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This is Later with Lee Matthews The
Lee Matthews Podcast More what You Hear weekday

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Afternoons on the Drive. Will Hermes
is a contributing editor for Rolling Stone,

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Spin and other publications. He's compiled
what could be the most comprehensive biography of

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Lou Reed. It's called lou Reid
The King of New York and he joined

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us now. Good morning Will,
Good morning Lee. Thanks for having me.

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What a very interesting topic because Lou
Reid, even during his career,

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was a bit enigmatic. He sure
was. I mean, he's a cantankera.

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He could be a cantankerous guy.
And he was a guy who made

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great music with Velvet Underground at his
beginning of his career back in the sixties,

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alongside all the great bands of that
era, the Beatles, the Stones,

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Grateful Dead, they all came up
at the same time, but the

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Via Underground never really got famous.
It wasn't until that band broke up that

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he went solo, and then he
had a lot of different different styles.

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His first big breakthrough was Transformer that
gave us the song Walk on the wild

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Side, which I guess is his
signature, but the name of the album

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is kind of a key to lou
Reid as a creative person. He was

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a transformer, did a lot of
different things that he did. I remember

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watching it was one of these VH
one videos of one of his live performance.

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It's very intimate, very small venue, but very intense and very complex.

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The guitar work, the vocal work. It seems like he that's where

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he liked. That seems to me
where he enjoyed himself most when he was

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doing a small, intimate performance.
I think so, yeah, And I

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think it's because what he was doing
was, you know, he was aiming.

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This is a guy. He was
a college guy. He studied poetry

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at college, and he was trying
to like, you know, elevate the

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level of as much as he loved
like the you know, the rock and

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roll songwriting of the originators, you
know, Chuck Berry and Elvis, Elvis's

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writers, he wanted to like bring
a different kind of poetry to it.

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And so it wasn't to everybody's taste. So I think he was more comfortable

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working in a smaller, smaller settings. But his work influenced so many rock

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artists that we love, movie makers, writers, you know, novelists as

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well. So he was just a
big cultural influence, not only here but

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really around the world. Will Hermes
is with us. The book is Lou

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read The King of New York and
much like you mentioned the poetry, much

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like Bob Dylan, his style was
more of spoken word poetry than it was

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rock and roll. It was because
you know, Lou didn't have a great

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voice. I mean, I I'm
sure it didn't either, but uh,

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you know, both both of those
guys found found a way to like make

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what they had as singers work for
them. And I think that was a

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lesson that everybody who wants to sing
takes away. You know, you work

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with what you got. Really,
whatever line of work you're in, you

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know, you you play to your
strengths. You you turn your weaknesses into

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strengths by doing something unusual with them. And Walk on the wild Side is

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perfect example of that, because that's
you know, he's just pretty much like

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talking through it, but it's it's
indelible. Well. His his guitar work,

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though, was so much more intense
than his vocal work, and I

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often wondered, is is it easier
for him to express himself with the guitar

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than it is to to do to
do so vocally. I mean some that's

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why we have great guitarists in rock
and roll, because a lot of time

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they can't do both. They can't
sing and play at the same time exactly.

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And lou Reid as a guitarist even
was a guy who you know,

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he couldn't play like Jimmy Hendrix.
He wasn't you know, it wasn't fast

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like Eddie van Halen, but he
kind of brewed into tone and feedback and

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you know, and he just you
know, honed his wrists. And he

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also worked with other amazing guitarists.
So he was a guy who really figured

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out how two guitarists could really create
powerful webs. And you know, the

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best of his work shows that.
The book is lou Reid The King of

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New York. It's written by Rolling
Stones, Will Hermes. Who's with us

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when you were putting this together,
what was the biggest surprise about lou Reid

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for you? Oh? Wow,
there were a whole lot of things that

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were that really kind of struck me. I mean, you know, some

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little bits of history, like you
know, he had a he had a

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fight with David Bowie once and like
a drunken roll in London. They and

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they were always famous friends, but
they had a falling out. Lou Reid

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played the White House. He played
the Clinton White House, which I never

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knew by invitation of I think probably
al Gore because he was a rock fan.

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And also, you know, I
read a lot of his fan mail,

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and I think lou Reid was a
famously nasty guy or could be.

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You know, sometimes he was super
kind, but sometimes he was nasty.

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And reading some of his fan mail, which a lot of it was I

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love you, lou You're amazing,
and a lot of it was like pretty

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weird, it gave me a sense
of like how being in a celebrity can

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be sort of scary sometimes. So
I think it was like a protective veneer.

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His nastiness sometimes. Well, you
call lou Reid the King of New

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York, Is that because of maybe
a hard upbringing and kind of a scrappy

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part of town. Well sort of, you know, honestly, not really,

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It's really more because he was such
a He was an artist who worked

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in every aspect of New York culture
through his life. He was involved with

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Andy Warhol, the visual arts scene, in the experimental film scene in New

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York. He came up in the
rock scene. He wrote music from the

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perspective of a poet and published poetry, and David Bowie called introduced him.

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At David Bowie's fiftieth birthday concert at
Madison Square Garden. The number one guest

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of honor was lou Reid, and
he introduced him as ladies and gentlemen,

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lou Reid, the King of New
York. I think it he'd be a

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good guy to quote. Well,
yeah, I didn't know if lou Reid's

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if most of his influence came I
guess it did. Most of his influence

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came from Greenwich, that Greenwich village
scene, that kind of night people doing

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things at night, whether it's poetry
or rock or whatever. Yeah. And

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he certainly when the Velvet Underground started, they were living on the Lower East

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Side at a time when there were
no boutiques down there. That's for sure.

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That was a scary place. And
he wrote about experiences that happened down

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there. But you know, growing
up, he grew up middle class on

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Long Island. So it's interesting.
One thing, as being a New Yorker,

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I always feel that like sometimes the
greatest New Yorkers very often are people

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who did not grow up in New
York City, but people who grew up

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a little on the outside of it. He grew up in Long Island,

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so but you know, he became. He became the King of New York,

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earned his crown. Will Hermes of
Rolling Stone, Magazine, Spin and

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many other publication The name of the
book is Lou Reed The King of New

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York. If you're a Lou Reed
fan, this is a must. And

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if you don't know much about Lou
Reid, here's your opportunity to learn more.

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And thanks for bringing it to us. Will Hermies, Thank you,

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Lee. Thanks for listening to Later
with Lee Matthews, the Lee Matthews Podcast,

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and remember to listen to The Drive
Live weekday afternoons from five to seven

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