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Lou Reed

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born March 2, 1942, Brooklyn, N.Y., U.S.

Photograph:Lou Reed, 1986.
Lou Reed, 1986.
Neal Preston/Corbis

byname of  Lewis Alan Reed  singer-songwriter whose place in the rock pantheon rests primarily on his role in guiding the Velvet Underground, a New York City-based quartet that produced four poor-selling but enormously influential studio albums under Reed's direction from 1965 to 1970. Reed's post-Velvets career, though erratic, saw him emerge as a star performer in his own right, …


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More from Britannica on "Lou Reed"...
21 Encyclopædia Britannica articles, from the full 32 volume encyclopedia
>Reed, Lou
singer-songwriter whose place in the rock pantheon rests primarily on his role in guiding the Velvet Underground, a New York City-based quartet that produced four poor-selling but enormously influential studio albums under Reed's direction from 1965 to 1970. Reed's post-Velvets career, though erratic, saw him emerge as a star performer in his own right, albeit an ...
>Lou Reed
   from the Velvet Underground, the article
>Lou Reed/John Cale
   from the Velvet Underground, the article
>Quine, Robert
American guitarist (b. Dec. 30, 1942, Akron, Ohio—d. found dead May 31, 2004, New York, N.Y.), was a distinctive stylist best remembered for his contribution as a member of the protopunk band the Voidoids (led by Richard Hell), particularly on Blank Generation, and for his work on albums by Lou Reed. Quine was older and more technically proficient than most punk ...
>Greenwich Village
Beginning in the early 20th century and especially since the Beat movement of the early 1950s, Greenwich Village had been a mecca for creative radicals—artists, poets, jazz musicians, and guitar-playing folk and blues singers—from all over the United States. In coffeehouses such as the Cafe Wha? on McDougal Street and Gerde's Folk City at 11 West 4th Street, singers ...

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3 Student Encyclopedia Britannica articles, specially written for elementary and high school students
Glam rock
   from the popular music article
A musical movement that began in Britain in the early 1970s, glam rock (also called glitter rock) brought over-the-top spectacle to the rock arena. The preeminent glam rocker was David Bowie. With the 1972 album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, Bowie introduced the first of his several theatrical personae, Ziggy Stardust, a fey-looking alien ...
Velvet Underground
U.S. rock group. Although they never sold many records, the Velvet Underground spawned many musical offspring by having a powerful influence on young musicians who later developed punk music. Known for their dark and intentionally crude songs, the Velvet Underground explored social and sexual deviance, drugs, violence, and despair, in sharp contrast to the prevailing ...
Bowie, David
(born 1947), British singer, songwriter, and actor. With his outlandish costumes, chameleon-like personalities, and musical diversity, David Bowie reigned as the king of glam-rock in the 1970s. Despite his sometimes strange, sometimes elegant appearance, Bowie won critical and commercial acclaim for his dozens of recordings, conducted sold-out world tours, wrote and ...