Artist News

Lou Reed was “a very nasty man”, says biographer

By | Published on Friday 16 October 2015

Lou Reed

The author of a new biography of Lou Reed has said that the musician was capable of being “a very nasty man” and that obituaries written when he died in 2013 were “too kind”.

Howard Sounes told Classic Rock: “I think, when he died, the obituaries were too kind because he was a person that people held dear. We can see that, at times, he was a very nasty man. People are complicated, Lou Reed was complicated – more than most. People say he was a ‘prick’, an ‘alcoholic’, a ‘wifebeater’. He made racist remarks, as a lot of people did at the time. You can list his faults, but he was also a very great artist”.

“You have to bear in mind that he had a history of mental illness and that he was very mixed up about his sexuality”, he added. “When he became famous he created this character that dressed in black and wore sunglasses, but that’s not who he was. He said, ‘I’m Lou Reed – fuck you’. That’s how he tried to defend himself”.

Sounes interviewed 140 people who knew Reed throughout his life, including the musician’s first wife Bettye Kronstad, who recalled his violent outbursts. “One time he actually gave me a black eye”, she is quoted as saying.

‘Notes From The Velvet Underground: The Life Of Lou Reed’ is due to be published on 22 Oct.



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