Lou reed rock and roll hall of fame

The New York Public Library is immortalizing Lou Reed in a new archive. Thanks to Reed's wife, performance artist and Musician Laurie Anderson, who shared the collection with the New York Public Library, visitors will be able to peruse Reed's collection of personal notes, photographs and more than 600 hours of recordings. Fans can finger through his personal record collection and look at drawings. depicting Reed's passion for tai chi. Lou Reed gained fame with The Velvet Underground, had a long solo career, and influenced musicians across genres, including fellow New Yorkers, hip-hop group, A Tribe Called Quest 

Anderson says her husband never discussed what to do with his belongings before his death in 2013, but she believes the archive should be accessible to fans and young musicians.

Lou reed passed away in 2013 from liver disease. He was 71 years old.

Lou Reed was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on Saturday night. As she did two decades before when The Velvet Underground were inducted in 1996, Patti Smith was on hand to welcome Reed into the Hall as a solo artist.

Smith told stories of her interactions with the man she considered both friend and mentor. She recalled one time when they were in his hotel room together, him dress in black and sitting in the bathtub, talking for hours. “He recited the great poets — Rupert Brooke, Hart Crane, Frank O’Hara. He spoke of the poets’ loneliness and of the poets’ dedication to the highest muses,” she said. “When he fell into silence, I said, ‘Please, take care of yourself, so the world can have you as long as it can.’ And Lou actually smiled.”

She was clearly emotional as she recounted their friendship. “His consciousness infiltrated and illuminated our cultural voice,” she said as she choked back tears. “Lou was a poet, able to fold his poetry within his music in the most poignant and plainspoken manner. Oh, such a perfect day.”

When he first entered the Hall, Reed reserved the few words of his speech to pay tribute to the late Sterling Morrison, who had died the year prior. Having passed in 2013 due to liver cancer, there’s no knowing how lengthy Reed’s solo speech would have been. Instead, Reed’s partner of 20 years and wife of five, Laurie Anderson, took the podium to pay tribute to her late husband.

Anderson spoke of Reed’s ability to not only understand himself as a human, but appreciate his work as an artist. “He could take his fame off like one of his leather jackets, or, he could just decide to use it.,” she said. “The fame, itself, was heavily important. Lou’s genuinely proud of what he’d done and could really appreciate his own work. And, tonight, he would have been so immensely proud to be a part of this.”

She spoke at length about all the life lessons being with Reed had taught her. In a particularly poignant moment, Anderson shared with the audience the three rules of life she and Reed had come up with. “And the first is, one: Don’t be afraid of anyone. Now can you imagine living your life afraid of no one? Two: Get a really good bullshit detector. And three: Three is be really, really tender. And with those three things, you don’t need anything else.”

Below, read both women’s touching speeches. You can also find crowd-shot footage of each beneath the respective transcripts.

Patt Smith’s Induction Speech:

Hello everybody. On October 27th, 2013, I was at Rockaway Beach, and I got the message that Lou Reed had passed. It was a solitary moment. I was by myself, and I thought of him by the ocean, and I got on the subway back to New York City. It was a 55-minute ride, and in that 55 minutes, when I returned to New York City, it was as if the whole city had transformed. People were crying on the streets. I could hear Lou’s voice coming from every café. Everyone was playing his music. Everyone was walking around dumbfounded. Strangers came up to me and hugged me. The boy who made coffee was crying. It was the whole city. It was more… Sorry. [Crying] I realized, at that moment, that I had forgotten, when I was on the subway, that he was not only my friend, he was the friend of New York City.

I made my first eye contact with Lou, dancing to the Velvet Underground when they were playing upstairs at Max’s Kansas City in the summer of 1970. The Velvet Underground were great to dance to because they had this sort of transformative, like a surf beat. Like dissonant surf beat. They were just fantastic to dance to. And then somewhere along the line, Lou and I became friends. It was a complex friendship, sometimes antagonistic and sometimes sweet. Lou would sometimes emerge from the shadows at CBGBs. If I did something good, he would praise me. If I made a false move, he would break it down.

One night, when we were touring, separately, we wound up in the same hotel, and I got a call from him, and he asked me to come to his room. He sounded a little dark, so I was a little nervous. But I went up, and the door was open, and I found him in the bathtub dressed in black. So I sat on the toilet and listened to him talk. It seemed like he talked for hours, and he talked about, well, all kinds of things. He spoke compassionately about the struggles of those who fall between genders. He spoke of pre-CBS Fender amplifiers and political corruption. But most of all, he talked about poetry. He recited the great poets — Rupert Brooke, Hart Crane, Frank O’Hara. He spoke of the poets’ loneliness and of the poets’ dedication to the highest muses. When he fell into silence, I said, “Please, take care of yourself, so the world can have you as long as it can.” And Lou actually smiled.

Everything that Lou taught me, I remember. He was a humanist, heralding and brazing to the downtrodden. His subjects were his royalty that he crowned in lyrics without judgment or irony. He gave us, beyond the Velvet Underground, Transformer and “Walk on the Wild Side.” Then, mediations on New York, homage to the pope and great mentor Andy Warhol in Magic and Loss.

His consciousness infiltrated and illuminated our cultural voice. Lou was a poet, able to fold his poetry within his music in the most poignant and plainspoken manner. Oh, such a perfect day. Sorry. [Crying] Such a perfect day. I’m glad I spent it with you. You made me forget myself. I thought I was someone else. Someone good. You were good, Lou. You are good.

