Hermes' captivating new biography, fires on all cylinders: It's exhaustively researched and opinionated, with a swagger that evokes its volatile subject. For most of the book there's precious little of Reed's later domesticity ... Hermes writes with kinetic flair ... A scrupulous chronicle of a rock outlaw who sought an authentic self on stage.
The achievement of Will Hermes’s book King of New York is, first, in how thoughtfully it contains Reed. It affixes Reed to his central muse: New York City. And, in doing so, it considers Reed through a very specific frame ... Hermes addresses both the scope of Reed’s work and the scope of Reed’s mythology ... The earliest chapters of the book operate in a way that earns itself out as the book progresses, funneling in a wide, seemingly overwhelming cast of people and influences who both inform and orbit the growing of Reed’s world—a world that, somewhat painfully, begins to shrink as the book progresses. That shrinking is beautifully rendered and paced by the writing of Hermes, but it is hard to watch, nonetheless ... If you are a reader who is coming to this volume to read about the exploits of the Velvet Underground, from its first rehearsals in 1964 through Reed’s departure in 1970, you’ll be satisfied. There’s enough familiar stories and anecdotes to keep any VU obsessive excited to stick around ... The book sits best with me when I consider it as an examination of obsession. To pursue a book of this heft, focused on a single subject and on that subject’s geographies, requires a type of labor that can only be defined by obsession. Hermes succeeds, I think, in treading the difficult line between obsession and a relentless type of fandom that might obscure the realities of a subject.
Many of the details in the book have been reported elsewhere before by people who were actually friends with Reed...but Hermes invokes them with a current tone that’s favorable toward, but not overly forgiving of, the notoriously prickly Reed.
Layered, nuanced ... Not concerned with lionizing or demolishing its principal subject. Instead, it sets out to tell the story of the artist’s up-and-down career and complicated personal life, giving equal weight to each ... Fans will likely devour many of these stories and want to live inside of them ... Fascinating ... Later stories, particularly in the second half of Reed’s life, may test the mileage of even die-hard fans. Hermes occasionally leans on hypothetical asides ... Much of Hermes’s reporting seems to have taken place after Reed’s death, though that doesn’t prove to be much of a hindrance.
Hermes expertly conjures the different scenes Reed inhabited, placing him amid a rich cast of collaborators, friends and lovers. There’s a sense that he’s updating Reed for a new generation, particularly as a prophet of queer liberation and gender nonconformity ... Hermes diligently recounts the creation of albums through the 80s, 90s and beyond, even as the cheques for use of his old songs in samples and ads started to roll in, making him a wealthy man.
