“You’ve gotta blow the roof off of your heart and let the universe in.”
Lou Reed has probably been, as a single, the most important artist in contemporary music History; and indeed, my biggest musical influence. Now, clearly his work with The Velvet Underground is the reason why I stated the aforesaid thought, yet Lou solo career proves a key fact: he really was one of those artist (alongside few others, like David Bowie) capable of creating a distinctive way, while never remaining on the same. The funny thing is that my first listenings of Lou Reed were when I was helping my girlfriend with her thesis of architecture. There were long nights of music, cigarets and creativity. Lou Reed influenced both of us in a plenty spacial way.
Transformer is glam rock, Berlin places halfway between rock opera and baroque rock, Street Hassle is art rock with new wave strokes, The Blue Mask and New York both belong to the singer/songwriter genre - but with different overall atmospheres (the former is darker, the latter is cynical and aggressive) and a different approach to the writing (the former is very "empty" in order to feel immediate, the latter is overloaded in order to sound epic). Yet if you just listen to the first few notes of each LPs, you can feel "the artist" Lou Reed fulfilling them - such is his touch, his idea of Music, his essence.