0 Lou Reed, "Coney Island Baby" (1976)

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Lou Reed's death has caught me up a bit. It wasn't one anyone could say was a surprise, but I felt it as an unexpected loss and still do. More, I have been amazed by the outpouring I have seen, often exasperated by what people laud and ignore. But of course—it could not be any other way. Lou Reed contained peevishness too, a Walt Whitman of our times, contradicting himself, large, containing multitudes. I wanted to post "Baton Rouge" on Facebook as my own personal expression of grief, but played it safe with "Sweet Jane." More I was intrigued by what everybody else was throwing up—it was an amazing variety, from pre-Velvets to "Egg Cream" and beyond, which may have been the most remarkable testament of all. Applying the work ethic Andy Warhol so famously drummed into him, Lou Reed willed himself into becoming a creative giant, one of the most enduring, influential, and productive artists of his time, and someone who personally became important to me, for his storytelling and sharp eye and his stories of substance abuse, bad relationships and good, and for his commitment to physical and, yes, emotional health. I saw him in performance once in Minneapolis, in 1984, and again in Seattle in 1992, and he was a sensation both times. I've been listening to him for 40 years but am only now getting some sense of the giant figure he cut. As for "Coney Island Baby," it's Lou Reed the way I particularly like him, with his defenses down and his heart wide open, alert and paying attention and getting the details. I mean, "I wanted to play football for the coach"? How does he get away with that? Among other things, Lou Reed was a consummate showman and a dedicated student of the human heart. Sit for 6:47 and enjoy a little masterpiece, why don't you.

Detail: Lou Reed, "Coney Island Baby" (1976)

0 Lou Reed, "Heavenly Arms" (1982)

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It's none of my business, but I still miss Sylvia. In retrospect, maybe Lou Reed was more in love with something she helped him find in himself than with her—though who can say that isn't the reason most of us are in love in the first place anyway? Not my business, as I said, and beside the point anyway. I can go visit her any time I like in this song (or, if not her, then what I miss, because obviously I don't know her). It's the song Reed used to climax The Blue Mask, his first great album of yet another reascendant period, the early '80s. And that's no coincidence, because among other things the (carefully incidental) priority is on the lines of a heterosexual agenda. "I love women, I think they're great," he says in the song "Women." Everywhere you look on that album it is women, women, women. So if it's going to be a torch song at the end the ground is laid. But it's laid with other elements too: this amazing band he assembled, with Robert Quine on guitar, Fernando Saunders on an aching soulful bass, and rock-solid drummer Doane Perry. The birth of 2 guitars bass drum as self-conscious ethos buoys this. Not to mention something about emotional recovery, the details hazy but the feeling of assessing and owning up strong here. It all comes to a bracing head in "Heavenly Arms," one of Reed's most nakedly revealing songs. The heavenly arms of the title belong to Sylvia, of course, called out by name. Not just called out, but implored, beseeched, howled for, from as vulnerable a point as may ever have been recorded, more or less. A bellow of love. It's fair enough to call it calculating—it's Lou Reed, after all, and I've outlined the case above. But that doesn't mean it won't move you, over and over again.

Detail: Lou Reed, "Heavenly Arms" (1982)