Quote Of The Day

"Victory goes to the player who makes the next-to-last mistake - Chessmaster Savielly Grigorievitch Tartakower (1887-1956)"

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Lou Reed had ECT for being 'gay'...

Born in 1942 into a Jewish family in Brooklyn, the teenage Lou Reed was subjected to electroconvulsive therapy to “cure” his homosexuality. His parents ordered this as they were "disturbed by his developing homosexuality."

Reed wrote about the experience in his 1974 song, "Kill Your Sons" and also is quoted as saying, "They put the thing down your throat so you don't swallow your tongue, and they put electrodes on your head. That's what was recommended in Rockland County to discourage homosexual feelings. The effect is that you lose your memory and become a vegetable. You can't read a book because you get to page 17 and have to go right back to page one again."

Reed we went on to work as a house songwriter for Pickwick Records before finding cult fame with art-rock band The Velvet Underground. Post-VU, he released a succession of acclaimed albums, most significantly 1972’s ‘Transformer’, whose themes of drug use and cross-dressing chimed with the mood of the glam-rock movement spearheaded by his friend David Bowie.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Note: only a member of this blog may post a comment.