My first exposure to Lou Reed was as a 16-year old hearing ‘Venus In Furs’ on our FM radio station in Bethesda, MD, WHFS. Even though I only had an inkling as to what the song was about, I really loved the music, the melody, the words, the singing, the sounds. 

I never really liked Lou’s solo stuff as much as the V.U. Banana Album and ‘White Light White Heat’. But when ‘Rock and Roll Animal’ came out, that threw everybody for a loop, with those guitar gymnastics by Steve Hunter and Dick Wagner - yow! Who knew? 

That got played all the time on the FM stations and most everybody loved it. These pictures were taken on the tour after ‘Rock and Roll Animal’, from behind the stage at Winterland in San Francisco. He did stick a needle in his arm FOR REAL during ‘Heroin’, as shown in one of my pictures. I would guess it just had saline solution or water in it. Alas, Hunter and Wagner had moved on, so didn’t get to see them (though I did a few years later with Peter Gabriel). 

4 of these photos are in Will Hermes' 2023 hardback book "Lou Reed: King of New York".