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Lou Reed.
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Reed, Lou (1942—)
Lou Reed, both as a solo artist and as a member of the Velvet Underground, had an extraordinary influence on the history of rock and roll from the 1960s through the 1990s. Bri...
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Critical Essay by Sandy Pearlman
With the Velvet Underground the pussyfooting has stopped. They do songs like "Venus in Furs" …, "Heroin," "The Black Angel&#x...
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Critical Essay by Steve Lake
[If Andy] Warhol's paintings and films were merely reflecting the commercial day to day existence of Twentieth Century America then the Velvets' achievements...
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Critical Essay by Richard Williams
The Velvet Underground have made just three albums…. But that trio of albums constitutes a body of work which is easily as impressive as any in rock.
If you d...
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Critical Essay by Lester Bangs
Why is this guy surviving, who has made a career out of terminal twitches ever since the Velvet Underground surfaced dead on arrival in 1966? Well, for one thing, the Ve...
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Critical Essay by Creem
Lou Reed reminds me of Jack Kerouac near the end, dozing in an arm-chair with a beer, a flask of bourbon and a script for Obetrols, mumbling the same old stories at anyone with...
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Critical Essay by Paul Nelson
Perhaps the fact that Lou Reed's curious career continues is more important than what he does with it at this particular stage. Had he accomplished nothing else, h...
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Critical Essay by Peter Reilly
I've always had the feeling that there is considerably less to Lou Reed's work than meets the ear. Members of the "thinking" pop press—...
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Critical Essay by Lenny Kaye
Lou Reed has always steadfastly maintained that the Velvet Underground were just another Long Island rock 'n' roll band, but in the past, he really couldn&#x...
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Critical Essay by Jim Trombetta
[If] you can hear [Lou Reed's best songs] at all, it's through bone conduction, like your own voice. Not even the Velvets' unique pulsating beat an...
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Critical Essay by David Dalton and Lenny Kaye
The Velvet Underground cauterized their time, searing the bloodstream of hedonism and frustration. Theirs was a demimonde, offering salvation in place of ...
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Critical Essay by Mikal Gilmore
[Take No Prisoners's] real bounty is its formidable last side, featuring petrifying versions of "Coney Island Baby" and "Street Hassle...
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Critical Essay by Scott Isler
The Lou Reed dialectic continues. In the past, this artist's work has zigzagged between extremes of light and darkness with pendular regularity. The felicitously t...
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Critical Essay by Henry Edwards
[Reed] was the first rock composer to open the Pandora's Box of unsavoriness. His hard-driving rock anthems, "Run, Run, Run," "White Heat/Wh...
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Reed, Lou (1942—)
Critical Essay by Sandy Pearlman
