The essential biography of the Velvet Underground singer and New York legend. Lewis Jones reviews Lou Reed by Anthony DeCurtis (John Murray)
With the four albums they released between 1967 and 1970, the Velvet Underground challenged the prevailing musical fashion set by California hippies. Instead of peace, love and soft drugs, they sang about paranoia, perversion and hard drugs. 
They made pop music at its least popular, and their sales were feeble, but although they lost the battle they won the war: flower power turned out to be a dead end, while the Velvets inspired countless “art” and punk bands.
Their shifting personnel were a remarkable bunch. Andy Warhol, as patron and “producer”, bestowed instant glamour, and imposed on them the fascinating German chanteuse Nico. 
But the star was Lou Reed, who wrote the lyrics and delivered them with an atonal camp sneer that charmed as it insulted. He later described himself as a “f------ faggot junkie”, but it seems he preferred women to men (he married three times) and amphetamines and whisky to heroin, so that was just a pose. Doctors thought he might be schizophrenic, and recommended electroshock therapy, as it was then called, which permanently damaged his short-term memory, and poisoned his relationship with his parents and the world.
