Lou Reed in Concert
Poster, offset lithograph
Blue Egg Printing and Design Ltd.
Great Britain, 1973
Given by Publicity and Display Ltd.
S.4338-1995
On display in room 106B
This signature image of Lou Reed (1942 – 2013) was first used as the cover of his solo album Transformer (1972). It is reused here to promote the tour of his follow-up album, Berlin (1973).
Aged 14, Reed was confined to an institution where he endured electric shock treatment to ‘cure’ him of supposed homosexual tendencies.
Following university, he gravitated to New York where he fell into Andy Warhol’s liberated Factory scene as frontman of pioneering rock group, The Velvet Underground – their name lifted from the title of a book exploring so-called deviant sexuality in 1963.
The Factory was bursting at the seams with revolutionary figures in gay and trans* liberation, including Holly Woodlawn, Penny Arcade, and Candy Darling. Reed was known for surrounding himself with drag queens and transgendered people and had a seminal relationship with a trans* woman called Rachel Humphreys, who accompanied him on tour and appears in his lyrics and album artwork during the mid-1970s.
Through his songs, Reed helped bring diverse characters into the mainstream consciousness, with ‘Candy Says’, ‘Sister Ray’, ‘Lady Godiva’s Operation’, and most famously ‘Walk on the Wild Side’, all having overtly queer, illuminating lyrics.
