People said that way back in the early days I was probably one of the first rappers; the reason is that I couldn't sing, so I had to talk! Lou Reed was probably the one who started it all.
I couldn't sing without a guitar. I like the way it feels to sing and be holding a guitar, even if I'm not playing it that much. All my idols that I grew up liking always had a guitar on them, but they didn't play it - Buddy Holly, John Lennon, Lou Reed, Elvis Costello. It's like having a partner with you.
When I was 13, Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground made more sense to me than anything else.
The Southern California arena rock, hair metal, laidback hippie garden culture - for many growing up in the '70s and '80s, none of it made us who we were like Lou Reed did.
The period right before punk rock where people like Lou Reed and Iggy Pop were really strong.
I have been listening a lot to The Carpenters and Neil Diamond, Elton John, and thinking, like, 'God, it'd be great to write a sort of subversive, alternative ballad,' like Lou Reed does so well with 'Perfect Day.' And I really loved 'Video Games' - at the time, it hadn't really got as big, but it's a classic song; you can't deny it.
I love Lou Reed because his voice sounds like your inner conscience.
I have total respect for the self-contained rock artist. Whether you're dealing with Jerry Garcia or Lou Reed or Patti Smith or a Whitney or an Aretha, they know what they want with their career.
I don't think I'll ever be able to fully explain the way that the Velvet Underground's records opened a door in my head. But it has something to do with Lou Reed as a mythic figure: a person who fitted no category, who defied limits and trends and definitions.
Lou Reed was an ideal figure to me. He was bisexual, like me, and seemed to inhabit an ambiguous middle place on the masculine-feminine spectrum.
