Story of the Song: Walk on the Wild Side by Lou Reed

From The Independent archive: Robert Webb takes a closer look at the singer’s New York narrative

Lou Reed on stage with a guitar, 1970s (Getty Images)

Lou Reed wasn’t the first person to write “Walk on the Wild Side”. In 1960, the jazz lyricist Fran Landesman penned the title-song for a musical adaptation of Nelson Algren’s 1950s novel of the same name. It flopped, but in 1969 the idea of transferring Algren’s streetwise story from page to stage was revived, and Lou Reed, at a loose end after the demise of the Velvet Underground, was approached to write the music for an off-Broadway production. “They said, ‘We think you are a very literary rock’n’roll person’,” said Reed, recalling the phone conversation.

Set in New Orleans during the Thirties, Algren’s novel turns the American Dream into a nightmare of poverty. Reed wasn't taken with the idea, but worked up a song. Luckily for Reed, the project, again, came to nothing. “I took my song and changed the book’s characters, into people I knew from [Andy] Warhol’s Factory,” Reed said. Each verse introduces a transvestite personality from Warhol’s New York arts lab. “I always thought it would be fun to introduce people to characters they maybe hadn’t met before, or hadn’t wanted to meet,” said Reed.

Holly Woodlawn, name-checked in the opening line, had appeared in Warhol’s 1972 movie Women in Revolt. She had, indeed, hitch-hiked from Miami to New York, aged 15, shaved her legs “and, then he was a she”. “The song is completely true,” Woodlawn has confirmed.

“Walk on the Wild Side” is the highlight of Reed’s 1973 album Transformer, produced by David Bowie. The sax solo was played by Bowie’s old music teacher, Ronnie Ross, and the memorable bass line, which runs counter to the vocal melody, fell from the fingers of the session player Herbie Flowers. “I hardly remember doing it because I was out of my trolley,” Flowers said.

Although its risque lyrics were bleeped into meaninglessness on American radio, the BBC were seemingly oblivious to phrases like “giving head” and gave it uncensored airtime. “Walk on the Wild Side” remains Reed’s only solo hit, despite the subsequent success of the original B-side, “Perfect Day”, in 1997, in its BBC charity guise.