Lou Reed never wanted to answer any personal questions by the media, everything he wanted to say was already contained within his music.
And music is what he offered to talk about.
He once called journalists “the lowest form of life” and had little tolerance for ‘dumb questions or lazy subjects’- as illustrated by the following interview snippets from 1974 and 1975.
Photography by Mick Rock
Video: Lou Reed in Australia, 1974
Photography by Dustin Pittman
Video: Lou Reed in Australia, 1975
However, in the last interview he ever gave, a conversation with director Farida Khelfa a mere month before his passing, he opened up about what sound meant to him.:
Photograph by Grant Cornett
Video: Lou Reed interviewed by Farida Khelfa for Parrot, 2013.
“I’m very emotionally affected by sound.
Sounds are the inexplicable.[…]
Sound is like light, what is light?
Or what is sound?
Sound is more than just noise and ordered sound is music.
My life is music.
The first memory of sounds would have to be your mother’s heartbeat, for all of us.[…]
You grow up, from when you’re a peanut, listening to rhythm.[…]
But then there are nature sounds…
The sound of the wind.
The sound of Love…”
Thank you Lou Reed- for doing what you loved, for making me forget myself and for being someone good.
sound /saʊnd/
1. Vibrations that travel through the air or another medium and can be heard when they reach a person's or animal's ear.
2. Sound produced by continuous and regular vibrations, as opposed to noise.
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