Lou Reed had been dancing on the edge of fame. Everyone seemed to know who he was from his days with Velvet Underground to his solo stuff. But, as a young kid at the time, no one I knew seemed to have a clue why. Although being spoonfed The Jackson Five and The Osmonds, I kept hearing this song that was kinda creepy, and sang about people I didn’t think I’d like to meet. I finally started exploring the alternative scene of that time via The Midnight Special and Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert. A local FM station played a lot of alternative stuff as well. Eventually I would learn the song was “Walk on the Wild Side”, and the singer was a guy named Lou Reed. I loved Walk on the Wild Side, but, nothing by Reed ever blew me away more than the live version of Sweet Jane. The intro to Sweet Jane has one of the all time greatest guitar licks ever performed. At about that time I became a huge Bowie fan. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that Bowie and Ronson actually produced Transformer. White Light, White Heat was a constant Bowie performance for years and often was the best song he would do in shows as he tended to over-manipulate his songs, but never altered Reed’s songs. The coolness and mellowness of Reed with the over-the-top nervousness and paranoia of Bowie’s early writings were a hell of a mix that should have been pursued much, much more than it was.

Today, Lou Reed is just Lou Reed. Like Andy Warhol, his mentor, he has one of those personalities that just screams individuality. All you have to do is look at Lou and you know who it is. You may not remember why, but you’ll know it’s Lou.

That’s very cool.

I’ve redone Walk On the Wild Side for my own karaokeing pleasure. Hope you enjoy it. It’s about the same as the original.