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DISGRACELAND

Lou Reed (An Origin Story) Pt. 1

DISGRACELAND

Jake Brennan

Society & Culture, Music, True Crime

4.613.1K Ratings

🗓️ 26 December 2025

⏱️ 35 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Lou Reed is one of the greatest rock ‘n’ roll characters of all time, one known to lie and exaggerate his own mythology during interviews about his past. In this special 2-part episode, Lou’s origin story with the Velvet Underground runs straight through Manhattan transgressions, murder mysteries, drug abuse, and all the other crimes, criminals, and antisocial behavior depicted in Lou’s legendary lyrics. This episode was originally published on March 28, 2023. To see the full list of contributors, see the show notes at ⁠www.disgracelandpod.com⁠. To listen to Disgraceland ad free and get weekly bonus content and more, become a Disgraceland All Access member at ⁠www.disgracelandpod.com⁠⁠. Sign up for our newsletter and get the inside dirt on events, merch and other awesomeness - ⁠GET THE NEWSLETTER⁠ Follow Jake and DISGRACELAND: ⁠Instagram⁠ ⁠YouTube⁠ ⁠X⁠ (formerly Twitter)  ⁠Facebook Fan Group⁠ ⁠TikTok To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

Double Elvis.

0:07.8

Disgraceland is a production of Double Elvis.

0:11.2

Heads up, everybody.

0:12.3

This is not your typical disgraceland episode where we tell the story of a musician through the true crimes they committed or that were committed to them.

0:20.3

For this two-part episode on the Velvet Underground's

0:22.8

Lou Reed, we're doing something different. To honor Lou's habit of basically lying and exaggerating

0:28.5

his way through most interviews about his past, we examine Lou's origin story in the Velvet Underground

0:33.8

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

0:38.2

Velvet Underground lyrics to explore what really inspired Lou Reed, one of the greatest

0:43.1

rock and roll characters of all time, to create some of the coolest and most influential

0:48.1

music of all time. All right, let's get into it. The stories Lou Reed told in his Velvet Underground songs are insane.

1:16.9

Manslaughter in the song The Gift.

1:19.2

Sadomasochism and sexual deviancy in the song Venus and Furs.

1:23.6

Drug abuse and heroin and I'm Waiting for the Man.

1:27.0

Prostitution in the song, there she goes again,

1:29.9

and of course, murder in the murder mystery.

1:33.5

In the stories Lou Reed told about himself to the rock press,

1:37.2

those were insane too,

1:39.4

that he once put a rifle to a man's head,

1:41.9

that his parents forced him to undergo electro-shock treatments

1:45.2

because he was gay, that he graduated from Harvard. Not sure why I would brag about that one,

1:50.5

but I digress. Lou Reed was once quoted as saying, I've lied so much about the past, I can't

...

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