A Birthday Message from Lou Reed

Today's my birthday. It's a round number which a lot of people don't like hitting, myself included. And it's been hanging over me for months, but now that I've hit it I have to say it's kind of a relief. I did the only reasonable thing and ran away to a foreign country for my birthday, and last night my bròther and sìster threw me a party. It was just a bunch of their friends who I barely know or had never met and it was sort of perfect. Now don't get excited, because absolutely nothing porny is about to enter into this blog post.

In the middle of the party, not far from the stroke of midnight, someone I'd never met before looked up from her phone and announced that Lou Reed had just died. Lou is one of the reasons I am what I am and I do what I do. He shone a light for misfits and perverts and trannies and queers and junkies all over the world, and he died a grumpy old death dwarf who'd truly made the world a more tolerable place for a lot of people. He was a Jewish kìd from Brooklyn who was given electroshock treatment for his bisexuality when he was just 14. His only radio hit to speak of was a marvellous and completely improbable song about the trannies and hustlers who hung around the Factory, which he managed to make into a huge international success basically because censors did not know what 'giving head' meant in 1972.

I can't believe he's gone, and it was kind of a strange birthday surprise. But, you know, life is short and unpredictable and you've just got to do everything you can to make the world better while you're on it.

I don't think I can embed it here, but below's a link to Halloween Parade, from the New York album, about what was left of the very queer and very inclusive Halloween Parade in NYC after the AIDS epidemic had decimated its ranks. He outlived all these people he mentions, people he obviously knew and loved, and when they were gone he did what he could to honour their memory in his own way. So long, Lou.

It's here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pb_r-IwB8t8