Lou Reed, the Tell-Tale Rocker: Reed and Robert Wilson collaborate on a music-theatre remix of the works of Edgar Allen Poe.

“He’s so contemporary,” Mr. Reed added. “It would sad be if he’s consigned to some cartoon level, like the Roger Corman movies. And the language is so beautiful. I spent so many hours with the dictionary, because some of these words were already arcane when he used them. He was a show- off in that way. My God, what a vocabulary. So I spent time finding out what these things meant, and then making it a litte bit, not necessarily contemporary, but what it actually meant. But the word he picked always had a beautiful sound.” NY Times