page_title: Walk on the Wild Side (Lou Reed song)
section_title: Inspiration
hierarchical_section_title: Walk on the Wild Side (Lou Reed song) / Inspiration
caption_attribution_description: English: Lou Reed and his friends mentioned in "Walk on the Wild Side": Holly Woodlawn, Jackie Curtis, Joe Dallesandro
context_page_description: "Walk on the Wild Side" is a song by Lou Reed from his second solo album, Transformer. It was produced by David Bowie and Mick Ronson, and released as a double A-side with "Perfect Day". The song received wide radio coverage, despite its touching on taboo topics such as transsexual people, drugs, male prostitution, and oral sex. In the United States, RCA released the single using an edited version of the song without the reference to oral sex. In 2010, Rolling Stone ranked it at number 223 in its list of the 500 greatest songs of all time.
  The lyrics, describing a series of individuals and their journeys to New York City, refer to several of the regular "superstars" at Andy Warhol's New York studio, the Factory, namely Holly Woodlawn, Candy Darling, Joe Dallesandro, Jackie Curtis and Joe Campbell. Candy Darling was also the subject of Reed's earlier song for The Velvet Underground, "Candy Says".
  Two decades after the song's release, Reed told interviewer David Fricke, "I know my obituary has already been written. And it starts out, "Doot, di-doot, di-doot...""
context_section_description: In the 2001 documentary Classic Albums: Lou Reed: Transformer, Reed says that it was Nelson Algren's 1956 novel, A Walk on the Wild Side (itself titled after the 1952 song "The Wild Side of Life"), that was the launching point for the song, even though, as it grew, the song became inhabited by characters from his own life. As with several other Reed songs from the 1970s, the title may also be an allusion to an earlier song, in this case Mack David and Elmer Bernstein's Walk on the Wild Side, the Academy Award-nominated title song performed by Brook Benton for the 1962 film based on Algren's novel. During his performance of the song on his 1978 Live: Take No Prisoners album, Reed humorously explains the song's development from a request that he write the music for the never-completed musical version of Algren's novel.
  Each verse refers to one of the "superstars" at Andy Warhol's New York studio, The Factory.
  "Holly" is based on Holly Woodlawn, a transsexual actress who lived in Miami Beach, Florida as a child. In 1962, after being bullied by homophobes, the fifteen-year-old ran away from home; and, as in the lyrics, learned how to pluck her eyebrows while hitchhiking to New York.
  "Candy" is based on Candy Darling, a transsexual actress and the subject of an earlier song by Lou Reed, "Candy Says". She grew up on Long Island ("the island") and was a regular at "the back room" of Max's Kansas City.
  "Little Joe" was the nickname of Joe Dallesandro, an actor who starred in Flesh, a 1968 film about a teenage hustler. Dallesandro said in 2014 that he had never met Reed when the song was written, and that the lyrics were based on the film character, not himself personally.
  "Sugar Plum Fairy" has been described as a reference to actor Joe Campbell, who played a character by that name in Warhol's 1965 film, My Hustler. The term was a euphemism for "drug dealer". "Sugar Plum Fairy" may have been a composite of a number of drug dealers in the Warhol superstars circle.
  "Jackie" is based on Jackie Curtis, another Warhol actress. "Speeding" and "crashing" are drug references. Curtis at one time hoped to play the role of James Dean in a movie; Dean was killed in a car crash.
caption: Reed and three of the persons he has said he described in his lyric: Holly Woodlawn, Jackie Curtis and Joe Dallesandro
exif: {"Image Make": "FUJIFILM", "Image Model": "FinePix S5700 S700", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Digital Camera FinePix S5700 S700 Ver1.00", "Image DateTime": "2008:06:11 07:02:03", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image Copyright": "", "Image ExifOffset": "2490", "Image XPKeywords": "[72, 0, 111, 0, 112, 0, 32, 0, 70, 0, 97, 0, 114, 0, 109, 0, 32, 0, 50, 0, 0, 0]", "Image CustomRendered": "Normal", "Image ExposureMode": "Manual Exposure", "Image WhiteBalance": "Auto", "Image SceneCaptureType": "Standard", "Image Sharpness": "Hard", "Image SubjectDistanceRange": "0", "Image PrintIM": "[80, 114, 105, 110, 116, 73, 77, 0, 48, 50, 53, 48, 0, 0, 2, 0, 2, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0]", "Image Padding": "[]", "Image OffsetSchema": "3976", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "4968", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "4906", "Thumbnail YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/250", "EXIF FNumber": "7/2", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Manual", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "64", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0220", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2008:06:11 07:02:03", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2008:06:11 07:02:03", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF CompressedBitsPerPixel": "4", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "8", "EXIF ApertureValue": "18/5", "EXIF BrightnessValue": "37/5", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "18/5", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF LightSource": "Unknown", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "633/10", "EXIF SubSecTimeOriginal": "00", "EXIF SubSecTimeDigitized": "00", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "3072", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "2304", "EXIF FocalPlaneXResolution": "5376", "EXIF FocalPlaneYResolution": "5376", "EXIF FocalPlaneResolutionUnit": "3", "EXIF SensingMethod": "One-chip color area", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera", "EXIF SceneType": "Directly Photographed"}