This urgent, propulsive melding of hard rock and graphic lyrics was nothing less than a statement of intent. Describing the junkie's daily grind of desperation and danger – "hey white boy, what you doin' uptown?" – in that enervated drawl, Reed stakes his claim to be the poet laureate of the New York mean streets of hustlers, pimps and junkies. Alongside Heroin, it showed that Reed was prepared to go places in song that few of his contemporaries would even contemplate going. Hard, dark, repetitive and utterly compelling.  From the Velvets' eponymously titled third album, the beautifully low-key Pale Blue Eyes is the flip side to the clattering intensity of I'm Waiting For the Man. A love song that wears its surprisingly romantic heart on its frayed sleeve, it is a thing of fragile beauty and deep intimacy. One of several Velvets-era Reed songs, including the bruised and restless Sunday Morning that showed there was a romantic nature lurking under that tough street-punk exterior. The loping, circular guitar coda and one-beat tambourine are all the accompaniment Lou needs to convey a world of sweet longing and regret.  From 1972, Reed's unlikeliest hit single somehow slipped the net of radio censorship despite touching on transvestites, rent boys and oral sex – Candy famously "never lost her head, even when she was giving head". Named after a Nelson Algren story, the song rides on two interwoven bass lines, one acoustic, one electric, as it spins a tale of Warholian excess though its cast of real-life characters: Holly Woodlawn, Joe Dallesandro, Jackie Curtis and Joe "Sugar Plum Fairy" Campbell. And topped by that dreamy "do di do di do" chorus by three girls called Thunderthighs. As perfect, and provocative, a pop song as you could ask for.  From 1972's Transformer, another apparently romantic pop song with darkness lurking just underneath the surface. Produced by David Bowie and Mick Ronson, it features a rolling piano riff and a rich string arrangement with Lou in full-on crooner mode. Then, he drawls the biblically vengeful line "You're gonna reap just what you sow" and suddenly all is not what it seems. An ode to the narcotic bliss of heroin as well as the transportive power of love, it later featured on the soundtrack of Trainspotting, where it fitted, and on a trailer for Downtown Abbey, where it didn't. Arguably the most misunderstood ballad in pop history and a beautiful song that is pitched just the right side of sentimental. One of the few Lou Reed songs Sinatra could have covered,  Having first surfaced on the Velvet Underground's fourth album, Loaded, in 1970, Reed reworked the song to dramatic effect on his live solo album, Rock n Roll Animal, wherein it became a hard rock magnum opus courtesy of the prolonged twin-guitar instrumental intro. Steve Hunter and Dick Wagner trade licks for an inordinately long time before one of the most instantly recognisable riffs in rock'n'roll finally emerges. An FM radio staple in the US, it made Lou a hard rock hero for a while, but, despite the guitar pyrotechnics, the song somehow remains the same.  1989's New York album, his 15th solo outing, was a stunning return to form: a long series of songs about the city that remained his biggest inspiration. The deftly observational Halloween Parade, about the annual gay celebration in Greenwich Village, is a kind of dark coda to Walk on the Wild Side, a post-Aids elegy to the fallen – "There ain't no Harry, no Virgin Mary/ You won't hear those voices again/ And Johnny Rio and Rotten Rita/ You'll never see those faces again." With a band that included the Velvets' Maureen Tucker on percussion and Dion DiMucci on backing vocals, New York was a return to the street poetry of his great, gritty early songs and Halloween Parade is it's elegiac centrepoint.
From scoring heroin in 1967 to mourning those lost to Aids in 1989, here are six of Lou Reed's greatest moments