{"id":266734,"date":"2025-11-16T21:59:08","date_gmt":"2025-11-16T21:59:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/266734\/"},"modified":"2025-11-16T21:59:08","modified_gmt":"2025-11-16T21:59:08","slug":"the-song-lou-reed-used-as-a-heartbreaking-autobiography-of-his-childhood","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/266734\/","title":{"rendered":"The song Lou Reed used as a heartbreaking autobiography of his childhood"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Lou<\/p>\n

(Credits: Far Out \/ Album Cover)<\/p>\n

Sun 16 November 2025 19:45, UK <\/p>\n

Lou Reed<\/a> was a man of few words\u2014in conversation, that is.<\/p>\n

An infamous persona followed Reed from when he first tasted fame in the early 1960s with The Velvet Underground. He had little to no tolerance for interviews, often coming off as detached and easily provoked to anger and scorn. His demeanour was dominated by a face that rested somewhere between solemn and boredom, speaking with a cool remove. He was both shy and confident, resolving to tact when there was nothing else to say.<\/p>\n

Yet, on record, he was an open book. <\/p>\n

To sing brazenly on \u2018Heroin<\/a>\u2019 of the gory intricacies of his drug use and of sadomasochistic themes on \u2018Venus in Furs\u2019, while remaining resigned face-to-face, only added to Reed\u2019s intrigue. With his departure from The Velvet Underground in 1970, Reed\u2019s solo career warranted deeper introspection in his songwriting: a rare glimpse at Reed, unmasked. <\/p>\n

He continued to sing of sex and drug use, while also chronicling the dark underbelly of city life and its eccentric, shady cast of characters, never shying away from transgression. Reed\u2019s stories often held up a mirror to himself; we could hear bits of himself woven into his tales of friends, lovers and acquaintances who crossed his path. But sometimes, Reed directly confronted himself, writing tragic stories of a life burdened by addiction and struggle. One song in particular tells of his life pre-fame, when his teenage years were spent in a torturous psychiatric hospital: \u2018Kill Your Sons\u2019.<\/p>\n

In 1959, during his first year of college at New York University, Reed was brought home<\/a> to Long Island after suffering a mental breakdown. As writer Will Hermes describes in his biography of the musician, Lou Reed: the King of New York, Reed remained \u201cdepressed, anxious, and socially unresponsive\u201d for a period of time. <\/p>\n

\"Lou<\/a>(Credits Far Out \/ Faber & Faber)<\/p>\n

Encouraged by a psychologist, his parents consented to having Reed undergo electroconvulsive therapy (ECT), thrice weekly for eight weeks. Reed said later that his parents sought to \u201ccure\u201d his suspected homosexuality, though his depression and subsequent behaviour are cited as the primary reasoning. It is an experience that haunted Reed for the rest of his life, and one that he immortalised on \u2018Kill Your Sons\u2019.<\/p>\n

Appearing on 1974\u2019s Sally Can\u2019t Dance, \u2018Kill Your Sons\u2019 calls out Reed\u2019s parents and the \u201ctwo-bit psychiatrists giving you electro shock\u201d, sung with a spitting voice that amplifies Reed\u2019s signature drone. He also chronicles the therapy\u2019s after-effects, particularly the memory loss he endured. \u201cBut everytime you tried to read a book \/ You couldn\u2019t get to page 17,\u201d he sings, \u201c\u2018Cause you forgot, where you were \/ So you couldn\u2019t even read.\u201d <\/p>\n

He names the hospitals he was admitted to \u2013 \u201dCreedmore treat me very good \/ But Paine Whitney was even better\u201d \u2013 and of the drugs he was administered on top of his ETC treatments, producing a range of emotions. With a dark humour, he sings, \u201cAll of the drugs that we took, it really was lots of fun \/ But when they shoot you up with thorizene on crystal smoke \/ You choke like a son of a gun.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reed\u2019s blatant criticism of his family continues, with a particular scathing tone towards his father. He sings of his Mom calling him on the phone, informing him of his father\u2019s violent behaviour: \u201cTook an axe and broke the table,\u201d Reed recalls dryly. \u201cAren\u2019t you glad you\u2019re married?\u201d he follows, with an almost mocking tone. <\/p>\n

Reed\u2019s sister, Merrill, on the other hand, married and stayed on Long Island. Her husband, as Reed recounts, is \u201cbig and he\u2019s fat, and he doesn\u2019t even have a brain\u201d. From Reed\u2019s point of view, his native Long Island has become a place of stagnancy, one with too much trauma to endure. He equates the island with his family and regards both with disdain, complicit in his wrongful treatment.<\/p>\n

As the chorus repeats, \u201cDon\u2019t you know they\u2019re gonna kill, kill your sons? \/ Until they\u2026 run away,\u201d Reed emphasises the ill-fated effects of his so-called therapy: the attempted killing of his old self, to reinvent anew, with his permanent aversion to the conformity that was attempted to be placed on him. <\/p>\n

As heart-wrenching as \u2018Kill Your Sons\u2019 is to listen to, Reed allowed the song to purge his emotions on the subject, even once managing to joke to his biographer, Victor Bockris, \u201cIt was shocking, but I was getting interested in electricity anyway.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Related Topics<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"(Credits: Far Out \/ Album Cover) Sun 16 November 2025 19:45, UK Lou Reed was a man of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":266735,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[96,596,33325,128,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-266734","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-entertainment","9":"tag-homepage","10":"tag-lou-reed","11":"tag-music","12":"tag-uk","13":"tag-united-kingdom","14":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266734","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=266734"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/266734\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/266735"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=266734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=266734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=266734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}