True poets must often stand alone. As a poet, he must be counted as a solitary artist. So, Lou, thank you for brutally and benevolently injecting your poetry into music. And for this, we welcome you, Lou Reed, into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Laurie Anderson’s Acceptance Speech:

Thank you all. It’s wonderful to be here in Cleveland, and Lou would’ve loved this. He’s here with his heroes — Otis and Dean. He’s here with B.B. King, who he loved and admired. Aretha, who he saw so many times. His dear friend, Doc Pomus, who taught him so much and with who he sang to in his beautiful record Magic and Loss. Of course, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is the place where the names of great musicians become completely magic words – Buddy Holly, Little Richard, the Coasters. And now, Lou Reed is one of those magic words.

Lou’s songs are full of life and complexity, and they’re about who have names. Candy and Caroline, Little Joe and Junior Dad and the man. So, now, they’re all here, too. The people from his imagination along with his serious rock & roll groove. Like he said, “Despite all amputation, you can still dance to a rock & roll station. And it was all right.”

Lou really knew the difference between himself as a writer and himself a person and as a rock & roll star. He’d shift between his roles with such skill. He could take his fame off like one of his leather jackets, or, he could just decide to use it. The fame, itself, was heavily important. Lou’s genuinely proud of what he’d done and could really appreciate his own work. And, tonight, he would have been so immensely proud to be a part of this.

In the last year and a half, I’ve heard from literally hundreds of people, and they’ve said how much Lou has changed their lives, pushing them towards something, pushing them to be better. Recently a guitar player told me about the time when she was playing with Lou onstage, and it was some kind of benefit with lots of people stepping out and doing solos. Like many musicians, like Lou, she was nervous about what he had to say about her playing. She stepped out and did her solo and she thought it was pretty good, and after she passed him onstage and said “So?” And he said, “Is that all you’ve got?” She couldn’t believe he said that. She was really frustrated and an hour later, she did another solo, and this time she just stepped on it. And she passed him by again, and he said, “That’s what I’m talking about.”

Lou is a wunderkind. He loved gear, he loved good sound. He was a photographer; he was an inventor; he was a warrior of tai chi. He was a great dancer. He could take watches apart and put them back together. He was kind; he was hilarious; he was never, ever cynical. Lou was my best friend, and he was also the person I admire most in the world. In the 21 years we were together, there were a few times I was mad, and there were a few times I was frustrated, but I was never, ever bored. We were touring musicians, and we often had to be apart.

Recently, a musician friend was telling me that he and his girlfriend were on the road so much that he decided not to live anywhere at all. I said, “How do you do that? Isn’t that disorienting not to have a place anywhere?” And he said, “She is my home.” I realized that was what it was like for me and Lou. It just didn’t really matter where we were. Lou loved his sister Merrill and her family. He loved and admired his Aunt Shirley, who’s also known as “Red Shirley,” who was the subject of his film. He was also a radical innovator and an artist right up until the end of his life. He made groundbreaking work like the live versions ofMetal Machine Music.

One of his last projects was his album with Metallica. And this was really challenging, and I have a hard time with it. There are many struggles and so much radiance. And after Lou’s death, David Bowie made a big point of saying to me, “Listen, this is Lou’s greatest work; this is his masterpiece. Just wait, it will be like Berlin. It will take everyone a while to catch up.” I’ve been reading the lyrics and it is so fierce. It’s written by a man who understood fear and rage and venom and terror and revenge and love. And it is raging. Anyone heard Lou sing “Junior Dad” will never forget the experience of that song, torn out of the Bible. This was rock & roll taken to whole new levels.

Lou understood pain and he understood beauty. And he knew that these two were often intertwined and that was what energized him. In this duality between yin and yang, he was also in tai chi and he was a tai chi master and he had the most beautiful meditation master of tai chi all over the world. As meditators and students of Buddhism, for many years we often talked about the advice of our Buddhist teacher, which had become central for our lives. One of the things our teacher told us — and something we tried very hard to learn — was this, he said, “You should try to practice how to feel sad without actually being sad,” which is really hard to do, how to feel sad without actually being sad.

As I said, Lou taught me a lot about growth, and I found out what it is to love and to be completely loved in return. This will be a part of me for the rest of my life. It’s also something that changes you forever, to have the love of your life die in your arms. And when Lou died in mine, I watched as he did tai chi with his hands, and I watched with joy and surprise that came over his face as he had died, and I became less afraid. One more thing he taught me. It crosses my mind every hour. It seems like after a year and a half, I’m still waiting for him to call, and sometimes he actually does call. And suddenly I remember one of his phrases or some random words or songs he made up, and I’m reminded also the three rules we came up with, rules to live by. And I’m just going to tell you what they are because they come really handy, because things happen so fast, it’s always good to have with you, like patchworks to fall back on.

And the first is, one: Don’t be afraid of anyone. Now can you imagine living your life afraid of no one? Two: Get a really good bullshit detector. And three: Three is be really, really tender. And with those three things, you don’t need anything else. For people with experience when their partners die, you’re compelled into a magical world where you fully understand many things that were complete mysteries up to that point. And so funnily, I see how people can turn into legs, and turn into music, and eventually turn into other people, and how fluid these bones are. And that’s what the Hall of Fame to me is all about, the transformation of people who took names that stand in beauty and style.

They say you die three times. The first is when your heart stops, and the second is when you’re buried or cremated. And the third is the last time someone says your name. I am so happy that Lou’s name is added to the list of people who will be remembered for the beautiful music that they made. Lou, my sweet lover, I love your last song, “The Power of the Heart.” You know me, I like to dream a lot. Of what there is and what there’s not. But mainly, I dream of you a lot. The power of the heart, the power of the heart. I accept this in your name. One more Lou.

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