Ten years ago today (10/27/13), Lou Reed died of liver disease at age 71. Reed; a massively influential songwriter and guitarist helped shape nearly fifty years of rock music with the Velvet Underground and his fearless solo career. 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 with Lulu his collaboration with Metallica, he always continued to challenge listeners for better or worse. Watch his full set from A Conspiracy of Hope at Giants Stadium on 6/15/86.
