By Victor Bockris
Mythical songwriter and guitarist Lou Reed gave up the ghost at the twenty seventh October 2013, yet his musical effect is guaranteed. Now become aware of the genuine tale of the Velvet Underground pioneer during this replace of Bockris’s vintage biography.
Transformer: the whole Lou Reed tale follows the nice songwriter and singer throughout the sequence of ameliorations that outline each one interval of his fifty yr occupation. It opens with the teenage electroshock remedies that ruled his thoughts of adolescence and not stops revealing layer after layer of this complicated and infrequently anguished artist and guy. Transformer relies on Lou’s collaborations with the toughest and such a lot romantic artists of his instances, from John Cale, Andy Warhol, and Nico, via David Bowie, Robert Wilson, Laurie Anderson and the ghost of Edgar Alan Poe. Rippling beneath every thing he did are Lou’s relationships along with his quite a few muses, from his collage sweetheart to his 3 better halves (and one drag queen).
Leading Lou Reed biographer, Victor Bockris - who knew Lou through the Rachel Years, from Rock ‘n’ Roll Animal to the Bells - updates his unique biography within the wake of Lou’s dying. via new interviews and images, he unearths the various changes of this larger-than-life personality, together with his ultimate shift from Rock Monster to the Prince captivating he had continually desired to be within the 20 years he spent with the affection of his existence, Laurie Anderson . other than with Lou, you may by no means particularly comprehend what may well occur next…
Including formerly unseen pictures and contributions from Lou’s innermost circle and collaborators that come with equally esteemed artists comparable to Andy Warhol and David Bowie, Transformer is as pleasing and vibrant a learn as befits an American master.
Critical Praise
“Bockris’s new paintings is readily recognizable because the heavyweight mental powerplay Lou Reed’s legend deserves…Reed is successfully pinned like a butterfly” – Q Magazine
“Transformer depicts the singer’s lifestyles as a sequence of death-defying moment acts” – manhattan instances e-book Review
“A very readable portrait…Blending expert biographical narrative with ample charges and a dishy, conversational sort, Bockris captures the various moods – and temper swings – of a real rock and roll chameleon” – leisure Weekly
“Transformer is a good extra fabulous short than stressed (about John Belushi)” – Spin
“Bockris presents perception into the personal lifestyles that led Reed to create lots of rock’s memorable songs, together with “Heroin” and “Walk at the Wild Side” – Publishers Weekly
“One of the funniest and so much memorable time-lined rock files around” – Philadelphia urban Paper
Read Online or Download Transformer: The Complete Lou Reed Story PDF
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Additional info for Transformer: The Complete Lou Reed Story
Example text
The limo made a gentle left turn and now we were on Hegemans Lane. Up ahead on the left was the Gold Coast Stables, or, as the owners liked to refer to it, “The Gold Coast Equestrian Center,” which sounded infinitely WASPier. As we passed by, I could see the green-and-white-striped stables, where the Duchess kept her horses. From top to bottom the whole equestrian thing had turned into a giant fucking nightmare. It started with the stable’s owner, a Quaalude-addicted, potbellied savage Jew, with a thousand-watt social smile and a secret life’s mission to be mistaken for a WASP.
Eliot and Walt Whitman. And it was there that Nadine Caridi—my lovable English, Irish, Scottish, German, Norwegian, and Italian mutt-of-a-duchess—learned to tie her curses together, as she was learning to tie the laces on her roller skates. It was sort of a grim joke, I thought, considering that Mark Hanna had warned me about going out with a girl from Bay Ridge all those years ago. His girlfriend, as I recalled, had stabbed him with a pencil while he was sleeping; the Duchess preferred throwing water.
And since the mommy in the story always liked to do things just right, she went out and researched the very best in surveillance equipment, and she ended up buying the latest and greatest TV cameras that give the clearest and brightest and most detailed picture that money can buy. And the best part, Mommy, is that it’s all in living color! ” Mommy’s legs were still spread wide open, in all their glory, when I said, “Anyway, about two months ago Mommy and Daddy were lying in bed on a rainy Sunday morning when she told him about an article she’d read about how some baby nurses and housekeepers mistreated the babies they looked after.