it comes.” (Courtesy of Richard Sigal)

  Reed performs with his band on the front porch of the Sigma Alpha Mu fraternity at Syracuse University during the 1961–62 academic year. (Syracuse University Archives)

  Reed’s college girlfriend, Shelley Albin, in 1963, with her brown hair bleached blonde out of depression over breaking up with Lou. Her mother commented about her “trashy” look: “Why not carry a mattress on your back, too?” Reed loved it. (Photograph by Marsha Bromson)

  Reed (center) and the Velvet Underground perform for Venus in Furs, a film by the band’s friend Piero Heliczer, November 1965. (Adam Ritchie / Redferns / Getty Images)

  Reed and Warhol hold one of the helium-filled balloons from Warhol’s Silver Clouds exhibition at the Leo Castelli Gallery in New York, 1966. (Estate of David Gahr / Getty Images)

  The Velvet Underground at the Trip in Los Angeles in 1966. Said Cher, an attendee: the Velvets “will replace nothing, except maybe suicide.” (© Lisa Law)

  Only boys wear shades: (from left) Nico, Andy Warhol, Maureen Tucker, Reed, Sterling Morrison, and John Cale in Los Angeles, 1966. (Steve Schapiro / Corbis via Getty Images)

  Nico and Reed rehearse outdoors in Los Angeles, 1966. (© Lisa Law)

  Hey, hey, we’re the Velvets: (from left) Morrison, Reed, Tucker, and newcomer Doug Yule, 1969. (Michael Ochs Archives / Getty Images)

  Did we miss the Summer of Love?: (from left) Tucker, Morrison, Yule, and Reed in unlikely psychedelic garb, 1970. (Consolidated Image Foundation / Cache Agency)

  Reed comes up from underground, backed by the Tots at Lincoln Center’s Alice Tully Hall, January 1973. (Steven Rossini / Frank White Photo Agency)

  Bettye Kronstad and Reed at the party following Reed’s Alice Tully Hall performances, January 1973. (Photo by Anton Perich)

  Reed and David Bowie reach across Mick Jagger for an intimate moment at the Café Royal in London, July 1973. (Photo © Mick Rock 2017)

  The “Phantom of Rock” onstage in Amsterdam, Holland, September 1973. (Laurens Van Houten / Frank White Photo Agency)

  Reed, blond and not having more fun. (Photo © Mick Rock 2017)

  Reed mimics shooting up onstage, November 1974. (Michael Zagaris)

  Reed enacts his fondness for the press, San Francisco, November 1974. (Michael Zagaris)

  Reed, whip-thin at the cover shoot for Coney Island Baby, 1975. (Photo © Mick Rock 2017)

  Reed takes aim. (Photo © Mick Rock 2017)

  “I’ll be your mirror”: Reed at home. (Photo © Mick Rock 2017)

  (From left) John Cale, Reed, and Andy Warhol at the Ocean Club, New York, July 1976. (© Bob Gruen)

  Patti Smith and Reed at the Ocean Club, July 1976. (© Bob Gruen)

  Pietà: Rachel comforts Reed at a London party celebrating their third anniversary, April 1977. (Photo by Jill Furmanovsky 1977)

  Rachel and Reed, April 1977. (Photo by Jill Furmanovsky 1977)

  Reed, from the cover shoot for Street Hassle, 1978. (Michael Ochs Archives / Getty Images)

  “Standing on the corner”: Reed, New York City, May 1980. (Estate of David Gahr / Getty Images)

  “A chocolate egg cream was not to be missed”: Reed enjoys an egg cream at Cafe Figaro on the corner of Bleecker and MacDougal, 1982. (Waring Abbott / Getty Images)

  “I took my GPZ out for a ride”: Reed in New Jersey, 1982. (Waring Abbott / Getty Images)

  Reed and Robert Quine lock in and roar at the Beacon Theatre, New York City, October 18, 1984. (© Ebet Roberts)

