Transformer A story of glitter, glam rock, & loving Lou Reed

In 1972, Lou Reed, singer/songwriter and former member of the Velvet Underground, released his second solo album Transformer, an album that combined Reed's "gritty side with the perfume of sophistication and camp," according to fashion writer Doonan (How To Be Yourself: Life-Changing Advice from a Reckless Contrarian). The book's pop-culture history of the creation, reception, and legacy of the landmark glam rock album (featuring one of Reed's most enduring songs, "Walk on the Wild Side") is interspersed with Doonan's memories of his own youth and his interest in the record. Reed was quoted as saying he made the album because it was "dreary for gay people to have to listen to straight people's love songs," and Doonan gives special consideration to Transformer's acceptance by queer audiences. In conversational and witty prose, this slim but informative book also has a song-by-song commentary, an account of Reed's life leading up to Transformer, and an appreciation of one of the album's producers, David Bowie. VERDICT Doonan's blend of personal reflection and cultural history offers a unique, entertaining, and fascinating portrait of a rock masterpiece that will be appreciated by music fans as well as those interested in LGBTQ+ social history.--James Collins

Doonan turns a sharp, funny eye on an icon of early LGBTQ+ musical expression: an album by the acerbic Lou Reed. It was the early 1970s, writes the author, when "pretending to be a bit femmy worked for the gay and female fans, but God forbid you actually were a friend of Dorothy's." Performers like Elton John and Little Richard hid their sexuality by writing off their performances as camp. But then came David Bowie and Ziggy Stardust, blowing the cover off the whole thing, and suddenly, as if in the transition from the tornado to Oz, the world gained shape and color for gay people. Following shortly after was Transformer, "the perfect soundtrack for the new glam-drogyny," in which Reed--poet, curmudgeon, late of the Velvet Underground--paired with Bowie as producer to exercise a particular insight, which Reed expressed like this: "I thought it was dreary for gay people to have to listen to straight people's love songs." One great LGBTQ+ love song, as Doonan writes in this song-by-song dissection of the 1972 album, was "Perfect Day," but it's another song on the album that's the perfect anthem: "Walk on the Wild Side," with its evocations of street life and transgression. The effect on hearing it, writes Doonan exultantly, was immediate and electrifying: "I am immediately smitten. It's 1972. I am a gay bloke, listening to tales of drag queens, on an album I just bought in the Manchester town center. This is so fucking insane. I am just about ready to blow a gay gasket." Other marginalized people in that barely-past-Stonewall era felt the same, at last having music unmistakably of their own--and, Doonan adds, many more liberatory albums followed on the heels of a release now reckoned as one of the greatest rock albums of all time. A perceptive, pleasingly idiosyncratic work of music appreciation and cultural history. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.