The “Golden Hits Of The 70s” 

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LOU REED

“WALK ON THE WILD SIDE”

(LOU REED)

RCA 0887

No. 16   April 28, 1973

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“The apostle of rock nihilism”or “the king of decadence,” as he has been dubbed, would readily

acknowledge that he hasn’t had a hit single since “Walk on the Wild Side,” his 1973 ode to the gender-

bending Andy Warhol crowd.  “I haven’t even tried to duplicate it,” Lou Reed told Revolu­tion’s Roy

Trakin.  How a controversial cut such as “Wild Side”–with its reference to “giving head”–ever snuck past

the nation’s censors, is not known.

Reed has been in the public eye quite a bit.  His appearance at the 1986 Amnesty International concert,

the Greenspan compilation LP, and TV commercials for Honda and American Express card, have all

increased his visibility among young rock fans.  His album, New York (1989), like a fair number of his

earli­er works, had received critical praise, but hadn’t yield­ed that second big hit.  Reed also collaborated

with John Cale in 1990 to compose and perform Songs for Drella, a musical tribute to Andy Warhol.

He was born Louis Firbank on March 2, 1943, to an upper-middle-class family in Long Island, New York.

By age 14, Lou was opting for a life of rebellion and rock’n’roll.  He played guitar in garage bands with

names like the Jades, Pasha & The Prophets, the Shades, and the Eldorados.  He attended Syracuse

University but dropped out; dabbled in journalism and acting; and worked for a number of years as a staff

songwriter and ghost artist for Pickwick Records.  As such, Lou wrote hot rod and surfing songs, recorded

as the Beach Nuts, and almost had a local hit as the Primitives with “The Ostrich.”

In 1964, Reed teamed up with John Cale and Ster­ling Morrison, and came under the guiding hand of

multimedia artist Andy Warhol.  With the addition the following year of Maureen Tucker, they became the

Vel­vet Underground, stark minstrels of urban decay, drugs, and the perverse.  During the reign of flower

power and LSD-stoked utopianism, the Velvets were proto-punks, crafting music that depicted the sleazy

underbelly of the Beat Generation and the evolving counterculture.  Their albums sold only marginally at

first and their time was short, but the influence of their sound and attitude on today’s rock music was pro­

found.

With the release of the group’s Loaded in 1970, Lou called it quits, dropping out of music and working at

his father’s accounting firm in Long Island.  The follow­ing year, Reed returned to the scene with the

release of Lou Reed, the first of now nearly 20 albums, all of which have charted on Billboard’s top pop

albums listings.  Each album, fans will attest, has its distinctive direction and style, and each is peopled by

a predictable assort­ment of bizarre characters: the speed freak, the trashy biker, the killer, and, yes, the

elder rock statesman.