Lou Reed’s Death: ‘He Was a Prince and a Fighter,’ Says Wife Laurie Anderson

Laurie Anderson, the performance artist and widow of Lou Reed, wrote a letter addressing the rocker’s death in Long Island, New York newspaper East Hampton Star.

The local weekly serves the South Fork of Long Island from Montauk to Southampton Village. Reed and Anderson shared a home in Springs, New York and it’s there that Reed died on Sunday, Oct. 27 at the age of 71. The official cause of death has been confirmed as liver disease and follows a liver transplant that Reed underwent earlier this year.

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Read Anderson’s letter in full below:

To our neighbors: What a beautiful fall! Everything shimmering and golden and all that incredible soft light. Water surrounding us. Lou and I have spent a lot of time here in the past few years, and even though we’re city people this is our spiritual home. Last week I promised Lou to get him out of the hospital and come home to Springs. And we made it! Lou was a tai chi master and spent his last days here being happy and dazzled by the beauty and power and softness of nature. He died on Sunday morning looking at the trees and doing the famous 21 form of tai chi with just his musician hands moving through the air. Lou was a prince and a fighter and I know his songs of the pain and beauty in the world will fill many people with the incredible joy he felt for life. Long live the beauty that comes down and through and onto all of us.

No word yet on funeral plans for the Velvet Underground co-founder and lifelong New Yorker.

Twitter: @THR_Earshot