Rachel Humphreys, the transgender woman and muse Lou Reed (2024)

The name Lou Reed is intrinsically intertwined with the golden age of rock ‘n’ roll. Be it as a solo artist or as the face of The Velvet Underground, his contributions to music – though largely unrecognised upon initial release – are undeniable. The perfect word to describe the ideas that his music reflected is ‘avant-garde’. What the world marvels at as progressive today was discarded by society for being ‘too much’ at the time of Reed’s ultimate fame. However, the question remains: was Lou Reed as liberal as his music?

Much of the cultural mystique and iconography of the 20th century emanates from the New York scenes that he sang of, but to what extent was he in amongst it? At the crux of this question is a tragic tale. The story of Rachel Humphreys and Lou Reed hasn’t gone down in history the way it should have — but perhaps it’s foolish to expect so in a world where queerphobia exists in abundance. This retelling is an attempt to shed some light on the dark side of the celebrated icon to which the patriarchy-dominated world deliberately turned a blind eye.

It was 1974 in a chaotic, near-dystopian New York when Reed met Humphreys, a much-loved drag queen, in the 82 Club, a location which was in transition from a trans performance club to a glam rock venue, and then, later, a punk club. At that time, Reed’s career was on the rocks with almost no success or recognition for his work, a situation that pushed him towards alcoholism and drug addiction.

He recalled being captivated by Rachel’s magnetic personality in an interview with the Bambi magazine, in which he stated: “It was in a late-night club in Greenwich Village. I’d been up for days as usual and everything was at that super-real, glowing stage. I walked in there and there was this amazing person, this incredible head, kind of vibrating out of it all.” The allure was instant. He explains, “Rachel was wearing this amazing make-up and dress and was obviously in a different world to anyone else in the place.”

“Eventually I spoke and she came home with me,” the ‘Walk on the Wild Side’ singer continued. “I rapped for hours and hours, while Rachel just sat there looking at me saying nothing. At the time I was living with a girl, a crazy blonde lady and I kind of wanted us all three to live together but somehow it was too heavy for her. Rachel just stayed on and the girl moved out. Rachel was completely disinterested in who I was and what I did. Nothing could impress her. He’d hardly heard my music and didn’t like it all that much when he did. Rachel knows how to do it for me. No one else ever did before. Rachel’s something else.”

The only aspects of their three-to-four-year relationship between 1974 and 1978 that became public are some cheesy photographs of the two and, of course, Reed’s 1975 album Coney Island Baby, in which Humphreys acted as a muse. The line, “I’d like to send this one out to Lou and Rachel, and all the kids at P.S. 192” of the title track is a direct reference to their relationship. And that’s pretty much all. Beyond the surface romanticism on a fleeting song, it seems Humphreys was not afforded the pivotal place in cultural history that her impact should have afforded her.

One can’t help but wonder why Rachel was never heard talking about their relationship. What were her feelings towards Reed? Was she in love? Was she happy? Was she trapped? Was she a muse? Or was she a direct collaborator? Was her voice consciously silenced from cultural discourse? As a matter of fact, no information regarding her pre and post-Reed life is readily available. Most press at the time was salacious. Most press, after the fact, airbrushed her out of the picture. The lack of agency is a classic example of objectification and subjugation. Even Reed’s own narrative of the pair displays red flags of control and callous sexualisation.

It appears that Reed was not at all sensitive to his partner’s preference to identify as a woman. In 1976, Andy Warhol wrote in his diary: “Lou Reed called and that was the drama of the day. He said Rachel had gotten kicked in the balls and was bleeding from the mouth and he wanted the name of a doctor. Lou’s doctor had looked at Rachel and said that it was nothing, that it would stop the bleeding? but Lou wanted another doctor to check. Lou called back and said he got Keith Richard’s doctor to come over. I told him he should take her to the hospital. I was calling Rachel ‘she’ because she’s always in drag but then Lou calls him ‘he’.”

It is widely reported that Reed fought with Rachel when she decided to have the gender reassignment surgery and ultimately ended their relationship. However, in the months and years that followed, Reed simply stated that it was actually Rachel who had left him. “Love has gone away,” he sings on the title track of 1978’s Street Hassle, an album that is allegedly about their breakup: “Took the rings off my fingers, and there’s nothing left to say”. Reed pretended that Rachel never existed and refused to talk about her publicly except for the time when he said: “All the albums I put out after this are gonna be things I want to put out. No more bullsh*t, no more dyed-hair fa*ggot junkie trip.”

Thereafter, Reed got “clean and straight” and went on to marry his second wife, Sylvia Morales, in 1980. Rachel, meanwhile, was relegated to a footnote that the world forgot about, despite Reed’s own admission implying that she played a part in the creative side of an artistic period that redefined rock ‘n’ roll. In fact, she helped to hold Reed together during a period of despair and addiction. Humphreys died in 1990 due to the AIDS outbreak and, with her death, the world forgot yet another painful story.

Looking back, there is a stark polarity between the apparent love Reed fostered for Humphreys and those who defied convention and the hurtful language and behaviours he sometimes exhibited. Perhaps this is merely a product of his own fears at heart. In the book called Please kill Me: An Oral History Of Punk, Reed described the electroshock treatment given to him as a teenager, by his mother, for being bisexual: “They put the thing down your throat so you don’t swallow your tongue, and they put electrodes on your head. That’s what was recommended in Rockland State Hospital to discourage hom*osexual feelings….the effect is that you lose your memory and become a vegetable,” he said.

This is not to be seen as an isolated event. It echoes the story of thousands of queer lives who were made to feel abnormal and forced to hate themselves. Sadly, it was perhaps through this same subjugation that Humphreys was also cast aside by history. The erasure of her trailblazing and influential impact is now a powerful reminder of how queerphobia and ignorance first destroy queer lives and then brush their stories of struggle and triumph under the carpet.

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