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Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
In this engaging yet uneven biography, Rolling Stone contributing editor DeCurtis (In Other Words) explores the life of a troubled kid from Long Island who transformed American music. A child of postwar suburbia, Lou Reed embraced rock and roll and the low life in his teens, and these two obsessions would fuel his career. In college, a close friendship with poet Delmore Schwartz marked his rejection of the mainstream. While songwriting at Pickwick Records not long after graduating, he met avant-garde Welsh musician John Cale and together they formed the Velvet Underground. Adopted by Warhol as the house band for his Factory, the Velvet Underground failed commercially even as they were creating a new musical paradigm. After leaving the band, Reed scored an unlikely hit with "Walk on the Wild Side," but his uneven solo output and louche proclivities kept him from stardom. Nevertheless, before his death in 2013 Reed was celebrated as godfather of rock's underground and had found domestic contentment with artist Laurie Anderson. While DeCurtis touches on Reed's violent behavior, substance abuse, and complex sexuality, the icon remains distinct but quite distant, and DeCurtis's takes on Reed's musical output are equally lacking. The 500-plus pages pass swiftly but leave the impression that when it comes to Reed, much remains to be said. Agent: Sarah Lazin, Sarah Lazin Books. (Oct.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
A full-length portrait of legendary musician Lou Reed (1942-2013).Rolling Stone contributing editor DeCurtis (Creative Writing/Univ. of Pennsylvania; In Other Words: Artists Talk About Life and Work, 2005, etc.), who followed Reed's career closely over the years, claims to be one of the few rock writers Reed respected. Focusing on the music as much as the singer's often dissolute lifestyle and controversial opinions, the author makes a good case for Reed's lasting significance. Born in Brooklyn, he moved with his middle-class Jewish family to Long Island when he was a young boy. A rebellious teenager, he began playing in bands early on. At Syracuse University, he came under the influence of the poet Delmore Schwartz, who encouraged him to take writing seriouslyand served as a model of the bohemian lifestyle. Moving to New York City, he soon joined up with the future members of the Velvet Underground, who gained cachet by being "adopted" by Andy Warhol. But the band set another pattern that would dominate Reed's career: an inability to share credit. Singer Nico, installed by Warhol to give the band glamour, and John Cale, who co-wrote many of the band's songs, were both bones of contention. Reed embarked on a long solo career, marked by alternating flashes of brilliance and gestures that seemed deliberate self-sabotage. DeCurtis faithfully chronicles all of them, with detailed information on recording sessions and Reed's musical collaborators. He also gives illuminating background information, often drawn from Reed's personal experiences, on what led to some of the compositions. Despite a flamboyant lifestyle in the gay culture of the day, Reed was an intensely private person, but the author has made every effort to interview those who knew him best. While his assessment of Reed's importance seems slightly overblown, the book is a well-written, valuable document of a major figure in the American rock scene, putting a human face on a man who often seemed impossibly remote. Essential reading for Reed fans and strongly recommended for anyone interested in rock as art. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
This is the third biography of singer-songwriter Lou Reed to be published since his death at 71 in 2013, but that's fine, since Reed was a complex figure whose life contained many areas obscured by shadow. Author DeCurtis, a contributing editor at Rolling Stone who knew Reed for more than 15 years, draws on interviews with the artist's fellow bandmates, friends, and former girlfriends to paint a picture of a brilliant musician whose deeply troubled past (which included a diagnosis, while still in high school, of schizophrenia and subsequent electroshock treatment) informed his music and his life. Even though he counted Reed among his friends in the music business, DeCurtis pulls no punches; for example, he talks about Reed's early sexual promiscuity in highly critical terms and is equally frank in discussing Reed's drug and alcohol abuse. This is a rough-edged, straight-talking biography of a man who became a legend as much for his offstage life as for his musical skills.--Pitt, David Copyright 2017 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
LOU REED: A Life, by Anthony DeCurtis. (Back Bay/Little, Brown, $19.99.) This thoughtful biography is among the best about the musician, tracing Reed's development into a transgressive artist. DeCurtis, a contributor to Rolling Stone, is one of the few music journalists that the notoriously difficult Reed trusted, and he draws on extensive interviews and research to offer insight into his subject's psyche and motivations. THE KING IS ALWAYS ABOVE THE PEOPLE: Stories, by Daniel Alarcon. (Riverhead, $16.) In a collection that grapples with the lasting effects of migration, young men learn who they really are. Our reviewer, Laila Lalami, praised Alarcón's characters, writing, "Only through the experience of displacement, whether voluntary or involuntary, do they come to truly know their intimate selves." WE WERE EIGHT YEARS IN POWER: An American Tragedy, by Ta-Nehisi Coates. (One World, $18.) This collection brings together some of Coates's best-known essays on race in the United States, touching on everything from President Barack Obama to James Baldwin, reparations to mass incarceration. Each essay - written during the eight years of the first black presidency - is preceded by a new, short introduction by Coates. RADIO FREE VERMONT: A Fable of Resistance, by Bill McKibben. (Blue Rider Press, $15.) Vern Barclay, the aging protagonist of this novel, is an old-school radio host who wades into radical politics by advocating secession on his show. While reporting a story at a Walmart, things go awry and he and a young activist are forced to go underground. McKibben is a well-known environmentalist in the state; our critic, Jennifer Senior, called the book "a charming bit of artisanal resistance lit." THE LAST GIRL: My Story of Captivity, and My Fight Against the Islamic State, by Nadia Murad with Jenna Krajeski. (Tim Duggan Books, $16.) Murad, part of the Yazidi religious minority targeted by ISIS militants in Iraq, describes the massacres, torture and sexual slavery she and her community faced. After escaping, she became a spokeswoman for other endangered Yazidis, and she is one of two laureates for the Nobel Peace Prize this year. FIRE SERMON, by Jamie Quatro. (Grove, $16.) Religious and sexual passions converge in this debut novel, as Maggie, a married woman who was raised as an evangelical, struggles to reconcile her all-consuming affair with her faith. Chapters take the form of unsent letters, emails and dialogues with herself, interrogating her own desires and contradictions.
Library Journal Review
Beginning with the Velvet Underground in the mid-1960s and continuing with a four-decade solo career that ended with his death in 2013, Lou Reed consistently broke boundaries in rock, melding lyrics that ventured into relationships, drugs, sexuality, and politics with music that ranged from garage rock to avant-garde explorations. In this comprehensive biography, Rolling Stone writer and author -DeCurtis (In Other Words) gives Reed's life its due, chronicling his growing up and early life, artistic collaborations with Andy Warhol, David Bowie, and Metallica, among others, while looking at both his triumphs and faults with -concise and readable prose. DeCurtis, who interviewed Reed himself over the years, also talked to various associates, friends, and musicians for this book. He presents a balanced consideration of Reed, spending equal time on the totality of his music and not just the well-known highlights, detailing the recording of specific albums and lyrics and their meaning and place in Reed's life at the time. VERDICT Reed's art (and life) were often groundbreaking, occasionally maddening, and consistently fascinating, and this volume captures all of those aspects, joining recent works by Aidan Levy and Howard Sounes in creating a thorough portrait of a man who profoundly influenced rock. [See Prepub Alert, 4/24/17.]-James Collins, Morristown--Morris Twp. P.L., NJ © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.