You were allowed to think whatever you wanted about who he was as a person (mostly because he didn’t seem to care), but there was never any argument over the veracity of his genius. Few rational listeners injected their discomfort with Reed’s personality into the experience of hearing his records; even fewer concluded that the way he sometimes acted in public eroded the insight of his output. You might say, “I hate Lou Reed,” but you couldn’t say, “I hate Lou Reed and I hate all his music.” If you did, it only meant you had terrible taste in everything. And this is why Reed’s life was such a
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