Perfect Day: An Intimate Portrait Of Life With Lou Reed

First, I must admit that although we have never met in person, I have been Facebook friends with the author for some time. She asked me to read her book, which I was happy to do, but a little apprehensive. In her book, she tells of meeting, dating, living with, marrying, divorcing, getting back together, and finally leaving for good rock’n’roller Lou Reed of Velvet Underground fame back in the ‘70s.But I have always been a fan of music in the Country genre and was not familiar with Lou Reed or his famous band. But while the book is about all that I mentioned above, it is more about a young girl getting caught up in the rock’n’roll fast lane, trying drugs and alcohol, and how she came to recognize that for the sake of her own sanity, she needed to get out of that scene.While others who knew more about Lou Reed and his band may very well get more out of her book than I did, it is a very interesting read which can be enjoyed by all. I was even intrigued enough to go to Youtube and observe Lou and his Velvet Underground band on video. He really was quite a good singer and perhaps even a better writer/poet.

I can honestly say that the book is quite well written and a quick and very interesting read. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

This a fascinating read of a young, naïve girl from rural America drawn into the counterculture of the late 60’s, early 70’s. As a teenager, drawn by the lure of love to an older man clearly living a life beyond any life she has ever known, the reader is taken on a parallel roller coaster ride into the subculture of the times. This is truly an eye-opening adventure into the behind-the-scenes view of life in the fast lane. Unfortunately, love alone is not sufficient for the author to overcome the pressures placed upon her and her dreams are irrevocably shattered.This is definitely a must read for baby boomers - especially those who, like myself, remember the upheaval of the times, but lived in complete ignorance of life defined by Lou Reed’s himself as “A Walk on the Wild Side!” It is also a great read for the younger generations who wish to know more of the subculture their own parents and/or grandparents may have experienced.The author’s recollections of those days seem honest and sincere and told in a no-holes-barred approach. Definitely a must read for young and old alike.

I'm trying really hard to find something nice to say about this book because Bettye Kronstadt does strike me as a nice person and she obviously had to put up with Lou Reed for quite a few years - no mean feat.But this book is very painful to read. It is everything you have read from other reviews.It is poorly written and full of obvious mistakes (i.e. there were no drones from John Cale's viola at Max's Kansas City in 1970, nor did Lou leave the band in 1970 because of John Cale's trying to take over the band, as Cale had been kicked out of the band in 1968).
There is a recurring emphasis on her perceived importance: behind Lou Reed's success was the unwavering presence of Bettye, muse, advisor, and multi-talented helper. As she repeatedly points out, he couldn't have made it without her.There is also what appears to be either willful blindness or else cluelessness regarding Lou Reed's well documented behavior, whether with hard drugs or sexual practices.I had to force myself to finish this book - the content ratio of is about 1% insights and 99% fluff which makes it a tedious read - no mean feat considering it’s a book about living with one of the most fascinating rock musician / songwriter of the 60s and 70s.

Even though it is not the best written ever, I liked very much reading the book. Bettye takes a warm and supportive perspective to go through the many details of her relationship with Lou.

