Disgraceland is a production of Double Elvis.

Heads up, everybody.

This is not your typical disgrace land episode where we tell the story of a musician through

the true crimes they committed or that were committed to them.

For this two-part episode on the Velvet Underground's Lou Reed, we are doing something

different.

To honor Lou's habit of basically lying and exaggerating his way through most interviews

about his past, we examine Lou's origin story in the Velvet Underground

through the crimes, criminals, and transgressive behavior depicted in Lou's Velvet Underground

lyrics to explore what really inspired Lou Reed, one of the greatest rock and roll characters

of all time,

to create some of the coolest and most influential music of all time.

All right, let's get into it.

Okay. The stories Lou Reed told in his Velvet Underground songs are insane.

Manslaughter in the song The Gift, sadomasochism and sexual deviancy in the song Venus and Furs, drug abuse and heroin, and I'm Waiting for the Man, prostitution

in the song, there she goes again, and of course, murder in the murder mystery.

In the stories Lou Reed told about himself to the rock

press, those were insane, too, that he once put a rifle to a man's head, that his parents

forced him to undergo electro-shock treatments because he was gay, that he graduated from Harvard.

Not sure why I would brag about that one, but I digress.

Lou Reed was once quoted as saying,

I've lied so much about the past, I can't even tell myself what is true anymore.

...