![\"\"](\"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/09\/lou_reed_a_life.jpg\")
There have been a number of books written about Lou Reed and\/or the Velvet Underground. Victor Bockris\u2019 Transformer: The Lou Reed<\/i> story hit shelves nearly a quarter century ago, at a time when Reed\u2019s creative renaissance hadn\u2019t yet fully flowered. And although Bockris recently published an updated version of his bio, unless he rewrote the whole damn thing, I think I\u2019ll pass.<\/p>\n
Part of the reason for my lack of interest on that score is the appearance of Anthony DeCurtis\u2019 Lou Reed: A Life<\/i>. DeCurtis is a highly respected music journalist. Yes, he\u2019s also a serious fan of his subject, but the Rolling Stone<\/i> contributing editor takes an evenhanded, admirably nonjudgmental look at Reed\u2019s life and work.<\/p>\n
That life and its body of work are inextricably entwined, as is so often the case with great artists. It\u2019s difficult \u2014 and often not altogether useful \u2014 to try to separate the two; one can\u2019t hope to understand one without some knowledge of the other. And DeCurtis provides plenty of both. Readers with only a surface knowledge of Lou Reed, the Velvet Underground and the associated music will learn a great deal. They may well not come away liking the man; that\u2019s value judgment. But readers will discover context that helps increase the understanding of Reed\u2019s early work, the music he made with the VU, and solo albums like Metal Machine Music<\/i> and The Blue Mask<\/i>.<\/p>\n
Reed’s notoriously difficult nature is on display from the book\u2019s beginning until (very nearly) its conclusion; DeCurtis doesn\u2019t pull punches or make excuses for his subject. Instead he presents the story \u2014 certainly not dispassionately, not exactly objectively, but \u2014 in a manner that\u2019s suitably respectful of its subject while maintaining journalistic ethics.<\/p>\n
Hardcore Reed fans will find much that reinforces already-held notions of the man, but DeCurtis\u2019 book will add nuance to those viewpoints. And with Lou Reed: A Life<\/i>, Reed neophytes have as close to a definitive biography of the man \u2014 and an eminently readable one at that \u2014 as could ever be hoped for. In the end, it\u2019s essential reading for both camps. It is, of course, completely impossible to know if Reed would have approved of DeCurtis\u2019 book. Odds are he would not have; such was his nature. But one suspects that he would have had a kind of grudging, silent admiration for it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There have been a number of books written about Lou Reed and\/or the Velvet Underground. Victor Bockris\u2019 Transformer: The Lou Reed story hit shelves nearly a quarter century ago, at […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15199,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,65],"tags":[3561,3560,2316],"class_list":["post-15198","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book","category-review","tag-anthony-decurtis","tag-lou-rred","tag-velvet-underground","cat-10-id","cat-65-id","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15198","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15198"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15198\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31801,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15198\/revisions\/31801"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15199"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15198"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15198"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.musoscribe.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15198"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}