Lewis "Lou" Allan Reed (1942-2013) was principal songwriter for The Velvet Underground (1964-1970), one of America's most influential and forward-thinking rock bands. His career spans 20 solo albums, collaborations with many artists and musicians, poetry books and photography, championing obscure authors and artists, and being an all-around iconoclast. "Walk On the Wild Side" (1972) was his most famous song; true to form, he hated it!
You'll want to read The Lou Reed trifecta, in preparational honor of the forthcoming release of
I'll Be Your Mirror, the collected lyrics of Lou Reed (expected in November 2020 from Faber & Faber)! It’ll be gigantic.
So, here:
{{a href="external_link-19067144"}}The Life of Lou Reed: Notes from the Velvet Underground {{/a}}
By Howard Sounes (Diversion Books)
On the heels of Anthony DeCurtis’ essential
Lou Reed: A Life (Back Bay Books, 2017) comes this significantly dishier biography, full of fleshed-out tales previously only heard in passing. Despite the title, this book too goes far beyond Reed’s years with The Velvets. Reed’s erudite crudity is on constant display throughout, and as always, both repellent and entertaining, by turns generous and stingy, prissy and guttural, he is always impossible to explain rationally. Much detail in this book!
Which brings me to:
{{a href="external_link-19067151"}}My Week Beats Your Year: Encounters With Lou Reed{{/a}}
By Michael Heath & Edited by Pat Thomas (Hat & Beard Press)
Here is a vast display of Lou Reed’s horrible engagements with media over many years. My goodness! Such terrible behavior, unsparing criticism of self and everyone, vivid contradictions and denials, extreme mental health issues, egocentric cynicism, genuine pariah stuff. These engagements are goaded, begged for by a press starving, trolling for outrage, which Lou provided by the bucket. Absolutely fascinating artifact-book of a very high quality.
And finally, in that spirit:
{{a href="external_link-19067157"}}The Velvet Underground Experience: Lou Reed, John Cale, Moe Tucker, Sterling Morrison, Nico, Andy Warhol & Friends{{/a}}
U.S. Edition of Monograph for V.U. Experience Exhibition (Hat & Beard Press)
This very lovely (beautiful-smelling) small-coffee-table book is an artful assemblage of reminiscences, clippings, photos, timely reviews and exquisite ephemera from the entire Velvets’ reign, from their early Warhol associations through 1990’s final reunion. Young and beautiful they all were; well-designed and executed is this volume.