How people could write glowing, over-the-top reviews--saying this book provides astonishing views into countercultural NYC in the '60s and '70s or whatever malarkey--is beyond me. Through no lens or perspective is this a 5-star book. Here''s what it is. This review is by someone who's loved, read about, listened to, seen live Lou Reed over 50 years. Also someone who knows a great deal about mid/late 20th century popular music, culture, history--from New York--knows a bit about good writing--and is a consumer of hundreds of biographies/autobiographies.FIRST: I am grateful that Bettye wrote this account. It is a story only she could tell; I do wish she'd had help with it. It must not have been easy to try to spin her experiences and memories into cohesive narrative. Still: that's what editors and ghost writers are for.The construction of this book is egregious and makes it difficult to get through, despite its modest length. It is choppy, uneven, repetitive, obscure, vague, has gaping holes even in the middle of anecdotes, jumps around, is unclear about dates and years, filled with what appear to be generalities, includes numerous stories without a punchline or takeaway, such that you're not even sure it that was the end of what she was trying to say, or what even she was trying to say.She repeats possibly 2 dozen times the same phrase about Lou leaving the Velvets and casting about trying to determine his next steps as a solo artist. She sets down that statement and then adds (essentially): "And I was there to pull him through and make sure he was the success we knew he could be. That was why I was with Lewis, I told myself and believed it." Over and over and over. Sometimes within 5-6 pages, sometimes within 20 pages, sometimes in one paragraph next to another. It's baffling.It is almost as if she had 5 drafts of this book, written at different times, maybe one intended as a article, one a chapter of a book, maybe background notes for someone, and a couple of attempts to actually write A Book--and someone (she or her publisher) just smooshed them all together and tried to match up roughly one version covering something with another version covering the same topic, but the result is a lot of muddled, redundant, sometimes even contradictory, or clashing information--and with different tones and vibe, all in one page or paragraph or anecdote.Someone should have shaped all this into not only "her truth" but into broader contexts of the day--what was happening in the world, in New York, in the Lower East Side and Village, the music scenes in NY, Lou's friends and associates, and what was happening in 1970s America.Similarly someone should have shaped all this into MORE of "her truth," because what she shares about herself is superficial, contradictory, unselfaware, confusing. She skates over the surface of almost everything, and is embarrassingly self-congratulatory about her talents (as a writer, as an actress, as a woman in charge) but it's utterly unconvincing. Sometimes she claims she is a student at Columbia, sometimes she's a secretary, sometimes attending an acting school that none of Lou's very well-informed friends have ever heard of but she claims was the best in New York, sometimes claims she traveled the country doing theatre but never once mentions a part or production or any actors she worked with. She often discusses being a simple farm girl, riding horses and picking berries in the wholesome sunshine, a Norman Rockwell family she characterized as quiet, dignified, self-effacing, and implied upper middle class....but why did she leave home and end up in NYC at 16?Well, 20 pages before the end we find out her entire family was awash in serious mental illness, her mother was accused of atrocities and lost custody of Bettye and disappeared for 15 years, her father had shock therapy, grandfather had PSTD, she had to uncimplainingly care for 5 children under the age of 8 when she was a child herself, on and on. Too little/too late. Bolted onto the side at the end.If this book had been properly constructed and edited someone would have helped her draw the lines between her completely unhealthy toxic abusive childhood and how she ended up being the tireless nursemaid for abusive Lou Reed.There are many times you'll be reading and thinking "Please do shut up. Please just stop." She goes into great detail about how she learned how to drive a John Deer tractor at age 8 on the farm....but will that allow her to drive Lou's parent's diesel Mercedes to the gay bar, once Lou is passed out and she doesn't know where she is? Then out of the shadows comes a drag queen who sits on the car and someone else says they shouldn't sit on the car and someone finds a notebook and writes out directions. And she drives off. And then she wakes up and she doesn't have pants on and Lou is on the floor calling her Princess but is so drunk he can't explain why they are in the guest room with no sheets on the bed, etc. but he has to tell her something urgently but the story trails off and you're not sure the point.Previously I mentioned there's no broader context into which this story unfolds--and that omission is glaring and unforgivable. 1970s New York and even Long Island was a time of profound changes and shifts. Bettye as an author now seems only vaguely aware of that. She blithely waves off homosexuality, as well as debauched things, going on around her in Lou's world...saying "I never judged anyone by who they loved and lots of people in theatre are gay so it seemed normal to me." She just finished saying she was Pollyanna from Pennsylvania. And even for people who had gay acquaintances in theatre, Lou's crowd was several orders of magnitude beyond "the usual." But she does not mention anything, anywhere, anytime, that ever shocked her...in that circle many things were done with the intent to shock and were probably objectively shocking. She just talks about how Lou would disappear in gay bars and she'd just dance and dance because dance makes her forget all the cares in the world spinning with happy dancy people hoooray! Meanwhile Lou "flirted with everyone" - the takeaway from which was "He is such a great performer...if I did not already know that from the time Lou was leaving the Velvets and determining his next steps as a solo artist. And I was there to pull him through and make sure he was the success we knew he could be."Ooof. OK. Whatever.Did the 2 of them even have sex? Ever? No clue. Just lots of "nuzzling his curly hair into the nape of my neck" action.So---there are 2 aspects on this book, as is, that make it worthwhile: (1) how "normal" and upper middle class his existence with his parents back at their house was--she may be very biased but it does not seem at all that Lou was going bat^&* staying with them--stories about how the 2 of them would spend days at the beach club having waiters bring them lemonade and cocktails, hitting the courts in their "tennis whites," and meeting up with the parents in the diningroom for Saturday night dinner "at the club" was sort of hilarious in how absolutely mundane it is--and how prototypically 1970s bourgeois upper middle class Rockville Center/Baldwin it is. Tale after tale where Bettye mentions driving around in the parents' Mercedes DL. Such a far 180-degree cry from anything else I'd known about him. I knew he was "middle class" but she brings to life what that must have been like. It also helps explain(?) why Lou decided--of all the neighborhoods in Manhattan--to settle in the Upper East Side. That's the most straight-laced conventional UN-Bohemian neighborhoods in New York. That Lou would choose the UES just tickles me...did he want that pretty upper middle class environment on some level? was he trying to deny other parts of him? was he comfortable in that milieu since it's close to how he grew up?So, you're not going to find any simple narratives anywhere painting the bougy aspects of Lou's background and in that early '70s period like this does.The second element that I haven't seen elsewhere is less amusing. It's about Lou's alcoholic drinking. It's fairly revolting to read. Nothing lurid, but just exhausting. He drank every night to fall-down-drunk incoherence. He said he had to drink to oblivion due to existential "pain." The number of nights this book chronicles of Bettye having to physically carry him, drag him, beseech him to stop drinking for the night is astonishing. She wanted to be with him, no doubt, but being nursemaid to a sloppy self-sorry mewling puking belligerent drunk is zero fun. Especially when he would also be abusive. And be as dependent and fractious as a toddler terrified of being abandoned.She doesn't "drag" Lou in sharing this info, but she is pretty plain about it, and how miserable it was. Some people claim she should have been honored to be his cop, nursemaid, mommy, truant officer, cheerleader but she makes a good case for finally getting out.The book suffers from a lack of self-awareness---her part in things---how Lou truly saw her (which I suspect is less rose-colored than she often depicts it) and how he disrespected her to others (she mentions this once, but everything I've read of Lou would indicate she had even a harder go of things that she lets on or lets herself remember--or is willing to be honest about with us, her readers). But she does get enough across to paint a fairly vivid portrait of that one aspect of Lou--his alcoholism--and how that informed a lot of who he was and how he operated.For that, and unintentionally amusing peeks into the upper middle class country club antics he seemed secretly to enjoy ("Tennis, anyone!"), I gave this book 3 stars.

