Legendary Singer Dies Aged 71 Legendary singer and songwriter Lou Reed has died in New York, aged 71. The punk-poet died of a liver-related ailment on Sunday morning, his literary agent Andrew Wylie said. The star had a liver transplant in May this year. Reed shared a home in Southampton, New York, with his wife Laurie Anderson, who he married in 2008. Lewis Allan "Lou" Reed was born in Brooklyn in 1942 and rose to fame as the frontman of the Velvet Underground in the late 1960s. He moved to England to be a solo artist in the 1970s and worked with David Bowie among others. It was during this time he produced his biggest hits, including Walk On The Wild Side and Satellite of Love. Another song - Perfect Day - was covered by a host of stars for a charity single. Reed rose to fame in the Velvet Underground In a tribute to the singer, Rolling Stone magazine said he "fused street-level urgency with elements of European avant-garde music, marrying beauty and noise, while bringing a whole new lyrical honesty to rock & roll poetry." During his career as a solo artist, from the 1970s into the 2010s, he was "chameleonic, thorny and unpredictable," it said. Glam, punk and alternative rock are all unthinkable without his revelatory example. 'One chord is fine,' he once said, alluding to his bare-bones guitar style. Two chords are pushing it. Three chords and you're into jazz.' Reed met Welsh musician John Cale in the 1960s and they formed a band called the Primitives, then changed their name to the Warlocks. After meeting guitarist Sterling Morrison and drummer Maureen Tucker, they became the Velvet Underground. The band caught artist Andy Warhol's attention who incorporated them into his Exploding Plastic Inevitable. "Andy would show his movies on us," Reed once said. We wore black so you could see the movie. But we were all wearing black anyway. Reed's trademarks were a monotone of surprising emotional range and power - slashing, grinding guitar, and lyrics that were complex, yet conversational. Known for his cold stare and gaunt features, he was a cynic who seemed to embody downtown Manhattan culture and was as essential a New York artist as Martin Scorsese or Woody Allen. Reed's New York was a jaded city of drag queens, drug addicts and violence, but it was also as wondrous as any Allen comedy, with so many of his songs explorations of right and wrong and quests for transcendence. Reed pictured a few months before his death He had one top 20 hit, Walk On the Wild Side, and many other songs that became standards among his admirers, from Heroin and Sweet Jane to Pale Blue Eyes and All Tomorrow's Parties. An outlaw in his early years, Reed would eventually perform at the White House, have his writing published in The New Yorker, and win a Grammy in 1999 for Best Long Form Music Video. He was one of rock's archetypal tough guys, but he grew up middle class - an accountant's son raised on Long Island. He hated school, loved rock 'n' roll, fought with his parents and attacked them in song for forcing him to undergo electroshock therapy as a supposed "cure" for being bisexual. "Families that live out in the suburbs often make each other cry," he later wrote.