'The only Lou Reed bio you need to read' The Washington Post One of Pitchfork 's ten best
music books of 2023 | A Kirkus Reviews best nonfiction book of 2023 'A monumental work
filled with first-person accounts of the master's life and a dizzying array of never-before
heard details' Michael Imperioli author of The Perfume Burned His Eyes The most complete
and 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 and the European avant-garde and left American culture
transfigured. In Lou Reed: The King of New York Will Hermes offers the definitive narrative
of Reed's life and legacy dramatizing his long brilliant and contentious dialogue with fans
critics fellow artists and assorted habitués of the demimonde. We witness Reed's complex
partnerships with David Bowie Andy Warhol John Cale and Laurie Anderson track the deadpan
wit street-smart edge and poetic flights that defined his craft as a singer and songwriter
with the Velvet Underground and beyond and explore the artistic ambition and 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 and a wealth of recent interviews to give us a new Lou Reed-a
pioneer in living and writing about nonbinary sexuality and gender identity a committed artist
who pursued beauty and noise with equal fervor and a turbulent and sometimes truculent man
whose emotional imprint endures.
