“Reed’s brilliance was in disliking almost everything—in cutting through the ‘glop’, as he would say, in distilling music down to its essence. He had little tolerance for bullshit. ‘Repetition is so fantastic, anti-glop’ Reed wrote in the pages of Aspen in 1966.

[…]

By carving out all the negative space, Reed created the environment for thousands of bands to bloom. He stood for many things: New York City, minimalism, repetition, feedback, poetry, darkness. But most of all, he defined what rock ’n’ roll could be: not just for himself, but for all of us.”

— Geeta Dayal