Lou Reed: The King of New York

In this magisterial account, Rolling Stone senior critic Hermes (Love Goes to Buildings on Fire) delves into the mind and music of the Velvet Underground’s front man. Growing up on Long Island in the 1940s and ’50s, Reed “fell in love with rock ’n’ roll and New York City doo-wop” early on (he recorded his first single in the latter style in high school). After graduating from college, Reed joined with John Cale, Sterling Morrison, and Angus MacLise to form the Velvet Underground in 1965. He left five years later to start a solo career. Though the band skirted fame in its brief run, it exerted outsize influence on punk and “alternative/college rock” of the 1980s, according to Hermes, who puts Reed’s legacy as both a rocker and lyricist front and center. Contending that his jubject’s “guiding-light idea” was to “take rock ’n’ roll, the pop format, and make it for adults,” Hermes notes that even Reed’s early songs dealt with “buying and using drugs, the psychology of addiction... intimate-partner violence, [and] BDSM relationships” at a time when discussing such topics in music was rare. Throughout, Hermes weaves in small, resonant details that make achingly plain the fragile, complicated psyche beneath Reed’s too-cool persona. At one point, a friend recalls seeing Reed after he underwent electroconvulsive therapy at 18, possibly as a treatment for depression: “He seemed the same... a little more shaky than usual. And he had a little quiver in his voice sometimes.” This stands as the definitive biography of one of rock’s most enigmatic personalities. (Oct.)