Five Years in New York that Changed Music Forever

Love Goes to Buildings on Fire

Love Goes to Buildings on Fire by Will Hermes - Five Years in New York that Changed Music Forever 
 
'A must-read for any music fan' (Boston Globe) 
 
Crime was everywhere, the government was broke and the city's infrastructure was collapsing, but between 1974 and 1978 virtually all forms of music were being recreated in New York City: disco and salsa, the loft jazz scene and the Minimalist classical composers, hip hop and punk. 
 
Bruce Springsteen and Patti Smith arrived from New Jersey; Grandmaster Flash transformed the turntable into a musical instrument; Steve Reich and Philip Glass shared an apartment as they experimented with composition; the New York Dolls and Talking Heads blew away the grungy clubs; Weather Report and Herbie Hancock created jazz-rock; and Bob Dylan returned with Blood on the Tracks. 
 
Recommended by Nick Hornby, this fascinating and hugely inspiring book will be loved by readers of Just Kids by Patti Smith, Chronicles by Bob Dylan, How Music Works by David Byrne and The Rest is Noise by Alex Ross. 
 
'Can literature change your life? Yes ... along came Will Hermes, who cost me several hundred pounds on iTunes and ruptured my relationship with guitars' Nick Hornby, Believer magazine 
 
Will Hermes was born in Queens, in the city of which he writes. He is a senior critic for Rolling Stone, and also writes for the New York Times and the Village Voice. He was co-editor of SPIN: 20 Years of Alternative Music.

Can literature change your life? Yes ... along came Will Hermes, who cost me several hundred pounds on iTunes and ruptured my relationship with guitars

It was the best of times, it was the best of places: Will Hermes captures the creative incandescence of New York in those five years that changed music

Brings depth and discernment and an eye for odd detail, making his book an essential work of cultural history

Will Hermes was born in Queens, in the city of which he writes. He is a senior critic for Rolling Stone, and also writes for the New York Times and the Village Voice. He was co-editor of SPIN: 20 Years of Alternative Music.

Crime was everywhere, the government was broke and the city's infrastructure was collapsing, but between 1974 and 1978 virtually all forms of music were being recreated in New York City: disco and salsa, the loft jazz scene and the Minimalist classical composers, hip hop and punk. 
 
Bruce Springsteen and Patti Smith arrived from New Jersey; Grandmaster Flash transformed the turntable into a musical instrument; Steve Reich and Philip Glass shared an apartment as they experimented with composition; the New York Dolls and Talking Heads blew away the grungy clubs; Weather Report and Herbie Hancock created jazz-rock; and Bob Dylan returned with Blood on the Tracks.

Will Hermes

Meticulous yet vivid . . . Hermes expertly conjures the difference scenes Reed inhabited, placing him amid a rich cast of collaborators, friends and lovers

A sympathetic portrait of a vastly talented but difficult man

No matter how well you know the man and his music, there’s so much more to him that’s never been revealed until now. This book has the menace and allure of Reed’s finest work

Plenty has been written about Reed, but only Hermes, to my mind, has gotten Reed’s peculiar balance, of person and poseur, exactly right . . . This biography is as beautifully researched as it is written

Fans will likely devour many of these stories and want to live inside of them

Through his all-encompassing focus on Lou, Will Hermes serves up a big slice of late 20th-century New York art history. This is an extraordinary achievement.

Michael Imperioli, author of THE PERFUME BURNED HIS EYES

There have been many biographies of Lou Reed, but Will Hermes has written the definitive life. He has probed into every corner, talked to people the others overlooked, dug up every last clipping and tape, but above all he has brought to the assignment a sharp eye, a clear head, a lucid prose style, and a determination to let Lou be Lou, without judgement

As in his magisterial Love Goes to Buildings on Fire, Will Hermes again tracks the traces of time in New York City, but now focusing in on one pulse, the scorching light that was Lou Reed. He chronicles the past that made this artist and the future he helped call into being our own, especially the expansive senses of gender and sexuality that Reed longed for and sang about, but never got to benefit from fully. Hermes's empathy for the pain behind his subject's notoriously difficult personality is worthy of the humanity of Reed's songs, and I couldn't offer higher praise

Carl Wilson, author of LET'S TALK ABOUT LOVE

Hermes shrewdly probes Reed's complex personal and professional life . . . Hermes' strength is in identifying and articulating the transformational brilliance of Reed's songwriting and performances within the context of the 1960s and '70s music scene. Reverent about his artistry, he's also discerningly cognizant of Reed's temperamental shortcomings . . . An engrossing, fully dimensional portrait of an influential yet elusive performer

The King of New York

Since his death ten years ago, Lou Reed's stature and living presence have only grown. The great rock-poet presided over the marriage of Brill Building pop and the European avant-garde, and left American culture transfigured. 
 
In Lou: A New York Life, the critic Will Hermes offers the definitive narrative of Reed's life and legacy, dramatizing his long, brilliant, and contentious dialogue with fellow artists from David Bowie to Andy Warhol. Will explore his craft as a singer and songwriter with the Velvet Underground as well as the gift for self-sabotage he took from his mentor Delmore Schwartz. This is a portrait of a committed artist who pursued beauty and noise with equal fervour and a man who left a lasting emotional imprint the world over.

Will Hermes

Praise for Lou Reed

Meticulous yet vivid . . . Hermes expertly conjures the difference scenes Reed inhabited, placing him amid a rich cast of collaborators, friends and lovers

A sympathetic portrait of a vastly talented but difficult man

No matter how well you know the man and his music, there’s so much more to him that’s never been revealed until now. This book has the menace and allure of Reed’s finest work

Meticulous yet vivid . . . Hermes expertly conjures the difference scenes Reed inhabited, placing him amid a rich cast of collaborators, friends and lovers

A sympathetic portrait of a vastly talented but difficult man

No matter how well you know the man and his music, there’s so much more to him that’s never been revealed until now. This book has the menace and allure of Reed’s finest work

Meticulous yet vivid . . . Hermes expertly conjures the difference scenes Reed inhabited, placing him amid a rich cast of collaborators, friends and lovers

A sympathetic portrait of a vastly talented but difficult man

No matter how well you know the man and his music, there’s so much more to him that’s never been revealed until now. This book has the menace and allure of Reed’s finest work

Books by Will Hermes

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