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.

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.

**** COMPELLING - The Sunday Telegraph CONTROVERSIAL ... Sounes' book pushes the standard Reed narrative - The New York Times Lou Reed, who died in 2013, was best known to the general public as the grumpy New Yorker in black who sang 'Walk on the Wild Side'. To his dedicated admirers, however, he was one of the most innovative and intelligent American songwriters of modern times, a natural outsider who lived a tumultuous and tortured life. In this in-depth, meticulously researched and very entertaining biography, respected biographer Howard Sounes examines the life and work of this fascinating man, from birth to death, including his time as the leader of The Velvet Underground - one of the most important bands in rock'n'roll. Written with a deep knowledge and understanding of the music, Sounes also sheds entirely new light on the artist's creative process, his mental health problems, his bisexuality, his three marriages, and his addictions to drugs and alcohol. In the course of his research, Sounes has interviewed over 140 people from every part of Lou Reed's life - some of whom have not spoken publicly about him before - including music industry figures, band members, fellow celebrities, family members, former wives and lovers. This book brings Lou Reed and his world alive.

(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."

Publisher 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.

Originally published: New York: Hyperion, c2000.