One of Will Hermes’ top priorities after transferring to Binghamton University in the fall of 1979 was going to WHRW and asking to help at the student-run radio station.
After getting an apprenticeship there, Hermes found a musical treasure trove: the WHRW record library.
“It was racks of vinyl from the floor to the ceiling,” the 1983 graduate says. “I was just knocked out! I made it my business to go through that library — top to bottom, side to side, front to back — before I graduated. I don’t know if I listened to every album, but I tried. And I looked at all of them.”
One of the acts Hermes uncovered was a New York City band called The Velvet Underground. Despite a lack of commercial success during the mid to late 1960s, the band influenced genres of music ranging from alternative and experimental rock to punk and new wave. The Velvet Underground, championed by pop-art legend Andy Warhol, was led by a singer/songwriter/rock poet/guitarist whose solo music — and NYC-based life — would also prove influential: Lou Reed.
“I had known about Lou Reed before I got to Binghamton, but I don’t think The Velvet Underground registered with me until I discovered their records in the WHRW library,” Hermes says.
More than 40 years later, Hermes — a music journalist who has written for publications such as The New York Times, Rolling Stone, Village Voice and Spin — has delivered what many are calling the definitive biography of Reed — Lou Reed: The King of New York. The epic book (530 pages!), released in late 2023 from Farrar, Straus and Giroux, is one of the most acclaimed music books of the year, receiving accolades from The Washington Post (“50 notable works of nonfiction”), Publishers Weekly (“The first books you should read in 2024”) and “Best music books of 2023” honors from The Los Angeles Times, Rolling Stone, Variety and Pitchfork.
Origins and research
Hermes decided to take a deeper dive into Reed’s life after seeing the outpouring of love from the public when the musician died of liver disease in October 2013.
“It was the first public mourning on social media to really hit home — certainly one of the earliest,” Hermes says. “There were so many people in my circle of friends posting these moving testimonials about how important Lou Reed’s music was to them and how much they loved The Velvet Underground.”
Hermes’ book decision was made easier by his belief that an authoritative Reed biography had not yet been written.
“I wanted to write a widescreen book that talked about the breadth of his influence over popular music, from The Velvet Underground years through the 21st century,” he says. “I wanted to talk about his later years after he met Laurie Anderson — his wife and one of the great artists of the past 30-40 years. And I felt he was the perfect example of somebody who came up through — and with the help of — a post-war artistic community in New York City. That was an extension of my first book (Love Goes to Buildings on Fire from 2011), which talked about New York City artistic communities in the 1970s.”
The Reed book became a nearly decade-long, research-intensive labor of love for Hermes, who visited places such as Cornell University (home to an extensive Velvet Underground collection), the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh and the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas. He also spoke with hundreds of people from different eras of Reed’s life.
“I made it my business to try to interview everyone who was still alive, even those who had already spoken a lot about Lou Reed,” he says. “You always discover new things. There are always new things coming to light.”
Hermes was also the first biographer to gain access to the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center’s archive of Reed materials in 2019. Hermes spent much of that summer in the special collections room, examining everything from letters, photos and lyric sheets to instruments and collectibles.
“I was already five or six years into the book at this point!” Hermes says. “When I started the book, I didn’t even know this would be made available. … It was more than icing on the cake. There were a number of aha moments.”
Those moments included a 1992 letter from Reed’s father, Sid, to his son. It contrasted with the contentious relationship the pair had for the previous five decades.
“Finding a letter from his dad, thanking him for a Father’s Day gift and telling Lou how much he loved him: That was a beautiful moment,” Hermes says.
Hermes had much of the book complete by the time COVID-19 hit in the spring of 2020. An auto accident kept Hermes sidelined during some of the pandemic, so Lou Reed: The King of New York was submitted to the publishing company at the end of isolation and hit bookshelves in October 2023.
“I didn’t make much use of the COVID time, but maybe that was a blessing,” he says. “A lot of great books came out during that time but didn’t get the attention because people weren’t going to bookstores in 2020 or 2021.”
A musical and cultural icon
Hermes’ recounting of Reed’s time in upstate New York in the early 1960s is just one of the book’s highlights.
As a Syracuse University student, Reed formed his own bands and learned how to be a “working musician” by playing at fraternity parties in the region. He worked at the campus radio station, started his own literary magazine, wrote poetry and was inspired and influenced by his creative writing professor, poet Delmore Schwartz.
“It was the only time in Reed’s life that he lived outside the New York City/Long Island metro area for an extended period,” Hermes says. “College laid the foundation for everything he did in his career.”
Although Reed had a Top 20 hit single in 1972 with “Walk on the Wild Side,” two No. 1 alternative-rock songs in 1989-90 and four Top 40 solo albums, mainstream commercial success generally eluded him.
Hermes attributes this in part to conflicting points of view from Reed’s two biggest influences: Schwartz and Warhol. Schwartz’s advice: Don’t sell out. Warhol’s philosophy: Work constantly and get paid.
“That maybe made it difficult for him to churn out easy-listening pop tunes that would become super-popular,” Hermes says. “The fact that ‘Walk on the Wild Side’ [with song characters based on transgender actresses and drug dealers] became a hit was incredible — a testimony to the power of his storytelling, especially considering the subject matter.”
Writing songs about drug use, queerness and prostitution weren’t “the stuff of pop-music success” in the 1970s, Hermes says.
“Now we can see how a lot of artists have walked in his footsteps that way,” he adds.
For Hermes, it was important to tell the gender-fluidity story of Reed’s life. Reed not only wrote about LGBTQ issues before the acronym was known, but he also had a transgender partner in the 1970s and occasionally referred to himself as gay.
“It was one of the first things I felt previous biographers had not gotten about Reed’s work: how central his queerness was,” Hermes says. “It informed his work deeply. Lou Reed was making art that engaged these issues well before the present movement. I think he was a pioneer, even if he wasn’t always branding himself as a political artist. But his work is incredibly important in the movement of LGBTQ civil rights.”
Reed’s musical output also remains relevant and inspirational. His 1972 song ”Perfect Day” was featured in the Wim Wenders film Perfect Days, which was nominated for a 2024 Academy Award for Best International Feature Film. In April, a Reed tribute album (The Power of the Heart) was released, showcasing cover songs from artists such as Keith Richards, Rosanne Cash, Joan Jett and Rufus Wainwright.
Hermes says he is “humbled” by the critical praise of the book and is happy that people are interested in Reed and still enjoy reading. He’s also happy to take a breath after a decade studying Reed’s world.
“I want to look at the blank page for a while and see what comes up,” he says. “That’s exciting. For nearly 10 years, I had stacks and stacks of books and magazines and other stuff about Lou Reed. I’ve packed that up and it’s out of the office. Now I have a blank slate — and I’m enjoying it.”
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