The Transformer: how Lou Reed kept on confounding expectations

In December 1964, Lou Reed released what was effectively a solo single under the name The Primitives. Do the Ostrich wasn't the first record to bear his name. For a few months he'd been churning out made-to-order songs for Pickwick, a label that specialised in bargain-basement albums ripping off that period's prevalent pop styles. Before that, his teenage band The Jades had released two entirely unexceptional doo-wop tracks in 1958 and two years later he had chanced his arm as a solo singer, recording in the perky, post-rock'n'roll style that predominated in pre-Beatles America.

But if it wasn't his first record, Do the Ostrich was certainly the most remarkable at the time. It was meant to be a quick knock-off of a novelty dance fad single, in the vein of Chubby Checker's It's Pony Time. But there, its resemblance to a chart hit ended.

Reed had tuned all the strings on his guitar to the same note, resulting in an intense, clangorous din. He'd later use the same trick on the Velvet Underground's Venus in Furs and All Tomorrow's Parties. The lyrics aren't trying to start a novelty dance craze at all, they're the sound of a drugged-out New York smart-ass sneering at anyone stupid enough to indulge in a dance craze: "Take a step forward, step on your face."

There isn't a chorus, just a load of unsettling screaming. The ultra-primitive rhythm builds to a chaotic, pounding middle section that sounds remarkably like something off the Velvet Underground album White Light/White Heat, still one of the great challenging listens in the classic rock canon 45 years on.

How anybody came to the conclusion that this was headed for the top 10 is a mystery. It's an odd footnote in his career, but Reed - who died last Sunday - never seemed embarrassed by it.

Perhaps it was because, in its own weird way, Do the Ostrich was Lou Reed in a nutshell: it should have been straightforward, but Reed had done the opposite of what he was expected to do. In the short term, the result was commercial oblivion: the single sank. In the long term, Reed had found his metier. He would make a career out of doing the opposite of what people expected. He was unknowable, which you suspect is exactly what he wanted to be: "I don't have a personality of my own," he flatly told one interviewer.