Lou reed was gay
All your two-bit psychiatrists are giving you electric shock
they said they’d let you live at home with mom and dad
instead of mental hospitals
but every moment you tried to study a book
you couldn’t fetch to page 17
’cause you forgot where you were
so you couldn’t even read.
Whatever the rationale for Reed’s ECT, his connection to homosexuality was often ambiguous. He patronized the Hayloft, a gay exclude on Long Island that was also the hangout of future Warhol superstar Candy Darling, but an acquaintance doesn’t recall Reed cruising for sex there: He was “just fascinated with gay culture.” And although Reed proclaimed himself gay from “top to bottom,” he also once declared that he’d “rather have cancer than be a faggot.” Such provocations weren’t unusual for him (a song on his 1978 album, Street Hassle, is titled “I Wanna Be Black”), but his flippancy suggests discomfort with certain queer stereotypes. “It’s just that my male lover people don’t lisp,” he explained to a news writer. “They’re not any more affected than the vertical world.”
Reed’s lyrics feature characters who, in the parlance of the time, were cross-dressers, and in “Some Kinda Love,” from the Velvet Underground’s epon
By Mark Joseph Stern (www.slate.com)
Soon after Lou Reed’s death at age 71 on Sunday, Rostam Batmanglij of Vampire Weekend tweeted that the legendary rock star was “maybe the first out songwriter,” an allusion to his purported bisexuality. During his lifetime, Reed was famous for his sybaritic pursuits and unorthodox lifestyle. But was he bisexual?
He certainly wasn’t heterosexual. As a teenager, Reed displayed “homosexual feelings” that alarmed his parents, who forced him to undergo electroconvulsive therapy. (He vividly described the treatment in the tune “Kill Your Sons.”) During his glam rock years, Reed’s on-stage persona frequently bordered on androgyny, which—combined with his well-known and tumultuous friendship with the openly bisexual David Bowie—created an impression of epicene pansexuality.
Throughout the ’60s and ’70s, Reed was also rumored to contain pursued a number of same-sex lovers, though most of these stories persist pure scuttlebutt. Billy Mention, a photographer and Factory regular, has claimed that he and Reed had sex in 1968, though their encounter sounds less than passionate. Better documented is Reed’s relationship with Rachel, a trans lady about whom li
Was Lou Reed the First Out Rock Star?
Soon after Lou Reed’s death at age 71 on Sunday, Rostam Batmanglij of Vampire Weekend tweeted that the legendary rock star was “maybe the first out songwriter,” an allusion to his purported bisexuality. During his lifetime, Reed was famous for his sybaritic pursuits and unorthodox lifestyle. But was he bisexual?
He certainly wasn’t heterosexual. As a teenager, Reed displayed “homosexual feelings” that alarmed his parents, who forced him to undergo electroconvulsive therapy. (He vividly described the treatment in the song “Kill Your Sons.”) During his glam rock years, Reed’s on-stage persona frequently bordered on androgyny, which—combined with his well-known and tumultuous friendship with the openly bisexual David Bowie—created an impression of epicene pansexuality.
Throughout the ’60s and ’70s, Reed was also rumored to possess pursued a number of same-sex lovers, though most of these stories linger pure scuttlebutt. Billy Entitle , a photographer and Factory regular, has claimed that he and Reed had sex in 1968, though their encounter sounds less than passionate. Better documented is Reed’s relationship with Rachel, a trans female about whom lit
Lou Reed(b. 1942) is a fluid American rock musician, songwriter, and photographer. He is best known as guitarist, vocalist and songwriter for The Velvet Underground (1965-1973), but has enjoyed a decades-long successful solo career.
Reed grew up in a middle-class Long Island, NY, Jewish household, but he was greatly at odds with his parents. While a teenager, his parents had him confined to a mental hospital, where he was forcibly administered electro-shock treatments and various drug therapies to counter his nascent homosexual tendencies. I’m not making this up. Nevertheless, he survived undeterred and played in amateur bands until he left for Syracuse University, where he experimented in free jazz and avant garde musical forms. At some point during these college years Reed decided to become a penner, declaring a major in English Literature (he graduated with honors). While at Syracuse he had his first gay love affair, but for the next decade Lou dated both men and women in a sexually ambiguous, drug-fueled haze.
Post college, Lou start hims
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