This is Later with Lee Matthews The Lee Matthews Podcast More what You Hear weekday
Afternoons on the Drive. Will Hermes is a contributing editor for Rolling Stone,
Spin and other publications. He's compiled what could be the most comprehensive biography of
Lou Reed. It's called lou Reid The King of New York and he joined
us now. Good morning Will, Good morning Lee. Thanks for having me.
What a very interesting topic because Lou Reid, even during his career,
was a bit enigmatic. He sure was. I mean, he's a cantankera.
He could be a cantankerous guy. And he was a guy who made
great music with Velvet Underground at his beginning of his career back in the sixties,
alongside all the great bands of that era, the Beatles, the Stones,
Grateful Dead, they all came up at the same time, but the
Via Underground never really got famous. It wasn't until that band broke up that
he went solo, and then he had a lot of different different styles.
His first big breakthrough was Transformer that gave us the song Walk on the wild
Side, which I guess is his signature, but the name of the album
is kind of a key to lou Reid as a creative person. He was
a transformer, did a lot of different things that he did. I remember
watching it was one of these VH one videos of one of his live performance.
It's very intimate, very small venue, but very intense and very complex.
The guitar work, the vocal work. It seems like he that's where
he liked. That seems to me where he enjoyed himself most when he was
doing a small, intimate performance. I think so, yeah, And I
think it's because what he was doing was, you know, he was aiming.
This is a guy. He was a college guy. He studied poetry
at college, and he was trying to like, you know, elevate the
level of as much as he loved like the you know, the rock and
roll songwriting of the originators, you know, Chuck Berry and Elvis, Elvis's
writers, he wanted to like bring a different kind of poetry to it.
And so it wasn't to everybody's taste. So I think he was more comfortable
working in a smaller, smaller settings. But his work influenced so many rock
artists that we love, movie makers, writers, you know, novelists as
well. So he was just a big cultural influence, not only here but
really around the world. Will Hermes is with us. The book is Lou
read The King of New York and much like you mentioned the poetry, much
like Bob Dylan, his style was more of spoken word poetry than it was
rock and roll. It was because you know, Lou didn't have a great
voice. I mean, I I'm sure it didn't either, but uh,
you know, both both of those guys found found a way to like make
what they had as singers work for them. And I think that was a
lesson that everybody who wants to sing takes away. You know, you work
with what you got. Really, whatever line of work you're in, you
know, you you play to your strengths. You you turn your weaknesses into
strengths by doing something unusual with them. And Walk on the wild Side is
perfect example of that, because that's you know, he's just pretty much like
talking through it, but it's it's indelible. Well. His his guitar work,
though, was so much more intense than his vocal work, and I
often wondered, is is it easier for him to express himself with the guitar
than it is to to do to do so vocally. I mean some that's
why we have great guitarists in rock and roll, because a lot of time
they can't do both. They can't sing and play at the same time exactly.
And lou Reid as a guitarist even was a guy who you know,
he couldn't play like Jimmy Hendrix. He wasn't you know, it wasn't fast
like Eddie van Halen, but he kind of brewed into tone and feedback and
you know, and he just you know, honed his wrists. And he
also worked with other amazing guitarists. So he was a guy who really figured
out how two guitarists could really create powerful webs. And you know, the
best of his work shows that. The book is lou Reid The King of
New York. It's written by Rolling Stones, Will Hermes. Who's with us
when you were putting this together, what was the biggest surprise about lou Reid
for you? Oh? Wow, there were a whole lot of things that
were that really kind of struck me. I mean, you know, some
little bits of history, like you know, he had a he had a
fight with David Bowie once and like a drunken roll in London. They and
they were always famous friends, but they had a falling out. Lou Reid
played the White House. He played the Clinton White House, which I never
knew by invitation of I think probably al Gore because he was a rock fan.
And also, you know, I read a lot of his fan mail,
and I think lou Reid was a famously nasty guy or could be.
You know, sometimes he was super kind, but sometimes he was nasty.
And reading some of his fan mail, which a lot of it was I
love you, lou You're amazing, and a lot of it was like pretty
weird, it gave me a sense of like how being in a celebrity can
be sort of scary sometimes. So I think it was like a protective veneer.
His nastiness sometimes. Well, you call lou Reid the King of New
York, Is that because of maybe a hard upbringing and kind of a scrappy
part of town. Well sort of, you know, honestly, not really,
It's really more because he was such a He was an artist who worked
in every aspect of New York culture through his life. He was involved with
Andy Warhol, the visual arts scene, in the experimental film scene in New
York. He came up in the rock scene. He wrote music from the
perspective of a poet and published poetry, and David Bowie called introduced him.
At David Bowie's fiftieth birthday concert at Madison Square Garden. The number one guest
of honor was lou Reid, and he introduced him as ladies and gentlemen,
lou Reid, the King of New York. I think it he'd be a
good guy to quote. Well, yeah, I didn't know if lou Reid's
if most of his influence came I guess it did. Most of his influence
came from Greenwich, that Greenwich village scene, that kind of night people doing
things at night, whether it's poetry or rock or whatever. Yeah. And
he certainly when the Velvet Underground started, they were living on the Lower East
Side at a time when there were no boutiques down there. That's for sure.
That was a scary place. And he wrote about experiences that happened down
there. But you know, growing up, he grew up middle class on
Long Island. So it's interesting. One thing, as being a New Yorker,
I always feel that like sometimes the greatest New Yorkers very often are people
who did not grow up in New York City, but people who grew up
a little on the outside of it. He grew up in Long Island,
so but you know, he became. He became the King of New York,
earned his crown. Will Hermes of Rolling Stone, Magazine, Spin and
many other publication The name of the book is Lou Reed The King of New
York. If you're a Lou Reed fan, this is a must. And
if you don't know much about Lou Reid, here's your opportunity to learn more.
And thanks for bringing it to us. Will Hermies, Thank you,
Lee. Thanks for listening to Later with Lee Matthews, the Lee Matthews Podcast,
and remember to listen to The Drive Live weekday afternoons from five to seven
and iHeartMedia presentation