Singer, songwriter Lou Reed dead at 71

Source: AFP | October 28, 2013, Monday |

Online Edition

Lou Reed, the American music pioneer who fused folk's lyricism with punk rock's energy and darkness, died yesterday of complications stemming from a recent liver transplant. He was 71.

Reed's literary agent Andrew Wylie said the singer-songwriter died at 11am on Long Island, the sprawling New York area that includes the borough of Brooklyn where he was born.

"The reason was complications following the liver transplant," Wylie told AFP, referring to the operation Reed underwent in May, without which his family said death was certain given how poor his condition had become.

Viewed by many as the godfather of punk, Reed forged a new cultural universe with the Velvet Underground, the band he formed in New York with Welsh musician John Cale in 1965, a time of evolving youth identity.

"The world has lost a fine songwriter and poet...I've lost my 'school-yard buddy," Cale wrote on his website yesterday.

The arthouse group was popular though not particularly successful in terms of sales during the 1960s.

But Reed's association with the era's pop art luminary Andy Warhol helped the band gain a hip and burgeoning following, with the colorful artist doing the instantly iconic banana cover art for the Velvets' self-titled debut album.

Warhol became the group's manager in 1965, and they provided music for his multimedia roadshow the Exploding Plastic Inevitable, and became the house band at his famed New York studio, The Factory.

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Singer, songwriter Lou Reed dead at 71

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