The essential biography of one of music's most influential icons: Lou Reed. As lead singer and songwriter for the Velvet Underground and a renowned solo artist, Lou Reed invented alternative rock. His music, at once a source of transcendent beauty and coruscating noise, violated all definitions of genre while speaking to millions of fans and inspiring generations of musicians. But while his iconic status may be fixed, the man himself was anything but. Lou Reed's life was a transformer's odyssey. Eternally restless and endlessly hungry for new experiences, Reed reinvented his persona, his sound, even his sexuality time and again. A man of contradictions and extremes, he was fiercely independent yet afraid of being alone, artistically fearless yet deeply paranoid, eager for commercial success yet disdainful of his own triumphs. Channeling his jagged energy and literary sensibility into classic songs - like "Walk on the Wild Side" and "Sweet Jane" - and radically experimental albums alike, Reed remained desperately true to his artistic vision, wherever it led him. Now, just a few years after Reed's death, Rolling Stone writer Anthony DeCurtis, who knew Reed and interviewed him extensively, tells the provocative story of his complex and chameleonic life. With unparalleled access to dozens of Reed's friends, family, and collaborators, DeCurtis tracks Reed's five-decade career through the accounts of those who knew him and through Reed's most revealing testimony, his music. We travel deep into his defiantly subterranean world, enter the studio as the Velvet Underground record their groundbreaking work, and revel in Reed's relationships with such legendary figures as Andy Warhol, David Bowie, and Laurie Anderson. Gritty, intimate, and unflinching, Lou Reed is an illuminating tribute to one of the most incendiary artists of our time.
About the Author :
Anthony DeCurtis is a contributing editor for Rolling Stone, where his work has appeared for more than thirty-five years, and a distinguished lecturer in the creative writing program at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of In Other Words and Rocking My Life Away and co-wrote Clive Davis's autobiography, The Soundtrack of My Life, a New York Times bestseller. Peter Coleman is an audiobook narrator whose works include Cold Barrel Zero and Shooting Scars, among others. He has seen the country in two theatrical tours, performed in forty states, and acted in well over a hundred screen projects, including short films, feature films, and web shows.
Review :
"An eloquent account of a harrowing life transformed by love in the end...An insightful, moving narrative. I highly recommend it."
-- "Suzanne Vega, songwriter"
"DeCurtis captures the soul and the essence of Lou Reed in his terrific new biography of the brilliant, culture-shaping musician...This is a must read."
-- "Clive Davis, award-winning producer and chief creative officer of Sony Music Entertainment"
"DeCurtis has given us a thorough and vivid portrait of an artist who, he shows us, was even darker than we knew."
-- "New York Review of Books"
"DeCurtis writes with clarity and precision...Reading Lou Reed is a bit like having a casual conversation with the rocker's biggest fan: fun, informative, and poignant."
-- "Shelf Awareness"
"Furious and tortured; warm and brilliant: Lou Reed's complexities make for fascinating biography."
-- "Dallas Morning News"
"Groundbreaking...A must-read for fans of rock and roll, New York City, or sex."
-- "Ada Calhoun, author of St. Marks Is Dead"
"This thoughtful biography is among the best about the musician, tracing Reed's development into a transgressive artist. DeCurtis, a contributor to Rolling Stone, is one of the few music journalists that the notoriously difficult Reed trusted, and he draws on extensive interviews and research to offer insight into his subject's psyche and motivations."
-- "New York Times"
"With grace and grit, Anthony DeCurtis has delivered a revelatory and insightful chronicle of this most challenging rock and roll icon."
-- "Alan Light, author of The Holy or the Broken"
