Lou Reed

Lou Reed is dead.

Lou Reed died yesterday morning in New York. He was 71 years old, and one of the all-time greats of music. He didn't just play rock 'n' roll, he was rock 'n' roll. Sexy, threatening, pathologically cool, always experimenting, never content to repeat himself or settle for less than the absolute best he could do. He was a key member of one of the greatest and most influential rock 'n' roll bands of all time; he made the best noise album of all time at a time when noise music barely existed; he was a punk before anyone knew what punk was; he managed to make Metallica sound half decent; and he was possibly the coolest motherfucker on the planet. His family and freinds have lost someone they loved; the world has lost a legend. So to remember him, I've picked out five quintessential Reed tracks:

It's hard to choose one Velvet Underground song, but this has always been my favourite.  There are a lot of things that add up to make this track great - Mo Tucker's drumming, John Cale's droning viola - but the key ingredients are all Reed. His lyrics, his voice and his guitar - those are the core of this song.

Of all of Lou Reed's solo albums, New York is the one that most perfectly captures his cool, his wry wit and that indefinable quality that links him inextricably with the eponymous city. And of all the tracks on that album, "Beginning of a Great Adventure" has always been my favourite. Apart from anything else, the lyrics just sound perfect paired with Reeds dry, acerbic voice and his deadpan delivery. You could read this out as a poem and it would still be brilliant, and there are few songs where that's the case.

If Hubert Selby Jr had been a songwriter, he would have written this. It's utterly heartbreaking - there's nothing much else I can say, really. If you only listen to one song today, make it this one.

This album came out in 1975. Bear in mind, in 1975 Throbbing Gristle had only just formed, punk was still an obscure New York phenomenon and people's attitude to Noise music was...well, basically what it is today. This album nearly destroyed Reed's career - even today, it's almost universally reviled, or at best regarded as a joke. But, contrary to popular belief, this album does not sound "bad" on purpose - it sounds great on purpose. Reed spent a lot of time and effort making sure that Metal Machine Music sounded exactly how he wanted, and the result is a stunning, hour-long composition that is among the most beautiful, ugliest, most brutal, most lyrical, most un-musical music ever made.

It's kind of fitting that Lulu, the album that this track comes from, was Lou Reed's last record. At a time when most '60s legends were content to plow the same old furrow, making music that - regardless of quality - was basically the same as what they'd done in their youth, Reed made an album with fucking Metallica. This is not a man who was in the business of fuck-giving.

Lou Reed is dead. And the world is a sadder, quieter place.