Reed's literary agent Andrew Wylie says the legendary musician died Sunday morning in Southampton at age 71 of an ailment related to his recent liver transplant.
Reed never approached the commercial success of such contemporaries as the Beatles and Bob Dylan, but no songwriter to emerge after Dylan so radically expanded the territory of rock lyrics.
And no band did more than the Velvet Underground to open rock music to the avant-garde - to experimental theater, art, literature and film, to William Burroughs and Kurt Weill, to John Cage and Andy Warhol, Reed's early patron and longtime inspiration.
