Lou Reed reads in the Reid Hall, Edinburgh, 16 May 2005
Even in his walk to the podium you can see the strange combination of vulnerability and belligerence that characterises Lou Reed's artistic persona. He looks quite youthful for a man in his sixties, and when he clears his throat and speaks it sounds as if he's been shovelling gravel down his throat. He grimaces at the microphone and wrestles it into a more satisfactory position before starting. 'I'm in Scotland to perform some songs at a Burns Festival', he drawls, 'Burns was a great Scottish poet and I decided it would be interesting to read some Edgar Allen Poe as a way of letting you hear a great American poet.' Scattered applause.

The smallish hall is packed out; testament to his legendary status. People would probably turn up just to have a look at him, which is just as well because he doesn't do much other than read from his own lyrics and passages from Poe. You wish he would conjure up a guitar and sing something from his back catalogue of songs, but over the years Lou has been at pains to present himself as much as an intellectual and a serious poet as a mere songwriter. Lou probably isn't sure - as Norman Mailer might say - whether he's a 'beatnik' or a 'hipster' these days, but in truth he's probably a bit of both. There's no doubt, however, that when he started out as a singer it was his cool, laconic, 'hip' style of delivery that gave those classic Velvet Underground songs their edge. The late Sterling Morrison, whose magical guitar work graces the Velvets' albums, described the young Lou Reed as one of the great rock and roll singers, and bemoaned the fact that he no longer was. It's true. Lou talks his way through much of his solo material, rather than singing it, and the songs often sound flat and lugubrious compared to the early work which fizzed with energy and assurance, and a surprising tenderness too at times.

He reads well, with passion and drama, slowly and deliberately, now and then tossing an aside to the audience - 'wow what an incredible line', 'that's very difficult to sing because there are no spaces between the words to breathe in', and so on. But song lyrics rarely work when spoken as poetry - although they must have poetry in them, and poems don't often work as songs either, unless they're either ballads or 'free-form'. Maybe 'Sister Ray', 'The Black Angel's Death Song' or the 'Murder Mystery' would work as spoken pieces, but he doesn't read any of these. He reads from the lyrics to his recent album 'The Raven' - his own lyrical homage to Poe - and Poe's own work, and a few other songs of his own, finishing up with 'Small Town' from 'Songs for Drella', and 'Candy Says'. He thanks us for coming and departs, leaving me, at least, wishing he had brought a guitar along.