Lou reed factory girl

By Michael Kaplan. October 12, pm Updated October 12, pm. The easiest way to lose Lou was to set expectations. Reed was born in Brooklyn, grew up on Long Island and received electroshock therapy as a teenager. He never forgave his parents for putting him through it. On the upside, the treatment allowed Reed to claim mental illness, which got him out of living in the dorms at Syracuse University, where he was an English major.

A concept album , Berlin tells the story of a couple's struggle with drug addiction and abuse. Initially, critical reception was mixed but appraisals of the album have warmed over the years: in Rolling Stone declared the album "a disaster", but by the album was ranked No. The concept was created when producer Bob Ezrin mentioned to Lou Reed that although the stories told by Reed's songs had great beginnings, they never really had an ending. Specifically, Ezrin wanted to know what happened to the couple from "Berlin" — a song from Reed's first solo album. The album is a tragic rock opera about a doomed couple, Jim and Caroline, and addresses themes of drug use , prostitution , depression , domestic violence and suicide. Instrumentally, Reed plays acoustic guitar.

When Brooklyn-born musician Lou Reed died on Long Island on Sunday, he left behind a city whose grit and grime inspired him to create music that influenced decades of successful musicians. These days, the Lower East Side crack dealers are more subtle and most of the prostitutes have been cleared from Times Square — but the scent of cigarette smoke hasn't yet cleared and it is still impossible to go an entire day without hearing a car horn. Victor Bockris, who wrote a biography of Reed, described the space as a "bohemian slum dwelling".

Inspired by the book of the same name by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch , the song includes sexual themes of sadomasochism , bondage and submission. The arrangement features John Cale 's cacophonous electric viola as well as Lou Reed 's ostrich guitar , which is a guitar with all of its strings tuned to the same note. Guitarist Sterling Morrison played bass on the song, but according to Cale, who was the band's usual bassist, Morrison never cared for the instrument.