'Sweet Wild and Vicious' is a tour through the reason Lou Reed deserves biographies: the songs

In 2023, a decade after the death of Lou Reed — songwriter, singer, guitarist, mercurial rock ‘n’ roll change-maker— his literary-minded fans got two fresh volumes: “Loaded: The Life (and Afterlife) of the Velvet Underground,” Dylan Jones’ oral history of Reed’s influential band; and “Lou Reed: The King of New York,” Will Hermes’ heavy biography of the man.

Just months later, literary-minded Journal Sentinel arts and books editor Jim Higgins adds “Sweet, Wild and Vicious: Listening to Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground” (Trouser Press Books) a tour through the reason Reed deserves biographies and histories: the songs.

Together with Journal Sentinel music critic Piet Levy, Higgins will talk about his new book at 6:30 p.m. May 9 at Milwaukee's Boswell Books.

Higgins approaches Reed's discography by release date instead of recording date, smartly using the concert LPs, boxed sets and demo collections as opportunities to compare different versions of songs — and nascent ideas — to the “official” versions Reed let the public hear shortly after he laid them to tape.

The approach is brisk enough that Higgins gets through the Velvet Underground’s four studio albums, released between March 1967 and November 1970, in less than 40 pages, and he’s more or less done with Reed’s 1970s output, plus a pair of concert recordings, by page 90.

Fortunately, Higgins pours a great deal of information into those pages: his exploration of drummer Maureen “Moe” Tucker backs his claim that she “brought a fresh conception to playing drums in a rock band,” and his overview of “Transformer,” the 1972 solo commercial breakthrough co-produced by David Bowie and Bowie guitarist Mick Ronson, shrewdly describes Reed’s “dominant vocal personality” as “sardonic, intimate, (and) superior.”

His summaries display a jeweler’s eye for flaws in the beautiful (the 1989 album “New York” is both “fully committed emotionally to the music” and “a crabby evisceration of (Reed’s home) city”) and a conscientious journalist’s efforts to be fair-minded — Reed's final studio album, the 2011 Metallica partnership “Lulu,” clumsily combined Reed’s “wrecked voice” with Metallica’s “machine-tooled thunder,” but Higgins manages to “salvage a couple songs."

Higgins extends the insight and fair-mindedness to Reed’s collaborators, including John Cale, “who brought noise and aggression to the Velvet Underground"; Reed’s artistic descendants, including Nick Cave and Violent Femmes; and even to the bibliography, although the absence of the late Lester Bangs, one of the best cheerleaders and gadflies Reed ever had, is a puzzling omission.

Such omissions are rare, however, and “Sweet, Wild and Vicious” benefits not only from Higgins’ attention to detail but also from his ability to write as though he is opening discussions rather than shutting down dissent.

If you go

Jim Higgins will speak about "Sweet, Loud and Vicious" in conversation with Piet Levy at 6:30 p.m. May 9 at Boswell Books, 2559 N. Downer Ave. To register for this free event, visit jimhigginsmke.eventbrite.com.

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: 'Sweet Wild and Vicious' a brisk tour through Lou Reed's discography