Book Review: “Transformer: The Complete Lou Reed Story” (2014 edition) by Victor Bockris
Unlike biographies that require readers to slog through uninteresting stories from birth and through early childhood, Victor Bockris’ “Transformer: The Complete Lou Reed Story” jumps in at Reed’s first transformation.
We meet young Reed as he’s in a mental institution undergoing electroshock therapy mandated by his parents. It’s a jarring way to delve into a life that had many jarring moments - musical and otherwise - and sets the stage for a fascinating read.
Thus begins Reed’s tortured relationship with his parents. It’s a relationship that finds the singer recounting horrific - some true, some not - tales of his upbringing to friends. Despite his professed distrust of his folks, Reed returned to live in their Long Island home after fleeing the Velvet Underground following a 1970 concert and they were present at his second wedding in 1980.
Originally published in 1994, “Transformer” was expanded and reissued in 2014 in the wake of Reed’s 2013 death at 71. The tacked-on portion of the book feels rushed - and it obviously was - but adds crucial context to the last 20 years of Reed’s career and his relationship with performance artist Laurie Anderson.
The bio follows Reed from the institution to his college days at Syracuse University and his friendship with poet Delmore Schwartz through his collaboration with Metallica on 2011’s Lulu. “Transformer” is the story of a frustrated cult figure who, by the 1990s, had been accepted by the mainstream in a big way. Bockris quotes music writer Nick Kent as saying by that point, “it became increasingly clear that (Bob) Dylan, Reed, and (Neil) Young were now well and truly the three leading lights out of their ages but unbroken generation of mythic rockers.”
Heady company to be sure.
Bockris uses his own interviews and copious source materials to pen a vivid biography of a man who lived a vivid life.
Music is the main focus and Bockris spends a lot of time analyzing the Velvets’ formation in Andy Warhol’s New York; their association with Nico; John Cale’s unceremonious departure; and Reed’s abrupt decampment. VU are repeatedly described as the second-most influential band of the 1960s after the Beatles, a point that is driven home as Bockris examines the punk movement that swept Reed’s New York in the 1970s.
There is so much focus on the Velvets, including Reed’s relationships with Cale, Moe Tucker, Sterling Morrison and Doug Yule and the band’s aborted reunion attempts in the 1990s, that is may be one of the best VU books out there. Their time together was short, but their influence cast a long shadow over Reed specifically and rock ‘n’ roll generally, so the focus seems wholly appropriate.
In subsequent portions of the book, the author takes an in-depth look at Reed’s various personas and releases in chapters organized in short time spans. Contemporaneous reviews are quoted to put Reed’s many solo albums in context with their times. From Berlin, to Metal Machine Music, to New Sensations to Ecstasy, Reed alternately sought to challenge and satisfy his audience, drifting from reluctant rock start to wanna-be commercial success and back again as his career unfolded.
Reed began his songwriting life at Pickwick Records, churning out songs for the notorious rip-off label and developing his trademark “ostrich” guitar tuning. While at Pickwick, Reed met Cale and the Velvet Underground’s long gestation period began.
Reed’s complicated personal life is also probed and the musician comes off alternatively as a prick and a sweet guy. He was obviously intelligent but not necessarily wise and certainly had no qualms about turning people away and inflicting pain - both emotional and physical - when he set his mind to it.
He beat up women, shot heroin and speed and talked about his parents as if they were child-torturing sadists. A product of 1950s America, he struggled with his sexual identity and was unable to accept himself as he was even as he sought acceptance from the public.
Reed’s many relationships with men and women - including his very public, long-term liaison with a transvestite named Rachel - are examined, as is the musician’s struggles with alcohol and amphetamine before going straight, taking up tai chi and partnering with Anderson.
In later years, according to the book, Reed took to telling friends he had never been gay or bisexual and had never shot drugs. Everyone agreed this was beyond credulity and incredibly bizarre behavior.
Beginning in the 1980s, Reed got his personal and professional lives together and enjoyed a period of personal happiness and professional reverence that lasted until an unsuccessful liver transplant and his subsequent death in 2013.
He kept recording and touring right up until the end.
“Transformer” is a well-written, well-sourced book that should appeal to casual and hard-core Reed fans alike. It’s detailed enough to provide insight even to those who followed his career closely and general enough to avoid the inside-baseball feel sometimes accorded to books about artists of Reed’s caliber.
It certainly inspired Sound Bites to revisit some of Reed’s catalog and that may be the book’s greatest gift.
Grade card: “Transformer: The Complete Lou Reed Story” - B+