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Lou Reed
- A Life
- Narrated by: Peter Coleman
- Length: 16 hrs and 51 mins
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Publisher's summary
The essential biography of one of music's most influential icons: Lou Reed
As lead singer and songwriter for the Velvet Underground and a renowned solo artist, Lou Reed invented alternative rock. His music, at once a source of transcendent beauty and coruscating noise, violated all definitions of genre while speaking to millions of fans and inspiring generations of musicians.
But while his iconic status may be fixed, the man himself was anything but. Lou Reed's life was a transformer's odyssey. Eternally restless and endlessly hungry for new experiences, Reed reinvented his persona, his sound, even his sexuality time and again. A man of contradictions and extremes, he was fiercely independent yet afraid of being alone, artistically fearless yet deeply paranoid, eager for commercial success yet disdainful of his own triumphs. Channeling his jagged energy and literary sensibility into classic songs - like "Walk on the Wild Side" and "Sweet Jane" - and radically experimental albums alike, Reed remained desperately true to his artistic vision, wherever it led him.
Now, just a few years after Reed's death, Rolling Stone writer Anthony DeCurtis, who knew Reed and interviewed him extensively, tells the provocative story of his complex and chameleonic life. With unparalleled access to dozens of Reed's friends, family, and collaborators, DeCurtis tracks Reed's five-decade career through the accounts of those who knew him and through Reed's most revealing testimony: his music. We travel deep into his defiantly subterranean world, enter the studio as the Velvet Underground record their groundbreaking work, and revel in Reed's relationships with such legendary figures as Andy Warhol, David Bowie, and Laurie Anderson. Gritty, intimate, and unflinching, Lou Reed is an illuminating tribute to one of the most incendiary artists of our time.
PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying reference material will be available in your Library section along with the audio.
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A blast from the past
- By Amazon Customer on 07-30-16
By: David Hepworth
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Bright lights dark shadows
- The real story of Abba
- By: Carl Palm
- Narrated by: Adrian Mulraney
- Length: 26 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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An exploration of all aspects of the Abba member’s lives and careers. Amazingly detailed, it examines the group member’s family backgrounds, the pre-Abba days, the legendary 70s, the marriages, the divorces, the business ups and downs, and the post-Abba solo careers.
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Awesome! -- All the Swedish words pronounced!
- By Howard_a on 06-18-12
By: Carl Palm
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Fornication
- The Red Hot Chili Peppers Story
- By: Jeff Apter
- Narrated by: Adrian Mulraney
- Length: 15 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Despite an epic reputation for exhibitionism, drug taking, and drunkenness, through it all the Chili Peppers have continued to produce records that shock, challenge, and intrigue their fans. Jeff Apter tells the complete Red Hot Chili Peppers story, from their first meeting at a Los Angeles high school to the creation of such career-defining albums as BloodSugarSexMagik, Californication and By The Way.
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Cabron
- By Amazon Customer on 10-02-19
By: Jeff Apter
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Thelonious Monk
- The Life and Times of an American Original
- By: Robin DG Kelley
- Narrated by: Sean Crisden
- Length: 25 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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Thelonious Monk is the critically acclaimed, gripping saga of an artist's struggle to "make it" without compromising his musical vision. It is a story that, like its subject, reflects the tidal ebbs and flows of American history in the 20th century. To his fans, he was the ultimate hipster; to his detractors, he was temperamental, eccentric, taciturn, or childlike. His angular melodies and dissonant harmonies shook the jazz world to its foundations, ushering in the birth of "bebop" and establishing Monk as one of America's greatest composers.
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The definitive bio of Monk
- By ricardo on 12-27-17
By: Robin DG Kelley
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Keith Richards
- The Unauthorised Biography
- By: Victor Bockris
- Narrated by: Adrian Mulraney
- Length: 20 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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In 1992, Victor Bockris' celebrated biography was the first to recognize Richards' pivotal role in the legend of the Rolling Stones. Now that book on rock's most incredible survivor has been expanded. Here are the true facts behind Richards' battles with his demons: the women, the drugs and the love-hate relationship with Jagger. His struggle with heroin and his status as the rock star most likely to die in the 1970s. His scarcely believable rebirth as a family man in the 1980s. Illuminated with revealing quotes and thoughtful insights into the man behind the band that goes on forever.
