Notes from the Velvet Underground

May 15, 2017

Sounes (Down the Highway; Fab) focuses on Lou Reed (1942-2013), the former Velvet Underground frontman and rock innovator responsible for the 1972 hit "Walk on the Wild Side." This well-researched title covers all facets of Reed's life, from his Jewish middle-class upbringing on Long Island, NY, to his critically panned collaboration with the heavy metal band Metallica in 2011. Ultimately, one comes away from this book with a profoundly negative impression of Reed. Numerous interviewees reveal him to be a prickly, hypocritical control freak, highly erratic owing to problems with amphetamines and alcohol, and a misogynist with a history of abuse against women. Among the work's strengths is that, unlike other bios about Reed, it doesn't focus too heavily on the Velvet Underground, which only constituted five years (1965-70) of his more than five-plus decades in the recording industry. As with Sounes's previous books, this is a very entertaining read, largely because of the gossipy nature of his primary research. VERDICT This comprehensive, albeit snippy, page-turner might end up being the definitive Reed biography.--Brian Flota, James Madison Univ., Harrisonburg, VA

Copyright 2017 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 19, 2019
In this admiring biography, music writer Sounes (Down the Highway) offers a measured chronicle of the life and music of Lou Reed (1942–2013). He traces Reed’s life from his childhood and youth in New York City and his early forays into performing music to the heights of his work with the Velvet Underground, his career as a solo artist, and his ceaseless creativity. While the Velvet Underground struggled through its seven-year existence, the band gave Reed an opportunity to develop as a songwriter and performer, skills that allowed him to embark on a successful solo career. Sounes examines Reed’s life alongside his recordings—for example, 1973’s Transformer, with its single “Walk on the Wild Side,” launched Reed into international stardom; two years later, a lawsuit against him by his manager slowed Reed’s songwriting for Coney Island Baby. In Sounes’s workmanlike prose, Reed emerges as an artist who refused to compromise, often to his own detriment (early in his career, he refused to play at a fraternity party and punched a glass door to ensure he wouldn’t have to). While there’s not much new here, Sounes proves to be an amiable narrator who successfully reveals Reed as an innovative, influential musician.

May 1, 2017
Lou Reed's literary and frank songwriting introduced mature subject matter like drug use and sexuality to a medium that was typically focused on teenage preoccupations. Influenced by the writings of John Rechy, Hubert Selby Jr., and William S. Burroughs as well as Dostoevsky, Poe, and Chandler, Reed wrote Heroin in 1964 while still in college, and later recorded it with the Velvet Underground, the band for Andy Warhol's multimedia show, the Exploding Plastic Inevitable. After four records with the Velvets and poor sales, Reed launched a solo career with mixed results until David Bowie produced Transformer and Reed had an unlikely hit with Walk on the Wild Side. Based on extensive interviews with Reed's sister, former lovers, bandmates, assistants, and survivors of Warhol's retinue, music writer Sounes depicts a talented but troubled man, belligerent, controlling, and uncompromising, who drank and drugged to excess (he suffered from hepatitis C and had a liver transplant shortly before he died) and often became a sad caricature of himself, but who also created transcendent moments of musical genius and influenced generations of rockers.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)