EBOOK
About
The most complete and penetrating biography of the rock master, whose stature grows every year.
Since his death ten years ago, Lou Reed's living presence has only grown. The great rock-poet presided over the marriage of Brill Building pop and the European avant-garde, and left American culture transfigured. In Lou Reed: The King of New York, Will Hermes offers the definitive narrative of Reed's life and legacy, dramatizing his long, brilliant, and contentious dialogue with fans, critics, fellow artists, and assorted habitués of the demimonde. We witness Reed's complex partnerships with David Bowie, Andy Warhol, John Cale, and Laurie Anderson, track the deadpan wit, street-smart edge, and poetic flights that defined his craft as a singer and songwriter with the Velvet Underground and beyond, and explore the artistic ambition and gift for self-sabotage he took from his mentor Delmore Schwartz.
As Hermes follows Reed from Lower East Side cold-water flats to the landmark status he later achieved, he also tells the story of New York City as a cultural capital. The first biographer to draw on the New York Public Library's much-publicized Reed archive, the release of previously unheard recordings, and a wealth of recent interviews, Hermes gives us a new Lou Reed, a pioneer in living and writing about nonbinary sexuality and gender identity, a committed artist who pursued beauty and noise with equal fervor, and a turbulent and sometimes truculent man whose emotional imprint endures.
Since his death ten years ago, Lou Reed's living presence has only grown. The great rock-poet presided over the marriage of Brill Building pop and the European avant-garde, and left American culture transfigured. In Lou Reed: The King of New York, Will Hermes offers the definitive narrative of Reed's life and legacy, dramatizing his long, brilliant, and contentious dialogue with fans, critics, fellow artists, and assorted habitués of the demimonde. We witness Reed's complex partnerships with David Bowie, Andy Warhol, John Cale, and Laurie Anderson, track the deadpan wit, street-smart edge, and poetic flights that defined his craft as a singer and songwriter with the Velvet Underground and beyond, and explore the artistic ambition and gift for self-sabotage he took from his mentor Delmore Schwartz.
As Hermes follows Reed from Lower East Side cold-water flats to the landmark status he later achieved, he also tells the story of New York City as a cultural capital. The first biographer to draw on the New York Public Library's much-publicized Reed archive, the release of previously unheard recordings, and a wealth of recent interviews, Hermes gives us a new Lou Reed, a pioneer in living and writing about nonbinary sexuality and gender identity, a committed artist who pursued beauty and noise with equal fervor, and a turbulent and sometimes truculent man whose emotional imprint endures.
Related Subjects
Reviews
"No matter how well you know the man and his music, there's so much more to him that's never been revealed until now. This book has the menace and allure of Reed's finest work"
a fascinating, addictive, head-expanding rush into the unknown."
"The great virtue of Lou Reed: The King of New York, the new and very fine biography by Will Hermes, is that it's really two biographies . . . Hermes is masterful, recounting the various unlikely elements that came together [to form The Velvet Underground] . . . To Reed, Hermes brings his same unique blend of rhapsody and scholarly dispassion, of love and skepticism that defines the very best crit
Stephen Metcalf, The Washington Post
"A compulsively readable and astonishingly well-researched book that's not just for Reed's fans, but for anyone interested in American cultural history. This is a biography with a real rock and roll heart."
Michael Schaub, NPR