Waiting for the Man: The Life & Career of Lou Reed

Description

In Waiting For The Man, Jeremy Reed focuses on Lou Reed as rock's principal literary avatar, paying special attention to his controversial lyrics and prototypical garage sound. Lou Reed influenced generations of copyists that took note of his outlaw status, ambiguous sexual orientation characterised by his seventies relationship with the transvestite Rachel, his implacable mystique, cool and defiant attitude as the narrator of subcultures. Finally the book examines the transcendent, if reluctant calm, that Reed arrived at in later life. Taking in the sweep of Reed's career from Velvet Underground to the variants of forty years of resistant solo pioneering, Waiting For The Man accesses the man and his music, with the extraordinary perception and attention to detail.

Jeremy Reed is an award-winning poet, novelist and counterculture biographer, who has published over 30 books of poetry, fiction and non-fiction. He performs with the Ginger Light, unique in their genre as pioneers of spoken word and music. Amongst his recent publications are Piccadilly Bongo, a collection of poetry enhanced by a CD of Marc Almond Soho songs, his biography of the sixties fashion designer John Stephen King of Carnaby Street, a novel Here Comes The Nice, and upcoming The Dilly, A Secret History of Piccadilly Rent Boys and a collection of poems Sooner Or Later Frank. He has been called by Pete Doherty "a legend, what more can you fucking ask?" by J.G. Ballard "the most original poet writing today" and by Bjork "the most beautiful outrageous poet in the world."

"All the books about me are bullshit except Jeremy's" - Lou Reed