
This year marks 50 years since the release of Lou Reed’s Transformer, an album which gave the LGBTQ+ community a voice as well as a soundtrack in 1972: Reed said at the time that it was “dreary for gay people to have to listen to straight people’s love songs.” In Reading, Simon Doonan – later to become an author, and ‘creative ambassador’ for upmarket NYC clothing store Barney’s – was listening. With Transformer, he takes a deep dive into Reed’s classic album: its creation and its aftermath, detailing its cultural and social legacy.
Moreover, Doonan recalls how the genderfluidity of Reed and David Bowie, Transformer’s co-producer, helped shape and influence his own life. The shocking ignorance, prejudice and drabness of 1960s and 70s Britain is comically detailed, with fashion and music offering a welcome escape for a young gay man. The years immediately preceding Transformer, he notes, comprised “a period of bonkers contrasts”: shocking images of war casualties in Vietnam and the Congo on one hand, Mary Quant-clad “dolly birds” and patronising TV adverts on the other.
This was also a time when teenagers had absolutely no intention of mimicking their parents’ sartorial or career choices. Doonan certainly did not, leaving Reading for London and then Los Angeles. This book is a must-have not only for Lou Reed fans, but anyone with an interest in cultural and social change.
Transformer: A Story of Glitter, Glam Rock & Loving Lou Reed, Simon Doonan (Harper One)
Price: £16.99. Info: here
words DAVID NOBAKHT
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