A rock musician flaunts his intellect at his own peril, which is why Lou Reed is more of a survivor than his tired rep as the droning voice of the New York demimonde would have you believe. It's been almost 20 years since he started heads a-scratchin' with "My House," his ode to Delmore Schwartz who he claimed haunted a house he lived in. People were perplexed not because Reed was identifying himself with a dead poet, but because he seemed to imply that he believed in ghosts.

Reed's rep these days is that of a churlish rock star with literary affectations who is happy to open his veins on his recordings but would just as soon put his cigarette out in a journalist's lap as tell him anything he'd really like to know. In a sense, then, things haven't changed; except, of course, the records, which have actually become more musically primal as they've become more lyrically baroque. On his new album, "Ecstasy" -- his 19th solo effort -- he tries to make his pronouncements on marriage and aging sound like subjects that no other rocker would dare explore, and while he succeeds up to a point you know you've heard it before -- on "The Blue Mask," on "Legendary Hearts," on "Magic and Loss." Lou Reed has been growing old for an awfully long time.

So it was a pleasant shock to see him looking so fit at Akasaka Blitz on Oct. 25. Dressed in his trademark black T-shirt and leather pants, and with an imposingly muscled build, he made middle-aged rocking look respectable. It's been said that Reed refers to his tours as "showing the bod," but I never took it literally before.