Lou Reed famously changed his mind, frequently, regarding which of his songs he liked and which he loathed. Getting mildly annoyed with me in 2004, as he tended to do – and not, in fairness, with me alone – he told me, “Follow the dotted line. Look, put all the songs together and it’s certainly an autobiography. It’s just not necessarily mine. I write about other people, tell stories, always did.
"But listen – I loved every last one of them. Every single second of every last one, OK?”
After the dissolution of The Velvet Underground, Reed's body of work grew from uncertain beginnings through a prolific and wildly diverse 70s surge – for this writer, his golden age – and on to a late 80s revival of inspiration.
There were many turkeys along the way, as well as many triumphs. We can’t squeeze everything into this operation, so while each have their advocates, there’s nothing from those fire-starters Metal Machine Music or Lulu. There’s no The Original Wrapper. And technically Sweet Jane was a Velvets song, before you start.
Mercurial, contradictory, vaulting from throwaway garage-candy to high art concepts and back again, Lou Reed’s enthralling, provocative solo catalogue remains, more than a decade after his death – Oct 27, 2013 – aged 71, as fascinating, frustrating and full-on as the man himself.
