It's not hard to annoy Lou Reed. He's long had a reputation for being less than personable, especially when it comes to interviewers. His testy, drug-fueled tête-à-têtes in the Seventies with late rock scribe Lester Bangs have become the stuff of legend, and today, at 60, Reed seems just as cranky as ever.

Perhaps he's earned that right.

Few can claim more influence on the history of rock and roll. Across four albums fronting the Velvet Underground, Reed brought art and poetry to pop music, in the process practically defining the sort of detached, hipster cool that would become de rigueur for rockers from the Seventies onward. VU expanded both the music's literary and sonic possibilities with songs like Waiting For the Man, Reed's spare, twitchy depiction of meeting his drug dealer, and Heroin, which described a smack rush in shockingly forthright, feedback-drenched terms.

After quitting the band in the early Seventies, Reed went on to a spotty but often brilliant solo career. He veered between weird but approachable records, like 1973's David Bowie-produced Transformer, and weird, inaccessible ones like 1975's avant-noise bonanza, Metal Machine Music. Once in a while he scored the odd hit (Walk On The Wild Side). Even a few Velvet Underground songs that went mostly unnoticed in their time became classic rock staples (Rock and Roll, Sweet Jane). For the most part though, Reed's been an artist ahead of his time. Punk, glam rock and New Wave owe much of their existence to Reed, as does the burgeoning garage-rock revival spearheaded by bands like the Strokes and the Hives. In addition to music, he's also written plays and poetry, acted in some films and has a book of his photography coming out in 2003.

Here's the thing, though: Reed doesn't like to talk about any of that. He prefers to focus on the present, which for him is a two-hour long, two-CD opus called The Raven, a collection of songs and dramatic performances inspired by the writings of old-school Goth Edgar Allan Poe. The album, which includes significant contributions from, among others, Willem Dafoe, Steve Buscemi and David Bowie, is like a microcosm of Reed's entire career: a wildly ambitious, mixed-medium project which is by turns inspired, bizarre, frustrating and laughable.

Talking with Playboy.com via telephone, Reed continually steered the conversation back to The Raven and showed no compunction about expressing his profound irritation (culminating when he hung up on us) when it meandered elsewhere. At an age when most artists are content to recycle the oldies, Reed remains irascible, arrogant and stubborn -- in short, the consummate artist.