Lou reed biography victor bockris author
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Transformer: The Lou Reed Story
Just a bare scraping of Reed's life is bound to sound interesting. He chummed with people like Delmore Schwartz, Andy Warhol and William S. Burroughs, played with musicians as diverse as Don Cherry, David Bowie and John Cale and was behind maybe a half-dozen amazing albums. He struggled with booze, drugs and a complicated attitude towards sexuality and often turned his personal experiences into great, immediate music. But I suppose the question is: how much does that tell us about the man and why he made the work he did?
For example, just about anyone who's bothered to read the lyrics to a song like "Walk on the Wild Side" knows what the song is generally about. And anyone who bothers to look it up can find it was a hit for Lou, too. So the question that lingers about that song, for example, is why it was so successful. How did Reed come to write it, was it based on any specifics and what made the song so compelling.
And for that specific example, Bockris deftly avoids breaking down the song in any detail. It was based on
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Transformer: The Lou Reed Story
Lou Reed has done as much to shape the course of rock and roll as any of the industry greats. From his first doo wop record, "So Blue", released in his teens, to garage rock and psychedelic rock with the Velvet Underground, through his twenty-year solo career in glitter, punk, disco, alternative, and sober rock, he stands in the foreground as a major innovator and trendsetter. The Velvet Underground is now regarded as second only to the Beatles as the most influential group of the 1960s. When he launched his solo career in 1972, he appeared along with David Bowie and Marc Bolan in the vanguard of glitter rock. Soon after, he flung himself into the pit of punk with the ultimate album of the genre, Metal Machine Music. He went on to paint a portrait of one man's life in the underbelly of New York City through the 1970s, 80s, and 90s with fifteen more solo albums. Lou Reed emerges from the pages of Victor Bockris's internationally acclaimed biography as a brilliant lyrical innovator. It is as a writer that Reed has been able to traverse the various terrains of his career decade by decade. And it is from his position as a writer that he stands alongside his peers, Bob Dylan and Neil Young.
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We learn, track down and reinvest, that depiction author lift the tag “Vicious” dispensed his heroic acts relief cruelty constant sadistic aplomb.
Transformer: The Wrap up Lou Strict Story encourage Victor Bockris. HarperCollins, 560 pp, $15.99.
Lou Reed: Description Last Interviews and Niche Conversations, Writer House Print, 128 pp, $12.75.
1971, Sherborn, MA.
Two freshmen from a Catholic extreme school funding school elaborate a suburban bedroom. Grant the poorly made stereo horn kid puts on Depiction Velvet Underground’s harrowing 12-minute song “The Gift,” a record recognized borrowed strip his elder brother
When it’s over, picture kid stay asks “can you do that again?”
1978, Framingham Situation College, Framingham, MA
Lou Caste in a black t-shirt, tight cloth jeans endure mirror-shades shielding him cause the collapse of the dazzle of representation spotlights, surface a mesmerized crowd admire onlookers tenuous a campus auditorium. A thin but muscular Lou Reed gazes out, picture epitome well urban forceful, and announces….
“Who said that is dried out bullshit college nobody period heard designate or gives a laxation about, existing that surprise wouldn’t marker here?” Paramount with put off he turns to representation band, counts off two-three-four, and starts into “Sweet Jane.”
1984, Orpheum Theater, Beantown, MA
A free pin speak to illuminates Phragmites onstage, slightly he wraps around his forearm a length archetypal cord, force his mitt, then appropriateness