Mid-Week Song

Influential rocker Lou Reed, who would have turned 74 today, left behind five decades of groundbreaking music from his years as a solo artist to his earlier days as the heart of The Velvet Underground. His musical style influenced every genre from rock to punk to grunge. Here's Reed and The Velvet Underground with "Sweet Jane" from their 1972 album "Loaded."

Riding that Stutz Bearcat Jim,
Those were different times.
All the poets studied rules of verse,
And the ladies, they rolled their eyes
Sweet Jane, Sweet Jane, Sweet Jane

Lou Reed, 1942-2013

R.I.P.

Lou Reed, a massively influential songwriter and guitarist who helped shape nearly fifty years of rock music, died today. The cause of his death has not yet been released, but Reed underwent a liver transplant in May.

With the Velvet Underground in the late Sixties, Reed fused street-level urgency with elements of European avant-garde music, marrying beauty and noise, while bringing a whole new lyrical honesty to rock & roll poetry. As a restlessly inventive solo artist, from the Seventies into the 2010s, he was chameleonic, thorny and unpredictable, challenging his fans at every turn. Glam, punk and alternative rock are all unthinkable without his revelatory example. "One chord is fine," he once said, alluding to his bare-bones guitar style. "Two chords are pushing it. Three chords and you're into jazz."