Teenage Lou Reed

In 1953 Sidney and Toby Reed moved the family out to the suburban Long Island town Freeport, NY.

Lou Reed's teenage life in Freeport has been very well researched but inconsistently documented. In our collection we have many vital snapshots of his life and the start of his musical career.

It is in this time that we start to see the advent of the Lou Reed myth - the "Rock n Roll Animal" caricature that he became known for.

Lou Reed Yearbooks

In the collection we have two of Lou Reed's Freeport High School yearbooks, his Junior year 1958 and Senior year 1959.

Inside each they are innumerable inscriptions from friends. Also contained is a goldmine of images of teenage Lou Reed.

Through his last two years of high school Lou Reed played guitar and sang in a couple of different groups. The most notable was his stint with classmates Alan Walters and Phil Harris as The Shades. Harris would go on to record under the name Bobby Randle.

The Shades were lucky enough to be scouted by Bob Shad at a high school talent show and soon after were signed to Shad's brand new label Time Records. In the process they changed their name to The Jades due to a naming conflict with a previously established group.

As The Jades, the three of them released the single Leave Her For Me/So Blue, Time Records 1002. Accompanying them were famed studio musicians King Curtis on saxophone and Mickey Baker on guitar. Lou Reed was 16.

Electroshock Therapy

Lou Reed had had plans to attend Syracuse University in Fall 1959. His father had driven him and his friends upstate to tour the campus and the decision had been set between he and his friends. Unbeknownst to his friends, however, during his final year of High School Lou Reed was suffering from what is now generally recognized as Depression. The diagnosis has never been made public, and Lou Reed himself was never consistent with his descriptions of the medical, mental, and moral concerns his doctors and parents had at the time.

It's not clear when it started but by mid 1959 Lou Reed's psychiatrist concluded that the solution was Electroshock Therapy, aka Electroconvulsive Therapy or ECT. Soon after graduating from Freeport High School, Reed was treated at Creedmoor Psychiatric Center using multiple applications of ECT. The treatment was debilitating and the recovery was long, together taking a little over a year.

Lou Reed's sister Merrill, his junior by 5 years, wrote about this period of Lou's life in the article "A Family in Peril: Lou Reed’s Sister Sets the Record Straight About His Childhood".

In Fall of 1959 Lou Reed finished his ECT treatment. Then began his post-shock treatment at Payne Whitney Psychiatric Clinic on Manhattan's Upper East Side. Too late to attend Syracuse University, he instead enrolled in classes at New York University.

This was the first time he had spent much time in New York City since he was 8.

Lou Reed took advantage of his new local by exploring New York's Jazz scene. Notably he would followed Saxophonist Ornette Coleman and his quartet, Billy Higgins, Charlie Haden, and Don Cherry, from show to show around the city. Since Reed didn't have the money to actually see them play he would resort to listening from outside club windows.

Lou Reed loved 50's Doo-Wop music. Anytime he had an opportunity to talk about it he would. In the Lou Reed Papers we a recording of a lovely moment in 1984 where he and Sue Simmons talk on New York's News 4 Live at Five and share their old favorites.

There was one great line that I wish I had written. It goes:

She made me do something that I never did before / I ran right down to the flower store / I bought her a bundle / a beautiful batch /  and don't you know she sent them right back / and she said "later for you baby"

If I only had written that... that's "Later For You Baby" by the Solitaires on Ace Records, the yellow label.

Lou Reed 45rpm Collection

The Jades & Doo Wop Carrying Case

(Lou Reed Papers)

Contains the records listed below