Lou Reed
It's 1942, and Lou Rabinowitz is born in Brooklyn, New York. By the time 1943 rolls around, his name is Lou Reed - daddy decided the name needed changing. That's not the only thing that Lou's parents decided to change. They sent Lou for shock treatment at age seventeen, so that he could be "cured" of homosexual tendencies. It's 1963, and Lou has moved to NYC, after discovering free jazz and experimental music at Syracuse University. He meets up with John Cale at Pickwick Records, and The Velvet Underground is born. The VU meets up with Andy Warhol, Andy adds Nico to the lineup, and punk rock and indie rock are born. The VU self-destructs rapidly after that - by late '67 Nico and Andy are out of the picture, John Cale leaves in '68, and Lou takes off in '70. It's 1972, and Lou Reed releases Transformer as a solo artist, with David Bowie and Mick Ronson as co-producers, and together with Bowie's Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars reshapes glam rock. Berlin follows soon after, extending the subjects of Lou's dark ballads to drug addiction, prostitution, and suicide. Just to make sure that fans aren't getting too comfy, in '75 Lou releases Metal Machine Music, a two-disc album of noise music created via two-guitar audio feedback. It's 1987, and a combination of Valerie Solanas' bullets from 1968 and a distracted hospital staff have finally killed Andy Warhol. Lou reunites with John Cale to create Songs for Drella, a quietly acerbic tribute to their dead friend. Politics and human rights loom large on the agenda for Lou these days, as he works with Amnesty International, and in his album New York comments on the politics and politicians of the day. It's 2007, and Lou Reed has been working for several years with Laurie Anderson on multiple recordings, evolving a range of threads from his previous work. Time to do something new - what will the fans expect? Were they expecting some nice, independently produced meditation music?
