(guest blogged by Howie Klein)

When the Velvet Underground started playing I was just a kid but I went to every show they did at Warhol's Exploding Plastic Inevitable. The impact the Velvet Underground had on my life--musically, spiritually, artistically--is incalculable. Decades later, I wound up working at Sire Records and my boss, Seymour Stein, signed Lou Reed. I was overjoyed, although Lou hadn't had a real hit in quite a while.

So he wrote a hit... and we put it out. It was a smash and for me, it was mind-blowing several years later when I went with Lou and he performed the song at a state banquet in the White House in honor of his friend, Vaclav Havel, President of the Czech Republic (+ the Clintons and a bunch of Beltway types).

Lou Reed's website