Transformer: The Lou Reed Story

by Victor Bockris

Book Overview

'A triumph' - Time Out Transformer is the only complete and comprehensive telling of the Lou Reed story. Legendary songwriter and guitarist Lou Reed passed away on the 27th October 2013, but his... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0684803666
• ISBN13: 9780684803661
• Release Date: August 1995
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Length: 446 Pages
• Weight: 1.68 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 6.5" x 9.6"

Customer Reviews

Best Reed bio so far

This remains the best bio of Reed. Don't be discouraged by the three-star average rating, which is simply the result of fans' resentment at a critical examination of their hero. This book view of Lou Reed is not pretty, but is unsurprising to anyone familiar with his history and his own account of himself in interviews, where he regularly appeared as self-aggrandising and insecure (although without seeming to realise it ...) Anyway, his character deficiencies needn't undermine your appreciation of his music. The book has some marvellous anecdotes and insights, for example, relating to the woman who inspired several classic VU songs and an amusing attempted interview by Lou Reed of Vaclav Havel. (Clue: the rock star thought himself more important than a mere head of government. Havel terminated the interview as Lou was clearly too incompetent to perform it.)

Helping

This book is far superior to Doggett's "Growing up in Public". I recently read them both. Just wanted to help out if anyone was deciding between the two.

rock'n'roll Boswell

Lou Reed has used his songwriting and sociopathic P.R. persona to tell the world more than anyone could have wanted to know about a middle-class Jewish kid from Long Island who just happened to revolutionize rock'n'roll. So why does the world need another soon-to-be remaindered rock-bio? Two reasons. One: Reed changed his personalities more often than his underwear, contradicting himself and opening as many mysteries as he solved. Two: Victor Bockris has done a damn fine job of playing Boswell to Reed's drugged-out bisexual Dr. Johnson. Collating endless reviews, interviews, and other views of Reed's life and work, Bockris has used his considerable literary skill to form a coherent, insightful narrative from Reed's often incoherent chaos of a life. Bockris has an authorial voice that's lively yet restrained; his writing takes a back seat to the biography, but his brisk style and intelligence are worthy of Reed, America's most literary rock star. Rock journalism needs a Victor Bockris almost as much as rock music needs a Lou Reed.

I couldn't put it down

Like its subject, Bockris's book is flawed and fascinating. Bockris is obviously a huge fan of the Velvet Underground and much of Reed's solo work, and his book covers seemingly every aspect of Reed's life. A couple dozen people, not including Reed but including many people who knew him well, were interviewed for this book. Every album and every available detail, lurid or otherwise, about Reed's personal life gets written up. The Lou Reed that emerges is not a pleasant person, but a fascinating and brilliant one nevertheless. With all that said, the book's flaws are many. Bockris, like Reed, seems to be an extremely perverse individual, which perhaps explains his fascination with Reed. His misstatements of fact are frequent (he says Brian Jones was murdered, and that Peter Laughner was the lead singer of Pere Ubu), leading one to suspect that many of the details he provides about Reed are not quite true either. At occasional junctures he says things that he seems not to really mean -- for example, that John Cale's solo albums are a better body of work than Reed's, or that Albert Goldman was the leading American rock critic of the 1970s -- probably just for the sake of being perverse. Still, for longtime followers of Reed's career, the book is riveting; and as a full-length biography of Reed, it has no substitute.

Enlightening

Its an excellent in depth study of someone I'd always admired, and knew so little about.It really gives insight into the personae of one of our most underrated, great musician/poets of the late 20th century. The author reveals Reed's genious and character flaws in personal relationships. It gives insight into his approach to music and relationships with his band members and life style.Reed is revealed as a rather dark character, with a real romantic soul.