Lou Reed, goodbye & thank you.

Lewis Allan "Lou" Reed (March 2, 1942 – October 27, 2013) was an American rock musician and songwriter.
After being guitarist, vocalist, principal songwriter of The Velvet Underground, his solo career spanned several decades.
The Velvet Underground were a commercial failure in the late 1960s, but the group has gained a considerable cult following in the years since its demise and has gone on to become one of the most widely cited and influential bands of the era hence Brian Eno's famous quote that while the Velvet Underground's debut album only sold 30,000 copies, "everyone who bought one of those 30,000 copies started a band.

Photo of Lou Reed as a senior in high school. Česky: Lou Reed v roce 1959

Source

The 1959 Voyageur, yearbook of Freeport High School, Freeport, New York.

Author; English: Freeport High School.

Reed was born at Beth El Hospital (now Brookdale) in Brooklyn and grew up in Freeport, Long Island.
Contrary to some sources, his birth name was Lewis Allan Reed, not Louis Firbanks, a name that was coined as a joke by Lester Bangs in Creem magazine. Reed is the son of Toby (née Futterman) and Sidney Joseph Reed, an accountant.
His family was Jewish, and although he said that he was Jewish, he added,
"My God is rock’n’roll. It’s an obscure power that can change your life.
The most important part of my religion is to play guitar."

Reed as a high school senior, 1959
Having learned to play the guitar from the radio, he developed an early interest in rock and roll and rhythm and blues, and during high school played in several bands. His first recording was as a member of a doo wop-style group called The Jades. In 1956, Reed, who was bisexual, received electroconvulsive therapy as a teenager, which was intended to cure his bisexuality; he wrote about the experience in his 1974 song, "Kill Your Sons".

In an interview, Reed said of the experience:

"They put the thing down your throat so you don't swallow your tongue, and they put electrodes on your head. That's what was recommended in Rockland State Hospital to discourage homosexual feelings. The effect is that you lose your memory and become a vegetable. You can't read a book because you get to page 17 and have to go right back to page one again."
—Lou Reed quoted in Please Kill Me (1996)

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