RIP Lou Reed, Ten Years Gone

Ten years ago today Lou Reed died. I remember exactly where I was.

I had just moved to Yonkers to attend graduate school for nonfiction writing and was taking my new roommate, who had also just relocated to New York, to Strawberry Fields in Central Park for the first time. While we were on the Metro North riding south into Manhattan, the news blasted onto our screens…Lou Reed had died at the age of 71. Right then and there we changed our plans and headed to Coney Island to honor Reed. It was much further but we had no real plans anyway. The decision felt right. We spent the day wandering the boardwalk and writing notes; she took photos and put her feet in the chilly Atlantic. We stayed until sunset, until the lights of the boardwalk started winking at the night.

A year later the nonfiction guest reader visiting my program would be Will Hermes, veteran music journalist, senior contributing editor to Rolling Stone, longtime contributor to NPR and All Songs Considered, former editor of SPIN, the Village Voice (RIP), and contributor to many other outlets across the country over the decades. I jumped at the chance to interview him for our program’s literary journal and happily brought along his books for him to sign.

Hermes’ 2011 book Love Goes To Buildings On Fire: Five Years in New York That Changed Music Forever is one of my all-time favorite books. I recommend it to people of all stripes (music fans, punks, NYC history fans, and all those cross-combos you can imagine). I read it right after devouring Patti Smith’s Just Kids, published the year before in 2010. I then checked Hermes’ index and bought old, used books online he had sourced to tell his story; they are some of my favorites in my music book library. I brought Love Goes… for him to sign, along with a SPIN anthology he co-edited, published in 2005, I’ve had since high school. He was shocked to see the anthology; I treasure it still (it was what finally got me, a late bloomer, always, to pay attention to Pinkerton and Smashing Pumpkins in my early 20s).

Hermes is smart, kind, encouraging, and spoke at length with me about music, listening habits, and writing habits; he politely answered all my questions giving me more time than I anticipated. (I was able to publish our interview on this very site. You can read it here!)

It was during this conversation Hermes slyly revealed to me his next book project, a biography of Lou Reed. In the following months I transcribed a few Lou interviews for him. I remember having to slow down the recordings because Lou was very clearly on speed talking a mile a minute nonsense. I treasured every second of it and waited patiently, wondering when this book would pop up.

That book, Lou Reed The King Of New York, was released on October 3rd! I have been devouring it and am about halfway through. I connected with Hermes online and he informed me that my name is in the acknowledgements, along with countless other assistants, researchers, transcribers, and the sort. I am overjoyed to have my name in such a piece of music, New York, and Lou Reed history.

Lou Reed The King Of New York is a beautiful book with fabulous design (s/o book designer No Ideas). Although I will say after having read Legs McNeil’s Please Kill Me in college, then Just Kids, Love Goes To Buildings on Fire, and Up-Tight: The Velvet Underground Story by Victor Bockris & Gerard Malanga (published in 1983, one of the books I found in Hermes’ index), and after having seen Todd Haynes’ GORGEOUS Velvet Underground documentary in 2021…the first part was mostly old news to me. Sometimes you can know too much lol. Right now, in my reading, Reed had just released his landmark, second solo record Transformer (1972) to extremely lukewarm and almost negative (!!) reviews. I am ready for Lou’s act two (at least that’s what I’m calling it). The rest of the story is (mostly) new to me; I know The Velvets records by heart (s/o my Loaded tattoo) and Reed’s solo LPs …but as I read The King of New York and see Hermes’ placement of Reed as a center of New York’s Art scene over the decades, and Reed’s proto-everything, I am about to adventure on a personal listening journey where all of these songs and sounds are new again for the first time in over a decade. Lou considered himself a novelist and The Velvet Underground records, in particular, each linear chapters filled with stories and characters, names, places, and ideas I can’t possibly try to list here. Read Hermes’ book! I can’t wait to hear all these records anew again.

What makes these memories extra special to me is the week I was interviewing Hermes was the same week I was starting to chat with someone on OK Cupid (lol) to arrange an in-person date. October is my favorite month because it is the month I met my now-husband, Ben (you remember him). We were busy falling in love and falling in love with New York together in its most flattering season, fall. When we revisit our chats every year, I remember it was when I was about to meet Hermes, and then the story starts all over again. I love The Velvets and Lou Reed and New York. They are a part of me like they are a part of so many of us.

Today, October 27, 2023, is the 10th anniversary of Lou Reed’s death. Honor him by playing his records, wandering the streets, write some poetry, come out of the closet, maybe tell someone off, and definitely buy Hermes’ book. I’m calling it now, Lou Reed The King of New York will win a prize. Cheers, Will! Thank you for your work. It means so much to me, lone blogger, fan, listener, writer, thinker, lover, freak, head, and New Yorker.