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\t\t\t\t\t\t\tLou Reed: The King of New York Will Hermes<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\t\t\tRock’s poet of the shadow self<\/p>\n
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\u201cKing of New York\u201d was the epithet given to Lou Reed by David Bowie, an obsessive Velvet Underground fan who rescued Reed\u2019s lacklustre solo career by producing Transformer, which spawned his biggest hit, Walk on the Wild Side. It\u2019s also the title of Will Hermes\u2019s meticulous yet vivid new biography, the first to draw on the archive donated to the New York Public Library by Reed\u2019s widow Laurie Anderson. As in his 2011 book Love Goes to Buildings on Fire, about the city\u2019s mid-70s musical landscape, Hermes expertly conjures the different scenes Reed inhabited, placing him amid a rich cast of collaborators, friends and lovers.\n<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a sense that he\u2019s updating Reed for a new generation, particularly as a prophet of queer liberation and gender nonconformity. This isn\u2019t a stretch: one of his best songs, 1969\u2019s Candy Says, is an achingly poignant evocation of gender dysphoria, among other things. On 1972\u2019s Make Up, three years after the Stonewall riots, he proclaimed \u201cNow we\u2019re coming out, out of our closets \/ Out on the streets\u201d. From 1974 to 1977 his partner was the trans woman Rachel Humphreys, and there was nothing closeted about their relationship.\n<\/p>\n
Hermes diligently recounts the creation of albums through the 80s, 90s and beyond, even as the cheques for use of his old songs in samples and ads started to roll in, making him a wealthy man. His greatest late-career release, New York, turned an unflinching eye on his hometown, railing against poverty and prejudice, mocking a hopeful poem about the statue of liberty: \u201cGive me your hungry, your tired, your poor, I\u2019ll piss on \u2019em.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
But if he made his name as rock\u2019s poet of the shadow self, whether his own or society\u2019s, it was in the service of a more truthful beauty. In his moving final chapter and epilogue, Hermes describes Reed\u2019s final days in 2013 \u2013 his body had rejected a transplanted liver, and he knew he was dying. \u201cI am so susceptible to beauty right now,\u201d he said, as friends played him the Shangri-Las, Nina Simone, Frank Ocean and Radiohead while he floated in his heated pool. In reality, he always was.<\/p>\n