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doesn't comapre to LIFE
- By A. Garofalo on 02-20-14
By: Victor Bockris
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Iggy Pop
- Open Up and Bleed
- By: Paul Trynka
- Narrated by: William Dufris
- Length: 14 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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Iggy Pop's legendary career has been tumultuous, reaching great heights with mega-hits and then hitting rock-bottom lows in jail and mental institutions. Along the way, he's become a cult-rock hero, an inspiration for dozens of other famous rockers, and has had a pretty good time of it, too. But the image of Iggy Pop versus the man behind that image, James Newell Osterberg, Jr., is surprisingly contradictory.
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Banal and Boring
- By Michael on 12-03-08
By: Paul Trynka
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Dig If You Will the Picture
- Funk, Sex, God and Genius in the Music of Prince
- By: Ben Greenman
- Narrated by: Peter Berkrot
- Length: 9 hrs and 1 min
- Unabridged
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Ben Greenman, New York Times best-selling author, contributing writer to The New Yorker, and owner of thousands of recordings of Prince and Prince-related songs, knows intimately that there has never been a rock star as vibrant, mercurial, willfully contrary, experimental, or prolific as Prince. Uniting a diverse audience while remaining singularly himself, Prince was a tireless artist, a musical virtuoso and chameleon, and a pop-culture prophet.
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Reads like a indepth career review & analysis
- By herb on 05-18-17
By: Ben Greenman
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Tearing Down the Wall of Sound
- The Rise and Fall of Phil Spector
- By: Mick Brown
- Narrated by: Ray Porter
- Length: 17 hrs and 35 mins
- Unabridged
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Phil Spector, born in the Bronx in 1940, grew up an outsider despised by his peers. But he formed a band, and had a number-one hit with "To Know Him Is to Love Him". He quickly became the top producer of early rock and roll and the originator of such girl groups as the Ronettes. Hit followed hit, and for all of them he used a new recording style called the "wall of sound". But the reign of the boy-man who owned pop music was doomed, and Spector spiraled into paranoid isolation and peculiar behavior.
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Descent Into Madness
- By Chris on 06-11-12
By: Mick Brown
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Somebody to Love
- The Life, Death and Legacy of Freddie Mercury
- By: Matt Richards, Mark Langthorne
- Narrated by: Tim Bruce
- Length: 15 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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When Freddie Mercury died in 1991, aged just 45, the world was rocked by the vibrant and flamboyant star's tragic secret that he had been battling AIDS. That Mercury had even been diagnosed came as a shock to his millions of fans, with his announcement coming less than 24 hours before his death. In Somebody to Love, biographers Mark Langthorne and Matt Richards skilfully weave Freddie Mercury's incredible pursuit of musical greatness with Queen, his upbringing and his endless search for love with the story of a terrible disease.
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Stunning dual biography of Freddie and AIDS
- By tru britty on 07-19-18
By: Matt Richards, and others
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Unchained
- The Eddie Van Halen Story
- By: Paul Brannigan
- Narrated by: Mike Lenz
- Length: 8 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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From the moment their hugely influential 1978 debut landed, Van Halen set a high bar for the rock 'n' roll lifestyle, creating an entirely new style of post-'60s hard rock and becoming the quintessential rock band of the 1980s. But the high-flying success was fraught with difficulty, as Eddie struggled with alcohol and drug addiction while simultaneously battling David Lee Roth over the musical direction of the band, eventually taking the band in an entirely new direction with Sammy Hagar and scaling new heights, before that iteration of Van Halen disintegrated.
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Please don't read other audible books
- By Mike on 02-01-22
By: Paul Brannigan
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Catch a Wave
- The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of the Beach Boys' Brian Wilson
- By: Peter Ames Carlin
- Narrated by: Bronson Pinchot
- Length: 14 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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In Catch a Wave, Peter Ames Carlin pulls back the curtain on Brian Wilson, one of popular music's most revered luminaries, as well as its biggest mystery. Drawing on hundreds of interviews and never-before heard studio recordings, Carlin follows the Beach Boys from their earliest days through Brian's deepening emotional problems to his triumphant re-emergence with the release of Smile, the legendarily unreleased album he had originally shelved.
