Lou Reed Quotes

Sex and drugs and rock and roll.

You can't have rock and roll without drugs, you can't have rock and roll without sex.

I don't really remember a whole lot of sex, drugs and rock n' roll, really.

It was 1967, and the hippie thing was happening. I got into experimenting with drugs while I was in college in Michigan.

In the studio you can auto tune vocals, and with drums, you can put them on a grid and make them perfect. I hate that sound. When someone hands me a record and the drums are perfectly gridded and the vocals are perfectly auto tuned, I throw it out the window. I have no interest in rock music being like that.

If you can remember anything about the sixties, you weren't really there.

I was a straight arrow, a control freak. I didn't do drugs or drink, and this was the '70s. I didn't like the loss of control. Which isn't exactly right, because I didn't know what happened when you did drugs.

Once I got to be about twenty-five, I got interested in the music of the time. I started smokin' dope, I started drinking, I started slowing down and trying to find myself. I didn't want to work in nightclubs.

During the 60's, drug use was in fashion in the U.S.

The whole idea of rock and roll lifestyle is a cartoon. It's a caricature. And at times, it's made up of people emulating others; a few who actually live that lifestyle and many who claim to live that lifestyle.

Rock and Roll has certainly tried to take its toll on me. I'd rather not talk about my past excesses here, although some hardcore rockers might argue that those excesses were responsible for some great records, but I know which side I came out on.

People in the business will stay with you through drugs and alcohol and divorces and insanity and everything else, but you have a failure, pal, and they don't want to know nothing about you!

Marijuana is used largely in the form of cigarettes, which cause delusions and produce insanity and often lead to atrocities that only a drugsoaked mind could conceive. Marijuana is a sinister drug that has only recently become available and popular among the younger element

I have an addiction. I have a mental illness.

Addiction is a neurological disease—a disease of the brain…. No one wakes up in the morning and says today ‘I want to become an addict.’

I was 15 years old in 1972, and yeah, when the 1970s broke, I was out there. Everything was kinda swirling around me - the music, women, cars, the culture.

Drop your shrink and stop your drinkin', crunchy granola's neat.

I hope the guy who came up with the phrase 'sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll' rots in hell, I'd like to change it so it makes more sense: 'sex death and rock 'n' roll'

When I was growing up, when I was 11 years old I was listening to The Mothers of Invention. You know, I mean I was a Frank Zappa fan in Arkansas.

I wasn't big in the party scene but I did have an excessive lifestyle. I had much more than I needed. I think that was a manifestation of a certain kind of mental illness.

I could do Rust In Peace again, but I don't want to. I could have followed that formula but, God, why? I would have to have done so much heroin and cocaine - and I wasn't going to. Not if I'm paying for it!

Sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll... take out the drugs and you've got more time for the other two.

A black man, but I feel so blue. So I smoke green and purple to my dreams come true. And my eyes turn red, the sky turns grey.

Im either running from life or im just waiting to die im the supplier or fire if you chasing a high.