I don’t have a great Lou Reed story, though I wish I did. I saw him around downtown Manhattan a few times, but never talked to him. The closest I really ever got to him was through his music. When I was fourteen or fifteen and living in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., my family took a trip to New York. I was already in love with the city at that time, and I remember stopping by an open air market — probably the one on Broadway near Fourth St — and bought this album:

Actually I bought it on tape, which tells you how old I am. I think I was a dollar short of the cost, but the vendor let me have it anyway, almost like an elder hipster passing along an heirloom to a wannabe hipster.

It didn’t change my life the way rock albums are supposed to do, but I did fall deeply in love with it, listening to it constantly for years. It was a big part of that era of my life, as were the other Velvet Underground albums and many of Reed’s solo albums. Thanks, Lou.

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