RIP Lou Reed at age 71

While not a direct fan of his music solo or with the Velvet Underground I can respect the influence he had on many bands, singers and writers...

Lou Read Passes Away from Rolling Stone

reply to post by opethPA


Ohh man I guess he is walking on the wild side now.
RIP dude.

I went through a phase where I listened to a lot of Velvet Underground. Going to have to play a few songs today, still love the music. RIP Lou Reed.

reply to post by opethPA


Music heroes keep leaving this world. Who will protect us against Post-Disney celebrities and all the musical Monsanto. Lou was 100% organic.

RIP Lou Reed.

Very sad to hear that ....R.I.P.

Some kinda animal...
See ya Lou.
Enjoyed the drinks at Mudd Clubb.

Sad news, but a bloody good innings considering all the "fun" he had.

And Transformer alone (let alone the rest of his output) is one of the greatest Rock n Roll albums of all time, essential listening to those that aint heard it.

Would he even care about the "best wishes" etc? Possibly not - what a dude!

RIP Lou,

Thank you Lou and RIP

RIP to one of the greats!!!

Not the news I really wanted to hear on the TV this morning.

He is an all time legend to me.

Major part of my teens.

I thought I was cool, but this guy was off the Richter Scale.

You will be missed Lou.

For those not in the know.........

Have been a fan for awhile. Got into Velvet Underground in my highschool years, then became and still am big fan and frequent listener to his solo work.

Thanks for the music Lou, enjoy your travels on the other side. ~

Lousy guitar player.

Couldn't really sing.

Wrote musically cretinous, monotonous songs.

Frequently intoxicated on stage. Often obnoxious even when sober.

Gravitated towards other musical incompetents like himself, thus never made a listenable album.

Wrote pretentious, cranky lyrics.

Still a major influence on pop music, though. Mainly thanks to David Bowie, who should have known better.

reply to post by Astyanax


Sorry dude I loved his stuff, he was a true artist.
I guess you have been very straight all your years.
Why even bother slagging the guy off? If you don't like the dude don't comment next time.
Again RIP dude you made my life take a different turn and cheers for that.

reply to post by boymonkey74

Sorry dude I loved his stuff, he was a true artist.

Very likely he was. Chacun à son gout. Glad you got something positive out of him.

I guess you have been very straight all your years.

That kind of personal allusion is unworthy of you. No, I wasn't very straight all my years, but I've never had much sympathy for the self-destructive loser narrative and I still don't. Watching good friends slide down the tubes while making heroes, role models and excuses out of people like Lou Reed didn't help.

But that's not my real complaint. My complaint about Lou Reed is that he was (1) a bad musician and (2) a bit of a prat. No doubt he had his troubles, but that's never an excuse, is it?

Why even bother slagging the guy off? If you don't like the dude don't comment next time.

Because my goat is got by all the people who were essentially indifferent to Lou Reed while he was alive, but who are all posting videos of Walk on the Wild Side on Facebook and elsewhere along with their RIPs. People who only knew Lou Reed for that one song. People who, if they were more familiar with Reed's work, would run screaming from it. Consider this my one-man backlash against internet Philistinism.

Again RIP dude you made my life take a different turn and cheers for that.

Oh yes, RIP by all means. I'm glad he had a positive effect on your life. Maybe your tribute to him should be a few words about that on this thread. No doubt they'll make more pleasant reading than my animadversions.

My favorite Lou Reed music video, the best one he never made. If you're not familiar with it, you'll see what I mean:
No Money Down, from his 1986 album, Mistrial

RIP Lou Reed, & thanks, man, for some truly different times.

I saw this clip yesterday. I couldn't believe it. This is exactly what I looked like in 1982. Exactly. A skinny, twitchy blonde kid with blacked-out aviators and exactly the same sharp angle face onstage. There wasn't video of Lou that was widely available back then and I was doing a really cranked-out blues show, so it wasn't as if I would've been hip to what he'd done back in '74 (other than that one artist rendition on an album with the blonde hair and black nails). It's weird to "see yourself" unexpectedly like that. Kind of creeps you out.

That said, looking back on it, it was a pretty effective look.

Lou was pretty great. I had pals that quoted his lyrics in normal chatter all the time.