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Not great
- By J. Barker on 08-08-16
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Small Town Talk
- Bob Dylan, The Band, Van Morrison, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and Friends in the Wild Years of Woodstock
- By: Barney Hoskyns
- Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain
- Length: 13 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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When musicians in the New York folk scene of the 1960s grew tired of city life, they decided to "get it together in the country". They headed for Woodstock - not to the site of the infamous music festival of 1969 but to the Catskills, to Bearsville, to Woodstock proper. Counterculture revolutionaries like Janis Joplin, Richie Havens, and Paul Butterfield got "back to the land", turning the once sleepy hollow into a funky Shangri-La.
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Captured the era - too many mistakes
- By Frank Canino on 04-17-16
By: Barney Hoskyns
What listeners say about Lou Reed
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Dave
- 05-16-18
good primer on Lou Reed and his music
Never been a fan of Lou Reed (well before my time), but this book really made me explore his work.
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1 person found this helpful
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- The Dietsch
- 07-09-18
Listen to the albums as you go!
Good book but the listening experience was even better listening to the albums as I made my way through the book!
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2 people found this helpful
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- M. Welch
- 08-30-20
Excellent Bio / Narrator Issues
Exactly the overview of Lou Reed I was hoping for. I love the deep descriptions of the albums and individual tracks. I listened along and discovered gems in Lou’s catalogue I never would have encountered otherwise.
The narrator should not attempt to use accents. He has a great natural voice and should use it unaffected. His attempt at John Cale’s Welsh accent was hilarious. It modulated from Cockney all the way to Russian and never sounds even faintly Welsh.
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- BrassHat
- 07-07-18
Really awesome Rock and Roll book
I never skimmed past a print story, review or interview having to do with Lou or the Velvets. I really thought I had heard or read all the stories, many I assumed we're fictional, or at least exaggerations.
This books hits on the obvious bullet points of Lou's career, but there are some tasty morsels slipped in there, each album anaylized (almost track by track) and the "logic" of Lou's musical direction.
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3 people found this helpful
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- M. Gordon
- 10-28-20
Great review of a great artist
I truly enjoyed learning about the exciting life of Lou Reed. The production is well executed.
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- Robert Gruber
- 10-31-17
Everything I hoped it would be.
I especially appreciated Mr. DeCurtis' attention to Lou's albums, which has opened up his discography to me in new and exciting ways. Great reading by Peter Coleman too.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Fenimore
- 12-17-17
VU & Lou Record Reviews. Waste of Time
This book wasn’t for you, but who do you think might enjoy it more?
Someone who isn't familiar with Lou Reed or VU
Has Lou Reed turned you off from other books in this genre?
Not at all. Just the author.
If you could play editor, what scene or scenes would you have cut from Lou Reed?
I would have given it a different title: Lou Reed and VU album reviews song by song.
Other than the DeCurtis record reviews everything else about Lou has been covered elsewhere. No new news anywhere.
Any additional comments?
Read Dirty Blvd. The Life and Music of Lou Reed, By Aidan Levy instead.
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6 people found this helpful
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- Brandon C. Wescoe
- 12-06-17
I wish...
I wish the narrator didn't read this book like it was a 1967 instructional film strip. Another listen ruined by a voice that's about as dynamic as a social studies text book.
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15 people found this helpful
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- Rachel Mello
- 11-24-18
eh...
The author is a music critic and writing gets off the narrative of Reed's life and gets mired in long, track-by-track descriptions of nearly every recording the prolific artist made. If you're a die-hard fan, maybe that's a plus. But if you're interested in the story of the artist's life those passages drag.
The reader has a strange, flat radio announcer voice and comes off sounding a little like Howard Cosell. He affects an awkward Brooklyn accent when quoting Reed, but I warmed to it a little. His voicing of women was embarrassing, though, especially making Laurie Anderson sound fey and flighty.
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7 people found this helpful
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- Jeremy R. Richey
- 08-06-18
Solid but we are still waiting on the definitive Lou Reed bio
DeCurtis is a good writer and this is a good book but it's not the definitive biography Lou has been deserving. We are given some good insights into Lou's early and later years especially but the majority of the book is bogged down by a more basic album by album review approach. Bottom line it is one of the best books on Lou out there but it will still be disappointing to devotees.
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1 person found this helpful