Lou Reed - Metal Machine Mystic book
LOU REED METAL MACHINE MYSTIC BY DAVID HOLZER
New from Jawbone: one of rock’s most confounding artists is revealed as never before through the lens of one of the most extreme and polarising albums ever made: his 1975 double LP of unrelenting, vocal-free noise, Metal Machine Music. On sale November 19th, with exclusive forewords by Thurston Moore and Ulrich Krieger.
When Lou Reed released Metal Machine Music in 1975, it was dismissed as either an avant-garde prank or an act of career suicide—or both. Over the subsequent half-century, however, the album has acquired a growing number of admirers, along the way to becoming a kind of secret handshake of hipness.
Through his work both in The Velvet Underground and as a solo artist, Reed is one of the most acclaimed and influential musicians of the rock era, yet he remains a defiantly inscrutable figure. Drawing on extensive research and exclusive interviews with more than sixty friends, collaborators, and admirers, and the help of Laurie Anderson and the Lou Reed Archive, David Holzer reveals him anew as a spiritual seeker with a deep interest in the esoteric practices of Alice Bailey and others, and a man with a profound belief in the power of one’s inner spirit. In so doing, he positions Metal Machine Music as a deeply serious, talismanic work that is unique in rock’n’roll.
Lou Reed Metal Machine Mystic is the first book to focus on the album as the key to understanding the methods, motivations, and mind of its creator. Constructed as an homage to the original album, which was released on four sixteen-minute sides of vinyl, the book is split into four sections of sixteen chapters, each of which takes a different angle on the record. Along the way, it unearths the secrets of the record’s creation, its true purpose, its immediate aftermath, and its subsequent astonishing rehabilitation.
Advance praise
‘If Metal Machine Music wanted to be a book, Metal Machine Mystic is the book. And no other book will do. Every chapter is rich in its insight and joyful in its connections to so many of Lou Reed’s characters.’ Victor Bockris
‘Lou Reed once told me that Metal Machine Music was gibberish from start to finish. David Holzer thinks there’s a lot more to it, and Metal Machine Mystic tells us why. A deep dive into Lou’s most controversial album, Holzer’s book is immersive, fascinating, and long overdue.’ Allan Jones
‘David Holzer has done incredible research on the available facts of MMM, plus the various theories and rumours around the album and its wider intellectual and social context. He also offers some of his own well-researched and information-based speculations, which he always reveals as such. He clears up the facts so that now the readers might make up their own minds.’ Ulrich Krieger
‘This book is great becuz Metal Machine Music is beyond great. That’s how this works.’ Thurston Moore
About the author
David Holzer is a British author who has been described as a wild scholar. He has written about the most extraordinary and overlooked aspects of music and musicians, Beat literature and art, the counterculture, and varieties of contemporary spirituality. His work explores and attempts to resolve the mystery of why some works of art by remarkable artists have the power to fascinate him and his readers. In 2025, he wrote the liner notes to Sony Legacy’s Metal Machine Music tribute album, Power To Consume Vol. 1. This is his first book about music. He lives in Spain and Hungary with his wife.
For all other enquiries please contact Tom Seabrook: tom@jawbonepress.com
Lou Reed Metal Machine Mystic by David Holzer
Published by Jawbone Press (www.jawbonepress.com)
360pp softcover / ISBN 9781916829367 / £16.95 UK