  Reed and his wife Sylvia arriving at a party hosted by Ahmet Ertegun at Mortimer’s, New York City, January 1989. (Ron Galella, Ltd. / Getty Images)

  John Cale and Reed, 1989, for Songs for Drella. (Waring Abbott / Getty Images)

  The Velvet Underground reunited and on tour at the Forum, London, June 5, 1993: (from left) John Cale, Lou Reed, Maureen Tucker, and Sterling Morrison. (Leon Morris / Redferns / Getty Images)

  Laurie Anderson and Reed at Josie’s, New York City, March 1996. (© Ebet Roberts)

  Bono (left), Anderson, and David Bowie (right) join Reed, who is being honored as a distinguished alumnus by Syracuse University, April 2007. (Eric Weiss Photo)

  Reed, backed by a choir, performs Berlin in Hamburg, Germany, July 2008. (Krafft Angerer / Stringer / Getty Images)

  Reed backstage at an event celebrating the Velvet Underground at the New York Public Library, December 2009. (Steve Pyke / Contour by Getty Images)

  James Hetfield (left) and Lars Ulrich of Metallica flank Reed at a listening party for their album Lulu at the Steven Kasher Gallery in New York, October 2011. (Kevin Mazur / Getty Images)

  Reed, in one of his last public appearances, joins his friend and collaborator Mick Rock at an event celebrating the publication of Transformer, October 3, 2013. (Theo Wargo / Getty Images)

  Lou Reed, 2009. (Steve Pyke / Contour by Getty Images)

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  A village? No way. Not even Greenwich Village, where I was born and grew up and where Lou Reed lived for many years at various points in his life. No, it evidently takes a city to write a biography of Lou Reed, at least for me. In one sense that’s literally true. I feel that I should acknowledge my own upbringing and decades spent living in New York, often in environments central to Reed’s story. He and I could share jokes (“It’s Fleet Week? Hello, sailor! Can I show you the docks?”) that would take some time for outsiders to unpack, if they even cared to. A small thing, perhaps, but a kind of emotional shorthand for a mutual understanding. So, as the King of New York, Lou Reed deserves the first acknowledgment for his extraordinary music and, more personally, his frequent graciousness to me.

  But it sometimes seemed as if the number of people who helped bring this book to fruition could populate a city. Most obviously due my thanks are the dozens of people who agreed to do interviews and the nearly equal number who spoke to me on background or off the record. All of them helped guide me to a greater understanding of a life filled with secrets and dark corners. Some writers, including Jim Sullivan and, especially, Tom Anderson, went beyond encouragement (as if that weren’t enough) to unsolicited generosity, providing transcripts, hard-to-find published stories, leads on potential sources, and valuable perspective. Beyond the insight in his own work, Rob Enslin provided essential assistance in all things regarding Syracuse University. A number of people—Doug Van Buskirk, Merrill Weiner, Sylvia Ramos, John DiPalermo, and Jeff Gold, in particular—provided help themselves, and led me to others who proved equally helpful. Julia Cox did first-rate research that led me in valuable directions. Anne Marie Morrissey and, especially, Chelsey Madden proved eminently trustworthy heroines of transcription. As photo researcher, my friend Ashley Kahn identified and made it possible for me to obtain all the wonderful pictures in this book.

  As always, my agent, Sarah Lazin, provided encouragement and support from the conception of this book to its completion, with the smart, capable aid of assistant agent Julia Conrad. When Sarah asked me with whom I’d most like to work on this project, I immediately said Michael Pietsch, whom I’d known and respected for m
any years. Now the chief executive officer of Hachette Book Group, Michael, in turn, recommended me to John Parsley, who was then an executive editor at Little, Brown. In our first getting-to-know-you meeting, John said so many smart things that stayed with me for days afterward. His keen intelligence, poise, and understated humor made it inevitable that I would want to work with him, and happily he believed sufficiently in the book to share that desire. He was a dream editor—focused, incisive, encouraging, and inspiring. He improved this book in every possible regard.