Rosanne and Others on Lou

At that great Talk House site a collection of fresh comments on Lou Reed's passing, from Courtenay Love to Michael Stipe.  Here's Rosanne Cash:

I was a bit in awe of Lou because of Magic and Loss. I thought that record was the most beautiful musical meditation on death I'd heard. I went to see him at Radio City when it came out, and he performed the album in sequence. I wept. It was spectacular. We met doing a radio show together in the early '90s, and not long afterwards I ran into him backstage at the Bob Dylan 30th anniversary show at Madison Square Garden. Neither of us was married at the time, and he asked for my phone number. I think we both realized at the moment he asked that even a single date would have been a disaster. We were so, so different. I shrugged, and we laughed. I worked with him a few times after that — a songwriters-in-the-round show, radio shows, a festival in Brooklyn — and saw him at various events in the city over the years. He was always so sweet to me. He couldn't have been more of a gentleman. I saw the other, difficult side of him in glimpses, but he just seemed like a really sensitive guy who hated pretension and who found it intolerable to compromise on anything that was important to him, whether it was the sound of his monitors or the meal he had ordered. I'll always respect him. Magic and Loss, indeed.