If you want to write, most every writer will tell you, you’ve got to read, read, read, and read. “Read more than you write,” advis­es Teju Cole. Even great film­mak­ers like Wern­er Her­zog and Aki­ra Kura­sawa cite copi­ous read­ing as a pre­req­ui­site for their pri­mar­i­ly visu­al medi­um. But what about music? What advice might we hope to receive about the art of writ­ing mem­o­rable, cul­tur­al­ly sig­nif­i­cant songs? Lis­ten, lis­ten, lis­ten, and lis­ten, per­haps.

One of the great­est of rock and roll greats, Lou Reed, had overt lit­er­ary ambi­tions, formed dur­ing his years as an Eng­lish major at Syra­cuse Uni­ver­si­ty, where he stud­ied under poet Del­more Schwartz. “Hubert Sel­by, William Bur­roughs, Allen Gins­berg and Del­more Schwartz,” he once told Spin, “To be able to achieve what they did, in such lit­tle space, using such sim­ple words. I thought if you could do what those writ­ers did and put it to drums and gui­tar, you’d have the great­est thing on earth.”

The­mat­i­cal­ly, Reed accom­plished this, bring­ing the same vio­lence, ten­der­ness, and street­wise deca­dence to his work as his lit­er­ary heroes did to theirs. But for­mal­ly, he drew on anoth­er bat­tery of influ­ences: clas­sic soul, doo wop, rhythm and blues, folk, jazz, and ear­ly rock and roll. Crib­bing from all these gen­res dur­ing his long career, Reed dis­played a seem­ing­ly effort­less mas­tery of arche­typ­al Amer­i­can pop music.

Unlike Leonard Cohen—another lit­er­ary song­writer drawn to life’s dark­er themes—Reed did not leave col­lege and start pub­lish­ing poet­ry. In 1964, he moved to New York to begin work as an in-house song­writer for Pick­wick Records, soak­ing up the music around him through his pores, trans­mut­ing it into his own warped take on ear­ly hits like his dance craze, “The Ostrich,” which includ­ed the line “put your head on the floor and have some­body step on it.”

As weird as Reed was even then, he wrote immense­ly catchy tunes and even­tu­al­ly inspired sev­er­al thou­sand punk, post-punk, alter­na­tive, and indie song­writ­ers with the nov­el idea that one could make dan­ger­ous, shock­ing music with sim­ple, catchy—even bubblegum—melodies. Per­haps no one had as great an effect on post-60s rock, but Reed’s own influ­ences drew solid­ly from the fifties and before, as par­tial­ly evi­denced in his own hand, in a scrawled list of “best albums of all time,” which he sub­mit­ted for a 1999 mag­a­zine inter­view.

1. Change of the Cen­tu­ry—Ornette Cole­man
2. Tilt—Scott Walk­er / Belle—Al Green / Any­thing by Jim­my Scott
3. Blood on the Tracks—Bob Dylan
4. Lit­tle Richard’s Spe­cial­ty Series
5. Hank Williams’ Sin­gles
6. Har­ry Smith Anthol­o­gy
7. Does Your House Have Lions—Roland Kirk
8. “Stay with Me Baby”—Lor­raine Elli­son
9. “Moth­er”—John Lennon
10.“Oh Super­man”—Lau­rie Ander­son & Unit­ed States

The list, tran­scribed above, includes the three-vol­ume Spe­cial­ty Ses­sions at num­ber 4, a com­pre­hen­sive omnibus of Lit­tle Richard hits. Below it is Hank Williams’ 3‑disc sin­gles col­lec­tion, and fur­ther down, at twice the size, Har­ry Smith’s enor­mous Anthol­o­gy of Amer­i­can Folk Music. By far, the bulk of Reed’s sug­ges­tions saw release before he ever put pen to paper and came up with “The Ostrich.” We’re just peek­ing into the six­ties with Ornette Cole­mans’ Change of the Cen­tu­ry, at num­ber one.

But you’ll also note that, tied at num­ber two with Al Green’s Belle and “Any­thing by Jim­my Scott” (mak­ing his list of ten come out to 13), we have Scott Walker’s bizarre, exper­i­men­tal 1995 mas­ter­piece Tilt (hear “Farmer in the City” fur­ther up), a return from obliv­ion for the reclu­sive six­ties croon­er and an album, writes All­mu­sic, “on a plateau some­where between Nico’s Mar­ble Index and Lou Reed’s Met­al Machine Music.” Ever mod­est (he once claimed, “my bull­shit is worth more than oth­er people’s dia­monds”), Reed was acute­ly aware of his own piv­otal place in 20th cen­tu­ry music, though he does refrain from list­ing one of his own records. He ends instead with the puls­ing, trance-like sin­gle “Oh Super­man,” by his roman­tic and musi­cal part­ner, Lau­rie Ander­son.

Who knows how seri­ous­ly Reed took this assign­ment, giv­en how much he could be “cir­cum­spect about the mate­ri­als and meth­ods of his art” in his often con­fronta­tion­al pub­lic state­ments. That same year, VH1 polled sev­er­al jour­nal­ists and “esteemed musi­cians,” writes the music chan­nel, on their choice of the 100 great­est songs of rock and roll. “Nat­u­ral­ly we approached Reed, who sent his choic­es back via fax. In true icon­o­clast form, instead of list­ing out his 100 favorite songs, he picked just eight.” Only two of the artists from his top ten appear here: Lor­raine Elli­son and Al Green. See his hand-writ­ten bal­lot above, and the eight songs list­ed below.

1. “Stay With Me” by Lor­raine Elli­son
2.“Out­cast” by Eddie and Ernie
3. “Lovin’ You Too Long” by Otis Red­ding
4. “Riv­er Deep Moun­tain High” by Ike & Tina Turn­er
5. + 6. “Geor­gia Boy” and “Belle” by Al Green
7. “That’s Alright Mama” by Elvis Pres­ley
8. “I Can’t Stand the Rain” by Ann Pee­bles

via @LouReed

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Ornette Cole­man Col­lab­o­rate with Lou Reed, Which Lou Called “One of My Great­est Moments”

Lou Reed and Lau­rie Anderson’s Three Rules for Liv­ing Well: A Short and Suc­cinct Life Phi­los­o­phy

Lou Reed Reads Del­more Schwartz’s Famous Sto­ry “In Dreams Begin Respon­si­bil­i­ties”

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness