Lou Reed, Dead At 71

Love or hate his work with Metallica, rocker Lou Reed was a hugely influential songwriter and guitarist who helped shape several decades of rock music, has died at 71. The cause of death has not been released.

With the Velvet Underground in the late Sixties, Reed fused street-level urgency with elements of European avant-garde music, marrying beauty and noise, while bringing a whole new lyrical honesty to rock & roll poetry. As a restlessly inventive solo artist, from the Seventies into the 2010s, he was chameleonic, thorny and unpredictable, challenging his fans at every turn. Glam, punk and alternative rock are all unthinkable without his revelatory example. "One chord is fine," he once said, alluding to his bare-bones guitar style. "Two chords are pushing it. Three chords and you're into jazz."


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Tags:  Lou Reed, Metallica, Velvet Underground  

Jason Fisher    October 27, 2013