Lou Reed: An appreciation

He not only walked on the wild side - he kicked it to life in song.

Lou Reed injected stories and subjects into rock 'n' roll no one before him had dared. And he did so in music that both went to the edge of distortion and spun out the most gorgeous of choruses.

A key part of New York history itself has passed with the life of Lou Reed as well.

In his erudite writing, biting edge, and ease with the forbidden, Reed embodied some of this city's highest ideals and most low-down emotions.

Of course, his story extended way beyond the town he so carefully observed. Reed's lyrical explorations into previously taboo subjects - from heroin addiction to sado-masochism to transvestism - made a wider range of expression possible for generations of young musicians to come.

Reed first made a crucial contribution to both music and art history with his 1960s band The Velvet Underground. Sponsored by Andy Warhol, the Velvets didn't just play concerts; they created seminal confrontational events in the East Village scene. Together with classically trained musician John Cale, and the aloof German model-turned-chanteuse Nico, Reed made the Velvets a band like none before it. Their songs prowled, and illuminated, New York night life at its most extreme. Their music too altered the possibilities of sound. Using new distortion and droning techniques, they created a sonic netherworld, a fresh psychedelia.

The band's 1967 debut, "The Velvet Underground & Nico," inspired one of popular music's most quoted lines, by Brian Eno: "The first Velvet Underground album only sold 10,000 copies. But everyone who bought it formed a band."

Punk, for one, would have been unthinkable without it.

RELATED: LOU REED, FOUNDER OF THE VELVET UNDERGROUND, DEAD AT 71

The songs - co-written by Reed and Cale - ran from the dissonant art-rock of "Black Angel Death Song," to the haunting folk-rock cascade of "I'll Be Your Mirror" to the proto-punk of "I'm Waiting For My Man."

Reed's solo career quickly eclipsed VU's in sales. His second solo work, "Transformer," produced by David Bowie, contained the worldwide hit, "Walk On The Wild Side." It was both haunting and sexy, with elegant strings, iconic backup vocals, and Reed's patented vocal approach - a half-sung/half-spoken sneer.

Reed never followed-up that hit up because he had no use for repetition or compromise. His solo career of the '70s ricocheted from the compellingly grim "Berlin," to the rousing arena rock of "Rock n Roll Animal," to that ultimate piece of provocation, "Metal Machine Music" in 1974. The last project, an exercise in brain-frying feedback, was seen by some at the time as a joke but later recognized as a pioneering work of sonic abrasion.

In the 1980s, Reed began to explore his guitar playing to a broader degree, spinning out more elaborate, and emotive, solos. He capped the decade in '89 by releasing one of his most insightful, and comprehensive recordings. "New York," a broad-stroked look at the city.

The disc was part a hard-edged rock record and part politically pointed op-ed piece. Its fourteen songs referenced every hot topic of the day from Bernard Goetz to Morton Downey Jr. to AIDS, in the process presenting Reed as not just a provocateur, but as the conscience of the city.

By the '90s, Reed started to write with even greater reflection, collaborating with Cale on a tribute to their Warhol days ("Songs for Drella") and ruminating on death itself on 1992's "Magic and Loss."

Reed pushed the boundaries even up to his last recorded work, "Lulu," the 2011 album he recorded with the thrash-metal band Metallica.

Well before the end of his life, Reed had become as much a character as a musician, an idea incarnate. He embodied a rigor in exploration, and an insistence on experimentation, that made him a rebel with more causes than you could count.

jfarber@nydailynews.com