Rolling Stone is reporting that Lou Reed has died today, at age 71:

Lou Reed, a massively influential songwriter and guitarist who helped shape nearly fifty years of rock music, died today. The cause of his death has not yet been released, but Reed underwent a liver transplant in May.

Needless to say, Reed’s adventures with the Velvet Underground, as well as his many solo outings after their dissolution, were very crucial to our musical development. Another anti-hero of the 1960s Lower East Side joins Jack Smith, Angus MacLise, Sterling Morrison, and many others on whatever Heaven’s version is of Ludlow Street. (Just kidding, we don’t believe in Heaven.)