Lou Reed's Transformer

Author: Ezra Furman
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 1501323059
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 185

Book Description
Transformer, Lou Reed's most enduringly popular album, is described with varying labels: it's often called a glam rock album, a proto-punk album, a commercial breakthrough for Lou Reed, and an album about being gay. And yet, it doesn't neatly fit into any of these descriptors. Buried underneath the radio-friendly exterior lie coded confessions of the subversive, wounded intelligence that gives this album its staying power as a work of art. Here Lou Reed managed to make a fun, accessible rock'n'roll record that is also a troubled meditation on the ambiguities-sexual, musical and otherwise-that defined his public persona and helped make him one of the most fascinating and influential figures in rock history. Through close listening and personal reflections, songwriter Ezra Furman explores Reed's and Transformer's unstable identities, and the secrets the songs challenge us to uncover.

Lou Reed

Author: Anthony DeCurtis
Publisher: Little, Brown
ISBN: 031637654X
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 512

Book Description
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.

The Life of Lou Reed

Author: Howard Sounes
Publisher: Diversion Books
ISBN: 1635766419
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 406

Book Description
An illuminating biography of Lou Reed, featuring interviews with over 140 people who knew him intimately, plus previously unpublished photographs. As band leader of the Velvet Underground and later a successful solo artist, Reed was much more than what the general public came to know as the grumpy New Yorker in black who sang “Walk on the Wild Side.” To his dedicated admirers, he was one of the most innovative and intelligent songwriters of modern times—a natural outsider who lived a tumultuous and tortured life. In the course of his deep research into Reed’s life, from a humble upbringing on Long Island to death from liver disease in 2013, Howard Sounes interviewed more than 140 people who knew the artist intimately—some of whom have not spoken publicly about him before. With new revelations from former wives and lovers, family members, fellow band members and celebrities, and music industry figures, this book offers an updated, unfettered look at Reed’s creative process, his mental health problems, his bisexuality, his three marriages, and his addictions to drugs and alcohol. Featuring previously unpublished photographs of some of Reed’s most private moments, this is the definitive account of one of rock ’n’ roll’s most complicated and brilliant prophets. “Compelling . . . Sounes takes pride in carefully debunking the myths that have crept in from Reed’s own fictionalizations.” —The Sunday Telegraph “Controversial . . . Sounes’ book pushes the standard Reed narrative.” —New York Times “A measured chronicle of the life and music of Lou Reed . . . Sounes proves to be an amiable narrator who successfully reveals Reed as an innovative, influential musician.” —Publishers Weekly “A walk on the dark side.” —Independent “A must read . . . Sounes chronicles Reed’s turbulent, and often brutal, relationships with men and women . . . and the wayward talent that produced such classics as ‘Walk On The Wild Side.’” —Daily Mail

Lou Reed

Author: Chris Roberts
Publisher: Hal Leonard Corporation
ISBN: 9780634080326
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 148

Book Description
(Book). Lou Reed has been art-rocker, iconoclast, contrary noise merchant, and junkie, yet he's always been fascinating. Only David Bowie, arguably, has re-invented himself as many times as Reed, while ensuring that each image was potent, edgy and dangerous. It's a tribute to Reed's standing that even punk rockers, with their scorched earth policy towards all pre-punk music, had a healthy respect and regard for him. Velvet Underground is one of the all-time greats; but in many people's eyes, Reed has produced his best work solo, after the demise of that band. This groundbreaking book analyzes and celebrates the willful intellect, fierce intelligence, and literary merits of Lou Reed's post-Velvet Underground music. Chris Roberts has written about music for fifteen years for The Guardian , Melody Maker , Sounds , and Uncut . He was also the editor of Idol Worship (Harper Collins), a collection of writings by pop stars (Bono, Thurston Moore, etc.) that has been hailed in some quarters as "The best book about rock 'n' roll ever."

Pass Thru Fire

Author: Lou Reed
Publisher: Da Capo Press
ISBN: 0786726024
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 610

Book Description
Containing a body of work that spans more than three decades, Pass Thru Fire is a stunning collection of the lyrics of an American original. Through his many incarnations-from proto punk to glam rocker to elder statesman of the avant garde-Lou Reed's work has maintained an undeniable vividness and raw beauty, fueled by precise character studies and rendered with an admirable shot of moral ambiguity. Beginning with his formative days in the Velvet Underground and continuing through his remarkable solo career-albums like Transformer, Berlin, New York, Magic and Loss, and Ecstasy-Pass Thru Fire is crucial to an appreciation of Lou Reed, not only as a consummate underground musician, but as one of the truly significant poets of our time.

The New Rolling Stone Album Guide

Author: Nathan Brackett
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0743201698
Category : POPULAR MUSIC--DISCOGRAPHY.
Languages : en
Pages : 948

Book Description
Publisher Description

Lou Reed's New York

Author: Lou Reed
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : New York
Languages : en
Pages : 140

Book Description
Here, we see Lou Reed's intuitive take on New York, the city that has been the fulcrum of his creative world for decades and with which he has become indelibly identified.

Spin Alternative Record Guide

Author: Eric Weisbard
Publisher: Vintage
ISBN:
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 484

Book Description
America's premiere alternative music magazine presents a book of outrageously opinionated reviews of the essential albums of punk, new wave, indie rock, grunge, and rap. Its abundantly illustrated, full-color pages provide in-depth and informative record reviews on the widest possible scale of alternative music. National ads/media.

Berlin

Author: Lou Reed
Publisher: Rizzoli International Publications
ISBN:
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 184

Book Description
"Berlin: A performance by Lou Reed of his legendary album Berlin, captured on film by Julian Schnabel. A collection of spectacular and ethereal images from the film, including a conversation they recorded especially for this book, a unique collaboration between two of the most profound artists of our times who happen to be good friends." --Book Jacket.

Perfect Day

Author: Bettye Kronstad
Publisher: Jawbone Press
ISBN: 9781911036067
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 0

Book Description
'Hey, you! Beautiful!' The voice was compelling—an order. So I turned around. 'Yeah, you,' he said. 'What are you doing in here? You look normal.' 'I am,' I said. Bettye Kronstad met Lou Reed in 1968 as a nineteen-year-old Columbia University student; they were married, briefly, in 1973. Their relationship spanned some of the most pivotal years of his life and career, from the demise of The Velvet Underground to the writing and recording of his seminal solo masterpieces Transformer, for which Lou wrote ‘Perfect Day’ about an afternoon they spent together in the park, and Berlin, which draws on tales from Bettye’s childhood. In Perfect Day, Bettye looks back on their initially idyllic life together on the Upper East Side; Lou’s struggle to launch a solo career after leaving perhaps the most influential rock band of all time; his work and friendships with fellow stars David Bowie and Iggy Pop; and his descent into drink and drug abuse following the success of Transformer, which sent him spinning out from gentle soul to rock’n’roll animal and brought a swift and calamitous end to their relationship. The result is a powerful and poignant meditation on love, loss, writing, and music.