Velvet Underground lead was a rock music inspiration
Singer-songwriter Lou Reed, whose “Walk on the Wild Side” became a rock classic and whose work as a solo artist and with the Velvet Underground inspired generations of punks and indie rockers, has died at the age of 71.
The news of his death was reported Sunday by Rolling Stone and later confirmed by his literary agent. The cause was not reported, but Mr. Reed had undergone a liver transplant in May.
Although he initially studied to become a poet, Mr. Reed went on to a music career that spanned five decades. A fixture on the New York rock scene who worked with Andy Warhol, Mr. Reed’s powerful guitar work and energy combined with his raw lyrical message to create a unique style that inspired rockers around the world. The Velvet Underground never achieved wide commercial success, but was considered seminal, and in 1996 the band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
“They opened wounds worth opening with brutal energy, without apology,” said singer and writer Patti Smith when she inducted the Velvets into the Rock Hall.
Classic Velvets songs included “White Light, White Heat,” “Sweet Jane,” “I’ll Be Your Mirror,” “Pale Blue Eyes” and “Heroin.”
The band has long been recognized as a major musical influence on punk and art rock, as reflected in a quote often attributed to musician Brian Eno that “the first Velvet Underground album only sold 30,000 copies, but everyone who bought it formed a band.”
The Velvets’ admirers included David Bowie, who gave Mr. Reed’s solo career a boost by producing the “Transformer” album, Mr. Reed’s biggest hit, in 1972. In addition to “Walk on the Wild Side,” the album included “Vicious” and “Satellite of Love,” which was later covered by U2.
Mr. Reed continued to make albums throughout the 1980s, and reunited with the Velvet Underground in 1990. Speaking at the Austin, Texas, music industry conference South by Southwest in 2008, Mr. Reed said the band was forbidden from playing blues or R&B licks, wanting the act to stand as a direct contrast to much of what was popular in the mid-’60s.
His most recently released recorded album was “Lulu,” a 2011 collaboration with heavy metal act Metallica.
In 2010, Mr. Reed narrated a taped tour of a Warhol exhibition at the Baltimore Museum of Art. He was selected to do the narration because Warhol had managed the Underground and designed the band’s first album cover.
An admitted hard drinker and drug user for many years, Mr. Reed underwent a liver transplant this year at the Cleveland Clinic, his wife, Laurie Anderson, told The Times of London, after he had canceled five California concert dates scheduled in April.
“I am a triumph of modern medicine,” Mr. Reed posted on his website on June 1, without directly acknowledging the transplant.