Research Catalog

Title

Lou Reed : a life / Anthony DeCurtis.

Author

DeCurtis, Anthony

Publication

• New York : Little, Brown and Company, 2017.
• ©2017

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Description

viii, 519 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color); 25 cm

Summary

"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."--Jacket.

Subjects

• Rock musicians
• Reed, Lou
• United States
• Biography
• Biographies
• Rock musicians > United States > Biography

Genre/Form

• Biographies.
• Biography.

Bibliography (note)

• Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents

Introduction: Anything for you -- From Brooklyn to the crotch of Long Island -- Corner table at the Orange -- Fellini squared -- The destructive element -- Aggressive, going to God -- All the things that are missing -- Transformer -- A city's divided soul -- Rock n roll animal -- One machine talking to another -- A speed-addled, leather-clad Virgil -- This gender business -- Fucking faggot junkie -- Growing up in public -- Just an average guy -- New sensations -- New York -- I hate Lou Reed -- Magic and loss -- Between thought and expression -- Me burger with I sauce -- Fourteenth chance -- Sadly listening -- This is today -- Metallica -- The measure of a man -- The afterlife.

Call Number

JNE 17-170

ISBN

• 9780316376556
• 0316376558

LCCN

2017008817

OCLC

973118697

Author

DeCurtis, Anthony, author.

Title

Lou Reed : a life / Anthony DeCurtis.

Publisher

New York : Little, Brown and Company, 2017.

Copyright Date

©2017

Edition

First edition.

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Bibliography

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Research Call Number

JNE 17-170