Our PennSound author page for Reed is home to his 2012 appearance at our own Kelly Writers House as the honored guest of that year's Blutt Singer-Songwriter Symposium. That hour long conversation with Anthony DeCurtis, has very usefully been segmented thematically, including individual tracks covering "his early interest in rock and roll and songwriting," "writing rock lyrics about drug culture and the ignored netherworld," "his constantly shifting artistic focuses," "his formal education," "improvisation in relation to his concept albums," and "being unaware of his influence" among others, along with comments on friends, collaborators, and influences, including Delmore Schwartz, Andy Warhol, the Velvet Underground, Laurie Anderson, Leonard Cohen, Edgar Allan Poe, Bob Dylan, and Metallica.
When Reed died of liver disease in October 2013, we paid tribute to him here on PennSound Daily, making an argument for his literary bonafides:
From his earliest recordings, Reed established the archetype of literate rock star, blending the urban dystopianism of William Burroughs and Hubert Selby, Jr. with the sensibilities of his Syracuse University mentor, Delmore Schwartz (to whom he dedicated "European Son," the incendiary closing track of 1967's The Velvet Underground & Nico), and while listeners typically relish his memorable (if bedraggled) characters and offbeat sense of narrative, he was certainly capable of formal innovations every bit as adventurous as the stories he told. Consider, for example, the binaural poetics of "The Murder Mystery," (off of the Velvet's 1969 self-titled record, later published as a standalone poem in The Paris Review) alongside John Ashbery and Ann Lauterbach's two-channel realization of the former's "Litany," or Jackson Mac Low's and John Giorno's experiments with multi-track renderings of their works. Brian Eno famously claimed that everyone who originally bought the first Velvet Underground album went out and started a band, and without a doubt there are also a great many poets who were first moved to pick up a pen by Reed's lyrics.A decade later, his presence is still sorely missed. You can listen to Reed's Blutt conversation by clicking here.
