Arts.Guardian.co.uk
Lou Reed sang about her and Andy Warhol made her a superstar. As Holly Woodlawn heads for Britain, John Patterson meets a drag queen legend
“Holly came from Miami F-L-A,
Hitchhiked her way across the USA,
Plucked her eyebrows on the way,
Shaved her legs and then he was a she …”
That’s how Lou Reed made Holly Woodlawn, the Warhol Factory superstar and legendary drag queen, famous in his 1972 song Walk on the Wild Side. Here’s Woodlawn’s expanded version: “I was 15 years old and failing at high school in Miami Beach because I was too busy partying. I was supposed to go to summer school to catch up and really didn’t want to, so I joined some of these Cuban queens to go to New York. I hocked some jewellery and we made it all the way to Georgia, where the money ran out and we had to hitchhike the rest of the way.