He made it through drug addiction, professional rejection, emaciation, all the way to 71. He left behind a long trail of depressing, inspiring, infuriating work, all delivered in a powerful monotone. As one reviewer said after listing to the 7-minute "Heroin", "I feel simultaneously impelled to somehow save this man and to reach for the needle." Reed's effect was like that all his life. In a plastic world, Reed was an artist.
