Lou Reed — music (velvet underground) with roots in the Russian Empire
Lewis Allan Reed was born on 2 March 1942 at Beth El Hospital in Brooklyn, the son of Sidney Joseph Reed, an accountant, and Toby Futterman. His connection to the Russian Empire runs through his grandparents.
Both his parents were born in Brooklyn to Jewish immigrants who had arrived in New York in the first decade of the twentieth century. One set of grandparents came from the Russian Empire and the other from Poland, and the sources disagree on which was which: the New York Public Library's guide to his papers describes his father as one of three children of Russian Jewish parents with businesses in Borough Park, and his mother as one of four children of Polish Jewish parents in Brownsville, while another account reverses the two. No town is recorded on either side. His father was born Sidney Rabinowitz and changed the family's surname to Reed when Lewis was a baby.
The family moved to Freeport, Long Island, in 1953, where his father became treasurer of a packaging company and Lewis had a bar mitzvah. He sang and played guitar in doo-wop groups at school, and at Syracuse University studied poetry under Delmore Schwartz, whom he called the first great person he had met, and ran a late-night radio programme.
As a staff songwriter at Pickwick Records he met John Cale, and with Sterling Morrison and Angus MacLise they formed the Velvet Underground in 1965. Andy Warhol became their manager and designed the banana cover of their first album. Reed was the band's guitarist, singer and principal songwriter until he left in 1970.
His second solo album, Transformer (1972), produced by David Bowie and arranged by Mick Ronson, contained Walk on the Wild Side and brought him wide recognition; Berlin (1973) and the live Rock 'n' Roll Animal (1974) followed. He released twenty solo studio albums, three books of photography and, in 2010, Red Shirley, a documentary about his hundred-year-old cousin Shirley, who had emigrated from Poland in 1938 and worked as a labour organiser in the garment district.
He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with the Velvet Underground in 1996 and as a solo artist in 2015. He died on Long Island on 27 October 2013, aged seventy-one.
"His grandparents, Russian and Polish Jews, emigrated to New York in the first decade of the twentieth century; both his parents were born in Brooklyn. Towns not documented."
Migration storyTracing the roots — Russian Empire (town not documented)
His grandparents were Russian and Polish Jews who settled in Brooklyn in the first decade of the twentieth century. The New York Public Library's guide to his papers places the Russian line on his father's side, the Rabinowitz family of Borough Park; another account places it on his mother's.
Father Sidney Joseph Rabinowitz (1913-2005), an accountant who changed the family name to Reed; mother Toby Futterman (1920-2013). One set of grandparents came from the Russian Empire, the other from Poland; sources disagree on which.
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Russian Empire (town not documented). At the time, this region lay within the Russian Empire, which spanned from Poland to the Pacific.
A career defined by ambition
"I am the Velvet Underground. I always was."