Lou Reed, frontman of the gritty-cool 1960s band The Velvet Underground, was a key influence on punk, grunge, and other musical movements that gave voice to the harder-edged realities of city life. A poet at heart, Reed illumined the lives of junkies, trans sex workers, and other “undesirables” with passion and precision, and collaborated with Andy Warhol, David Bowie, and avant-garde artist and musician Laurie Anderson.
But before that, Reed began his career writing and performing rip-offs of then-current pop trends—surf music, girl-groups, British Invasion—for a budget record label called Pickwick whose platters sold for 99 cents in supermarkets.
In September last year, Light in the Attic records brought out a compilation of those early ditties as a service to Lou Reed completists, and Will Hermes (M.A. ‘95) noted it in his Substack, a subscription-based service where writers share their work.
“Finally,” Hermes wrote, “Reed’s wild, pre-Velvet Underground bargain bin rock’n’roll records get a proper historical reissue.”
Hermes knows whereof he speaks. A longtime writer on music and the culture that surrounds it for Spin, Rolling Stone, the New York Times, and other publications, and a contributor to National Public Radio, he’s also the author of Lou Reed: The King of New York (2023), which the Washington Post called “the only Lou Reed bio you need to read.”
The book tells Reed’s story from his Jewish ancestry to Pickwick pop to international stardom, and grew out of Love Goes to Buildings on Fire (2011), Hermes’ richly detailed history of popular music in New York in the early ‘70s. That era was a period when the hippie ethos of 1960s rock encountered the edgy experimental music of downtown Manhattan, and disco, hip-hop, and the Brooklyn jazz scene emerged.
Reed, of course was a key player in that mix—and when Hermes decided to write his biography, he took another look at the entire NYC arts world of the day.
“I could see the effects of my writing on the cultural life of my town.