Lou Reed, one of the most influential voices of rock, died today at 71. Lou Reed leaves behind his wife, the performance artist, Laurie Anderson. The cause of his death has not yet been released.

With the Velvet Underground, Lou Reed broke barriers of sixties rock and roll. The band sang about drug addiction, the gay lifestyle while the Stonewall Riots were still a recent memory and the darker alternatives of New York City living. Lou Reed was nothing if not honest.

Lou Reed's Velvet Underground were the quintessential downtown New York City band. They were the opposite of The Beatles. John Cale would fine musicians if they played blues licks.

The New York legend has been making music for almost fifty years. Lou Reed had a liver transplant in May.

Lou Reed was born Lewis Allan Reed in Brooklyn in 1942. Lou Reed went to college at Syracuse University before he got a gig as a staff songwriter for the novelty label Pickwick Records. Reed has his first minor hit with a dance-song parody called "The Ostrich" in 1964.

Lou Reed, and the Velvet Underground merged street smarts with avant-garde, beauty with ugliness and a harsh junkie mentality to clean pop in the late Sixties. Lou Reed sang about "Waiting for My Man," the man who had the dope. He admitted that "Heroin" was going to be the death of him, but was honest about the rush of beautiful nothingness he felt when the blood flowed into the brain.

Lou Reed was one of the first alternative music artists. He inspired glam rock, punk rock and art rock. He made art by breaking things down to their simplest forms. He explained "One chord is fine. Two chords are pushing it. Three chords and you're into jazz."

In the early days of rock and roll, Lou Reed was a doo-wop fan. In 1989 he inducted Dion of Dion and the Belmonts, a Bronx doo-wop group, into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Lou Reed was inspired by his friend La Monte Young, a minimalist composer. Reed met John Cale, a classically trained violinist from Wales in the mid-sixties and they formed the band The Primitives, which soon were renamed Warlocks and finally the Velvet Underground after they added Sterling Morrison on guitar and Maureen Tucker on drums. Andy Warhol, New York City's arbiter of taste liked them and added them to his Exploding Plastic Inevitable. Lou Reed said "Andy would show his movies on us. We wore black so you could see the movie. But we were all wearing black anyway."

Andy Warhol produced the Velvet Underground's first album, "The Velvet Underground & Nico," in 1967. It didn't sell well, but it was as influential as that year's "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" by the Beatles or "Blonde On Blonde" by Bob Dylan The Velvet Underground out Rolling Stoned the Rolling Stones.

The Velvet Underground released three more albums: "White Light/White Heat" in 1968, "The Velvet Underground" in 1969 and Loaded in 1970. Lou Reed wrote the almost-hits "Rock & Roll" and "Sweet Jane" for the Velvet Underground.

The Velvet Underground broke up in 1970 and Lou Reed went solo. His first backup band went on to become the prog-rock band Yes. In 1972 David Bowie produced Lou Reed's breakthrough album "Transformer" which had the hit "Walk On the Wild Side," which described drag queens and oral sex. In 1973 he released the phenomenal "Berlin." Lou Reed explored soul music and horns on "Sally Can't Dance" from 1974. I can still remember the commercials on New York TV. In 1975 he released the highly experimental "Metal Machine Music." Reed was blasted for his live "Take No Prisoners" in 1978.

Lou Reed married Sylvia Morales in the early 1980s and it showed on his 1982 album "The Blue Mask." The were divorced in 1992. He released "New Sensations" in 1984 and arrived for a lot of people with his "New York" album in 1989. Lou Reed reunited with John Cale in 1991 with the Andy Warhol Tribue "Songs For Drella."

Lou Reed married musician-performing artist Laurie Anderson in 2008 after living together throughout the nineties.

Lou Reed toned down and toned up with Tai Chi in the 2000s. Reed released the Edgar Allen Poe tribute "The Raven in 2005 and teamed with Metallica for the 2011 album "Lulu," after they jammed at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Lou Reed will be missed. In New York and everywhere.

By Tony Sokol, follow me on Twitter