Joe Dallesandro

Lou Reed saw the movie Flesh (1968) and that's where he got the idea for the third verse of the song "Walk on the Wild Side", which is about "Little Joe". Paul Morrissey told Lou to watch the movie and write about the characters in the film. The song is the end result.

My introduction to the gay world did two things. One, it saved me from life in prison for murder, which is probably where I would have wound up. How? Because the gay world showed me that you didn't have to beat up every man you saw or hurt people to make a point. It gave me a whole other attitude, a calmer attitude. Two, it taught me never to be homophobic, even before there was such a term. I think because I grew up in a period, especially later on, when the people I looked up to were like...my heroes....That's what I liked about the period, that a man could say he liked both, that he appreciated both the look of a man and the look of a woman without being stereotyped.