Brow Beat

Watch a Great Documentary About Lou Reed

Lou Reed in 1983

Photo by STRINGER/AFP/Getty Images

Lou Reed, the rock legend behind the Velvet Underground and nearly four decades of solo material, died Sunday at 71.

In 1998, PBS’s American Masters series produced a feature-length documentary on Reed looking back at his whole career. The documentary, which was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, features interviews with Reed and just about everyone you’d like to hear on him, including David Bowie (who worked with him on Transformer), Philip Glass, Patti Smith, Thurston Moore, David Byrne, John Cale, and other surviving members of the Velvets. They even spoke with Holly Woodlawn and “Little” Joe Dallesandro, the drag queen and the street hustler immortalized by Reed in “Walk on the Wild Side.”

You can watch the full documentary below.

For more on Lou Reed, read Mark Joseph Stern on whether the singer was the first out rock star and Rob Wile on how Reed helped bring down communism in Eastern Europe.