The greatest songs are timeless and inhabit a universe of their own. Walk On The Wild Side is one of those. You can never get tired of it, no matter how often you’ve heard it. At least I can’t.

It’s the song that defines Lou Reed’s career to the point where he once observed: “I know my obituary has already been written. And it starts out: “Doo, de-doo, de-doo, doo-di-doo dooooo….” He was wrong about that. And there was much more to Lou than this song, which came from his second solo album Transformer, produced by David Bowie and Mick Ronson.

It’s an affectionate tribute to Reed’s friends among Andy Warhol’s coterie of ‘Superstars’ – trans actors Holly Woodlawn (came from LA, hitchhiked her way across the USA) and Candy Darling (came from Long Island, never lost her head “even when she was giving head”); actors Joe Dallesandro (never once gave it away, everybody had to pay and pay) and Joe Campbell (aka Sugar Plum Fairy; went to the Harlem Apollo, you should have seen him go, go, go) and drag queen Jackie Curtis (thought she was James Dean for a day). Somehow the censors failed to spot anything transgressive in the lyrics.

That distinctive sliding bass at the beginning is played by British session man Herbie Flowers. He played it once on his upright double-bass, then a second time on an electric bass, the second instrument earning him double the going rate of £17 for his 20 minutes work.

The sax solo, heard over the fadeout, is by Bowie’s childhood sax teacher Ronnie Ross. And the “coloured girls” doing the backing vocals are Thunderthighs, a girl trio of Dari Lalou, Karen Friedman and Casey Synge. In later years Reed removed the reference to their colour in live performance, though I don’t remember anyone – including Thunderthighs – raising any concern about the word at the time.

In a depressing footnote, three years ago a student body in Canada had to apologise for including the song on a playlist after complaints that it was “transphobic” rather than what it actually was – an affectionate tribute to his many gay and trans friends in New York by Lou, who was himself bisexual and lived for years with a trans woman called Rachel.

Somewhat incredibly considering his status as such an influential legend, I now find that this was his only hit single, creeping into the Top Ten (at no.10) in May 1973, apart from a re-released Satellite Of Love in 2004 and several cover versions of this song’s original B-side, Perfect Day.