The sister of late rock icon Lou Reed has denied that he underwent electro-shock therapy to treat homosexuality in his youth.
Reed's sexuality was the source of much speculation in the early days of the Velvet Underground, and many biographers have suggested that his parents forced him to address "homosexual urges" as a teen.
In an article for website Medium, Merrill Reed Weiner said that it was not true that her brother - who died in 2013 at the age of 71 - received the treatment for those reasons, although he died undergo electro-shock therapy for anxiety.
"During Lou’s teenage years, it became obvious that he was becoming increasingly anxious, avoidant and resistant to most socialising," she wrote. "Told by doctors that they were to blame and that their son suffered from severe mental illness, [their parents] thought they had no choice... It has been suggested by some authors that ECT was approved by my parents because Lou had confessed to homosexual urges. How simplistic. He was depressed, weird, anxious, and avoidant."
She added: "My parents were many things, but homophobic they were not. In fact, they were blazing liberals."
Weiner is now a family therapist and says that she and her brother were close until his death - but refuted his claims that he had been physically abused by their father as a child. "The stories he related – of being hit, of being treated like an inanimate object – seemed total fantasy to me. I must say that I never saw my father raise a hand to anyone, certainly not to us and never to my mother. Nor did I see a lack of love for his son during our childhood."
You can read the full interview at Medium here. Reed will be inducted into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame tomorrow.
