After quitting the Velvet Underground in August 1970, Reed took a job at his father's tax accounting firm as a typist, by his own account earning $40 a week. A year later, however, he signed a recording contract with RCA and recorded his first solo album in London with top session musicians including Rick Wakeman and Steve Howe who would later join Yes. The album, simply titled Lou Reed, contained smoothly produced, re-recorded versions of unreleased Velvet Underground songs, some of which were originally recorded by the Velvets for Loaded but shelved (see the Peel Slowly and See box set). This first solo album was overlooked by most pop-music critics (although Stephen Holden in Rolling Stone called it "almost perfect") and it did not sell in significant numbers.

In 1972 Reed released Transformer, which made him a part of the glam rock movement. David Bowie and Mick Ronson co-produced the album and introduced Reed to a wider popular audience (specifically in the UK). The hit single "Walk on the Wild Side" was both a salute and swipe at the misfits, hustlers, and transvestites in Andy Warhol's Factory. The song's cleverly transgressive lyrics evaded radio censorship. Though musically somewhat atypical for Reed, it eventually became his signature song. The song came about as a result of his commission to compose a soundtrack to a theatrical adaptation of Nelson Algren's novel of the same name, though the play failed to materialize. Ronson's arrangements brought out new aspects of Reed's songs; "Perfect Day", for example, features delicate strings and soaring dynamics. It was rediscovered in the 1990s and allowed Reed to drop "Walk on the Wild Side" from his concerts.

Though Transformer would prove to be Reed's commercial and critical pinnacle, there was no small amount of resentment in Reed devoted to the shadow the record cast over the rest of his career. A public argument between Bowie and Reed ended their working relationship for several years, though the subject of the argument is not known. The two reconciled some years later, and Reed performed with Bowie at the latter's 50th birthday concert at Madison Square Garden in 1997. The two would not formally collaborate again until 2003's The Raven. Reed followed Transformer with the darker Berlin, which tells the story of two junkies in love in the city of the same name. The songs variously concern domestic abuse ("Caroline Says I", "Caroline Says II"), drug addiction ("How Do You Think It Feels"), adultery and prostitution ("The Kids"), and suicide ("The Bed").

In this period, Reed cultivated a shocking persona and image. He preferred black leather clothes and spiked collars, and he cropped his hair, cutting fascist symbols in it and dyeing it blonde. For many years Reed maintained a deliberately "camp" manner and image, stylistically predicting the heroin twink aesthetic that was to define queer fashion in later years. It was this version of Reed that greeted the public on the cover of Rock n Roll Animal, a successful live album that consolidated the commercial gains he had made with "Walk on the Wild Side".

Also at this time, Reed publicized his hostile interpersonal style—already known to his former bandmates—with his intense interviews with rock journalists, in particular Lester Bangs. Reed rapidly became known as one of the most difficult rock personalities, a reputation he has maintained even when not using drugs. His "sick" persona was not entirely put on: heavy drug use plagued the recording of the album Sally Can't Dance, an R&B-styled collection that hit the U.S. Top Ten, the highest chart performance of Reed's career. Nevertheless, Reed's 1970s work held him up as an authentic member of the new "freak scene" in mainstream rock, alongside such other shock rock figures as David Bowie, Iggy Pop, and Alice Cooper.

As he had done with Berlin after Transformer, in 1975 Reed responded to his glam rock success with a commercial failure, a double album of electronically generated audio feedback, Metal Machine Music. Critics interpreted it as a gesture of contempt, an attempt to break his contract with RCA or to alienate his less sophisticated fans. But Reed claimed that the album was a genuine artistic effort, even suggesting that quotations of classical music could be found buried in the feedback. Bangs declared it "genius", though also as psychologically disturbing. The album was reportedly returned to stores by the thousands after a few weeks.[12] Though later admitting that the liner notes' list of instruments is fictitious and intended as parody, Reed maintains that MMM was and is a serious album. In the 2000s it was adapted for orchestral performance by the German ensemble Zeitkratzer.

By contrast, 1976's Coney Island Baby was mainly a warm and mellow album, though for its characters Reed still drew on the underworld of city life. At this time his lover was a transvestite, Rachel, mentioned in the dedication of "Coney Island Baby" and appearing in the photos on the cover of Reed's 1977 "best of" album, Walk on the Wild Side: The Best of Lou Reed. While Rock and Roll Heart, his 1976 debut for his new record label Arista, fell short of expectations, Street Hassle (1978) was a return to form in the midst of the punk scene he had helped to inspire. But ironically Reed was dismissive of punk and ...'disclaimed any identity with punk '"Its... [r]idiculous I'm too literate to be into punk rock...The whole CBGB's, new Max's thing that everyone's into and what's going on in London - you don't seriously think I'm responsible for what's mostly rubbish?'[13]''The Bells (1979) featured jazz great Don Cherry, followed by Growing Up in Public with guitarist Chuck Hammer the following year. Around this period he also appeared as a sleazy record producer in Paul Simon's film One Trick Pony. Reed also played several unannounced one-off concerts in tiny downtown Manhattan clubs with the likes of Cale, Patti Smith, and David Byrne during the period, but full reconciliation between Cale and Reed was implausible. Cale later wrote the song "Woman" about Reed on his album BlackAcetate.

Source: Lou Reed - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia