Transformer

By Simon Doonan,

Book cover of Transformer: A Story of Glitter, Glam Rock, and Loving Lou Reed

Book description

In this funny and poignant memoir and cultural history, the television personality, columnist, and author of Drag pays homage to Lou Reed's groundbreaking album Transformer on its fiftieth anniversary and recalls its influence on his coming of age and coming out through glam rock.

In November 1972, Lou Reed released…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Transformer as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

I’m a bit obsessed with the Velvet Underground, glam rock, Bowie, and the Warhol Factory – fixations that converge on Lou Reed’s music, especially the Transformer album. Transformer recounts a similar fanboy obsession, but it also puns on its title (putting one syllable in black, the other in white) to accentuate the striking queerness of the album.

Crucially, Noonan centers the lives and works of the Warhol drag queens at the heart of “Walk on the Wild Side” (Holly “from Miami, FLA” Woodlawn or Jackie “speeding away” Curtis) who’ve been relegated to footnotes. Reed was an inconsistent source and a…

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