Lou Reed: The King of New York
Will HermesThe most complete & 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 & the European avant-garde, & left American culture transfigured. In Lou Reed: The King of New York, Will Hermes offers the definitive narrative of Reed's life & legacy, dramatizing his long, brilliant, & contentious dialogue with fans, critics, fellow artists, & assorted habitués of the demimonde. We witness Reed's complex partnerships with David Bowie, Andy Warhol, John Cale, & Laurie Anderson; track the deadpan wit, street-smart edge, & poetic flights that defined his craft as a singer & songwriter with the Velvet Underground & beyond; & explore the artistic ambition & 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, Hermes employs the library collections, the release of previously unheard recordings, & a wealth of recent interviews to give us a new Lou Reed-a pioneer in living & writing about nonbinary sexuality & gender identity, a committed artist who pursued beauty & noise with equal fervor, & a turbulent & sometimes truculent man whose emotional imprint endures.
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Will Hermes is a contributing editor at Rolling Stone, a longtime contributor to NPR’s All Things Considered & The NY Times, & the author of Love Goes to Buildings on Fire. He also writes for Pitchfork & w