Anthony Decurtis Lou Reed

In October 1990, Lou Reed interviewed Vaclav Havel, playwright, poet, president of the newly emancipated Czechoslovakia, and – surprisingly? – a Velvet Underground fan. During the course of their conversation, Havel handed Reed a book. "These are your lyrics, hand-printed and translated into Czechoslovakian. There were only 200 of them. They were very dangerous to have. People went to jail." Nobody will go to jail for owning Between Thought and Expression, but Reed's lyrics remain dangerous – not, as in Communist Czechoslovakia, for what they are, but for what they say…

Live stage performance of Lou Reed's 1973 album, recorded at St. Ann's Warehouse in Brooklyn, New York over five nights in 2007. When it was first released, 'Berlin', Reed's third solo outing, received a critical mauling, especially since it followed his earlier triumph, 'Transformer', with its hit single 'Walk On The Wild Side'…

In 1972, Lou Reed was a minor cult hero to a handful of rock critics and left-of-center music fans who championed his former band, the Velvet Underground, but he was unknown to the mainstream music audience. By 1986, Reed was a rock & roll icon, widely hailed as a master songwriter and one of the founding fathers of punk, glam, noise rock, and any number of other vital rock subgenres; he even scored a few hits along the way. If you want to know what happened during those 14 years to make such a difference, the answer can be found in The RCA & Arista Album Collection, a 17-disc box set that brings together nearly all of Reed's recorded work from this period…