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Wild side catches up with Lou Reed
The American rock star Lou Reed is recovering after undergoing a life-sav- ing liver transplant. Reed, who is 71, was close to death before having surgery early last month in Cleveland, Ohio, his wife, Laurie Anderson, has disclosed in an interview with The Times published today.
Of the circumstances behind the transplant, she said: “It’s as serious as it gets. He was dying. You don’t get it for fun.” She described the operation as “a big surgery which went very well”.
Reed, formerly of the Velvet Underground and famous for songs such as Walk on the Wild Side and Perfect Day, had mysteriously cancelled five concert dates in April including two performances at the Coachella festival in California, with one venue citing “unavoidable complications”.
Anderson, a performance artist best known for her 1981 hit single O Superman, said that the couple had chosen transplant surgery at the Mayo Clinic, Cleveland, over New York because she claimed that the hospitals in New York were dysfunctional. “Fortunately we can outsource like corporations,” she said. “It’s medical tourism. The Cleveland clinic is massive. They have the best results for heart, liver and kidney transplants. Whenever I get discouraged about how stupid technology is and how greedy and stupid Americans are, I go to the Cleveland clinic because the people there are genuinely very kind and very smart.”
Anderson, who has been with Reed for 21 years and married for five, vividly described the drama behind his liver transplant. “You send out two planes — one for the donor, one for the recipient — at the same time. You bring the donor in live, you take him off life support. It’s a technological feat. I was completely awestruck. I find certain things about technology truly, deeply inspiring.”
The last few weeks had been emo- tionally draining, she added. “When you’ve been with someone for a long time, it’s almost like it’s happening to you because of the empathy between partners,” she said. “This is no longer an operation that is life threatening. They put it [the new liver] in immediately and it started to work immediately. Every week it gets better. I can imagine a world where you can get everything transplanted.”
Asked how long Reed’s recovery would be, Anderson said: “I don’t think he’ll ever totally recover from this, but he’ll certainly be back to doing [things] in a few months. He’s already working and doing t’ai chi.” She added: “I’m very happy. It’s a new life for him.”
Reed has graphically evoked his drug and alcohol addictions. His 1964 song Heroin, released with the Velvet Underground three years later, features the lyrics: “Heroin, be the death of me/Heroin, it’s my wife and it’s my life.”
In a 1971 essay, Fallen Knights and Fallen Ladies, Reed wrote of being introduced to drugs and getting hepatitis in the process.
He told the journalist Lester Bangs in 1973 that a single shot of Scotch “is so small that you’ve gotta nurse it like it’s a child or something. I drink constantly . . . I’m getting tired of liquor because there’s just nothing strong enough. Now if we were drinking 150-proof saké, or something like that, then I could get drunk.”
Of his drug-taking, he said: “I take drugs just because, in the 20th century, in a technological age living in the city, there are certain drugs you have to take just to keep yourself normal like a caveman, just to bring yourself up or down. But to attain equilibrium you need to take certain drugs. They don’t get you high even, they just get you normal.”
In 1992 Reed wrote: “I tried to give up drugs by drinking . . . It didn’t work.”