Lou Reed
Lou Reed is an actor, born 1942.
The screen credits on this page understate the man considerably. Lou Reed was the guitarist, singer and principal songwriter of the Velvet Underground, a band that sold very little while it existed and then turned out to be the root system of most underground and alternative rock that came afterwards. His solo career ran five decades on the strength of three things: a deadpan half-spoken voice, lyrics that went places pop lyrics were not supposed to go, and a guitar approach that treated noise as material rather than as a fault.
Born in Brooklyn in 1942, he spent the seventies alternating between glam accessibility and open hostility to his own audience, sometimes inside the same year. Transformer in 1972 is where the wider public found him. Berlin, the following year, answered it with a bleak song cycle almost nobody wanted at the time and a great many people cite now. Metal Machine Music in 1975 was an hour of guitar feedback delivered to a major label as a studio album. Then in 1989 New York found him a late voice, plain-spoken and furious, reporting on the city he had lived in all his life.
His filmography is a footnote he appears to have enjoyed. He plays himself in Prozac Nation and in two Wim Wenders films, turns up as a man in strange glasses in Blue in the Face, and is billed in Lulu on the Bridge as Not Lou Reed. He voiced a villain in two animated Arthur features and sang for a cartoon rock star in 1983. He died in 2013.
Movies (15)
- Arthur and the Revenge of Maltazard (2009)
- Arthur 3: The War of the Two Worlds (2010)
- The Velvet Underground: Psychiatrist's Convention, NYC, 1966 (1966)
- Blue in the Face (1995)
- Prozac Nation (2003)
- The Velvet Underground (2021)
- Heart of a Dog (2015)
- Rock & Rule (1983)
- Permanent Record (1988)
- Faraway, So Close! (1993)
- Moonage Daydream (2022)
- The 25th Anniversary Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Concerts (2009)
- Lulu on the Bridge (1998)
- Palermo Shooting (2008)
- Superstar: The Life and Times of Andy Warhol (1990)
TV (3)
Music (24)
- Lulu (2011)
- Transformer (1972)
- New York (1989)
- Berlin (1973)
- Songs for Drella (1990)
- Coney Island Baby (1975)
- Metal Machine Music (1975)
- The Blue Mask (1982)
- Lou Reed (1972)
- Magic and Loss (1992)
- New Sensations (1984)
- Legendary Hearts (1983)
- Growing Up in Public (1980)
- The Bells (1979)
- Street Hassle (1978)
- Sally Can’t Dance (1974)
- Hudson River Wind Meditations (2007)
- The Raven (2003)
- Ecstasy (2000)
- Set the Twilight Reeling (1996)
- Mistrial (1986)
- Rock and Roll Heart (1976)
- Rock n Roll Animal (1974)
- Walk on the Wild Side: The Best of Lou Reed (1977)
Where to start with Lou Reed
Transformer is the record to hear first, and not out of deference to the hit: it is where his writing meets a producer's pop instincts, and it is the only Reed album that is straightforwardly easy to like. Go from there to Berlin, its opposite in every respect, a grim song cycle about two people coming apart that has aged into the best thing he made.
New York is the third essential, a plain guitar record with the words pushed to the front, closer to reportage than to rock lyrics. The Blue Mask is the connoisseur's pick, and Street Hassle contains the long title suite that justifies the whole difficult-artist reputation.
Metal Machine Music is not a joke and is also not an evening's listening, so approach it as sculpture. On screen, The Velvet Underground puts the band in context properly, and Songs for Drella, his song cycle about Andy Warhol, does more character work than three decades of acting credits managed.
The Lou Reed records to start with
Transformer is the accessible one and the reason most people know him. Berlin is the bleakest album a major label ever released as a follow-up to a hit. New York is the late, plain-spoken masterpiece, and Metal Machine Music is an hour of feedback aimed at anyone expecting another Transformer.
Reed on film, mostly as himself
He turns up on screen fairly often and is always unmistakably him. The Velvet Underground is the Todd Haynes documentary and the best introduction to the band. Blue in the Face and Faraway, So Close! use him as himself, and Moonage Daydream places him in the world he and Bowie built.