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‘It’s kind of extraordinary to be able to say that I was friends with Lou Reed’ says author who was obsessed with the musician as a student
Casey Cooper-FiskeSunday 23 November 2025 00:01 GMTComments
CloseSalman Rushdie discusses state of free speech in US
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Sir Salman Rushdie has revealed that his late friend, the iconic singer Lou Reed, originally intended his renowned song "Walk On The Wild Side" for a musical.
The 78-year-old author disclosed that The Velvet Underground frontman had conceived the track, from his 1972 album Transformer, for a stage adaptation of Nelson Algren’s novel of the same name.
Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs, Sir Salman shared his personal connection to Reed: "It’s kind of extraordinary to be able to say that I was friends with Lou Reed because when I was at college, I kind of worshipped The Velvet Underground. And the idea that I would end up with Lou Reed’s phone number never occurred to me."
He elaborated on the song's genesis: "Originally, it was written to go as the title track of this Nelson Algren musical, based on the novel, Walk On The Wild Side. And then the musical fell apart, never happened, and so he rewrote (it), the music is the same, but he rewrote the lyrics, dropping the characters from the novel, and replacing them with characters from the (Andy) Warhol Factory."
open image in galleryReed died in 2013 (Getty Images)Sir Salman chose the track as one of his Desert Island Discs, alongside Bob Dylan’s "Blowin In The Wind" and The Rolling Stones’ "(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction."
The author also recounted a poignant near-meeting with Nelson Algren himself. "It’s very strange because Nelson Algren, I almost met," he said.
Algren had reviewed Sir Salman’s Midnight’s Children in the Chicago Tribune.
Sir Salman was en route to Algren’s housewarming party when tragedy struck. "The party was all laid out and prepared, and he had a colossal heart attack and died on the rug in the middle of the room, and the first guests to arrive found the host dead on the floor. So I never met Nelson Algren, but almost."
Earlier this month, Sir Salman released The Eleventh Hour, a collection of stories set in diverse locations, marking his first fiction book in nearly three years.
open image in gallerySalman Rushdie was left blinded in one eye after being attacked on stage in 2022 (Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved)His celebrated works include the Booker Prize-winning Midnight’s Children and The Satanic Verses, which led to a fatwa issued by then-Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1989. Sir Salman, who spent years in hiding, has travelled freely for the past quarter-century.
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The Indian-British Booker Prize-winning writer was left blind in one eye following a knife attack in New York state in 2022.
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