Doonan turns a sharp, funny eye on an icon of early LGBTQ+ musical expression: an album by the acerbic Lou Reed…A perceptive, pleasingly, idiosyncratic work of music appreciation and cultural history.” — Kirkus Reviews
“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.” — Library Journal
“The perceptive and consummately witty Simon Doonan toasts Lou Reed's Transformer on the occasion of the classic album's 50th anniversary.” — Shelf Awareness
"Doonan proves.. you can make a joyful, glitter-strewn book out of airing every one of your opinions and feelings – good, bad or just plain wild." - Jim Farber — The Guardian
“Doonan's droll, concise yet action-packed hosanna to the personal and salutary joys of Lou Reed's glam rock classic Transformer. Both Simon and I were, in effect, created by everything Transformer stood and stands for.” — John Cameron Mitchell, creator of Hedwig and the Angry Inch, Shortbus and How to Talk to Girls at Parties.
“Simon Doonan makes this tale of glam-rock cultural revolution soar like a love song. Transformer is more than just the story of Lou Reed—it’s the story of how pop music's rebels and outsiders can change the world, by envisioning a more seductive future. Doonan turns it into a dazzlingly brilliant, deeply personal, totally revelatory epic—a Seventies story that somehow seems perfect for our moment right now.” — Rob Sheffield, bestselling author of Love Is A Mixtape, One Song At A Time and Talking to Girls About Duran Duran
"Doonan’s book is a serious yet campy homage to the very first explicitly, purposely queer-oriented music album. In addition to being a funny, fact-filled history, the book sent me back to listen more intently to the album and led me to the conclusion that Transformer is indeed a glamdrogynous (Doonan’s coinage) masterpiece." — The Gay & Lesbian Review
"Simon Doonan’s hilarious cultural commentary meets Lou Reed’s poetic rock gravitas. Warhol, Bowie, electroshock, conflict, surprises, sequins— this book is truly a walk on the wild side, with my very favorite humorist as our guide!" — Ariel Levy, Bestselling author of The Rules Do Not Apply and Female Chauvinist Pigs
“Part love letter to an LGBTQ masterpiece, part hilarious memoir, Simon Doonan’s Transformer is a treat, as glamorous, decadent and camp as Lou Reed’s iconic album. The book is at turns funny and affecting, sly and subversive and, as you would expect, splendidly swishy. Superbly entertaining, Simon’s book deftly captures the epoch when glam rock burst into our lives, and, like Transformer itself, acts as a time capsule of that exciting, hedonistic era.” — Darryl W. Bullock, author of The Velvet Mafia and Pride Pop and Politics
“With real humor and insight Simon Doonan beautifully weaves together hilarious and moving snapshots of his youth with the larger context of Lou Reed's most successful album. Here's a fresh, exhilarating view of a key moment in the history of pop music and cultural politics. It's the perfect book to read on a perfect day.” — Sam Lipsyte, author of No One Left to Come Looking for You and The Ask
“Thank you, Simon, for this guidebook to my misspent youth. I wasted years in wild conjecture about my idols. Conjecture no more! You've dished up the facts -and some of the more irresistible fictions - about Lou and David and the glitter critters of a fabulous long ago.” — Tim Blanks, Editor At Large, Business of Fashion
10/01/2022
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
2022-08-31
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.