Poorly written.Cash in on the legend.A big bore.Even for devoted fans not of interess.Stay away from.

The tale here: vulnerable alcoholic boy prodigy is nursed by solid beautiful Scandinavian womanHard to see one of your heroes thus but it more than probably is a very fair accountAlso on Bettye's watch he came up with Transformer AND Berlin ... arguably with Coney Island his meisterwerksSo thank you Bettye ... you really are brave.A MUSTREAD for Lou-watchersPS Oh Yes and he wrote Perfect Day for her .... they really loved each otherHOWEVER: throughout this tale we are time and time again reminded by Bettye of her constancy integrity faithfulness duty-drivenness ... as we are of Lou's numerable failings ...since all of us will be reaching for this book to know more about Lou this can become a counterproductive exercise ... she divorces him then "OUT OF DUTY" sticks around so he can birth Berlin ... an album she says he partly [70% or so] borrows from her early life and fights they both had ... for someone who claims a love of literature surely she must have at some point thought about where writers get their stories from .... that part to me is disingenuousPS: reading what former girlfriend Shelley Albin said in [DeCurtis 2017] all flaws described by Bettye are corroborated"he wasn't happy unless he made someone more miserable than he was""he was not anybody i wanted to live with. It wasn't worth it. It was too much grief"When you hear a tale once you think maybe; when you hear it twice ....

nice 2nd hand book for very good price..

I used to be one of the biggest Lou Reed fans in Europe.... well, until he stopped making an effort in his vocals (circa "Street Hassle"). I even got to talk to him once, very briefly. I followed his subsequent career (from an ever-growing distance), but have always yearned for more detail about his life and career, before the 80s at least.When I head about this book, I became very excited. I know it was obviously promoted by his death, (as are most "exposes"), but nonetheless though it would be chock-full of anecdotes and snippets.No so. The author seems less proud of the fact that she was married to a superstar than her claim to be "a writer", "an author", "a student of literature".For a start, she details particular conversations between her and Lou that are often comprised of 40-plus exchanges each way. NO WAY could she remember that! Why, she even says herself in a few places, (when she's describing certain episodes rather than conversations), that things are a bit blurred after 50 years, and this is to be expected. But she can still remember so many sentences, verbatim?It is only when one examines closer the actual conversations that the penny drops. It's like she's said to herself "Well I can remember the gist of the exchange, so I'll just embellish it to pad things out, and add a nuance to proceedings here and there. After all, I AM a writer!"So we get paragraphs inserted to describe the surroundings, facial expressions, body movements, presumed mental reactions and moods, you name it. The irrelevant asides, and the choice of words to convey them, is often laughable. It's like she is desperate to prove her command of the English language! Put it this way - if she was recounting these events in the middle of an interview, she wouldn't come out with half the stuff she does here!For those who think I am being harsh, look the title of the book : "A Perfect Day - An Intimate Potrait Of Life With Lou Reed". This books was written with Lou Reed fans in mind, not Bettye Kronstad fans. I don't know what other success (if any) she has had in her other writing, but this is NOT her autobiography. If it was, then she would be at liberty to describe her family's history..... though having said that, a lot of celebrities pad out their bio's with that nonsense, when all that is needed is a one- paragraph summary in case it had any direct bearing on the celeb's upbringing. Bettye does even worse. Three whole pages of photographs of her family. including one page with two virtually identical pics of her mother. For heaven's sake - people aren't interested in what her mother looked like! It does not have, nor had, anything whatsoever to do with Lou Reed!Likewise, even though Lou Reed has talked about having EST in his youth (re "Kill your Sons"), the fact that her father also had some EST is completely irrelevant to either Lou's life of their marriage, and we didn't buy the book to read about HIS experiences.As for the relationship, I'm not saying for a moment that she was wrong to walk out on Lou Reed. I always knew he wasn't the most noble of human beings. But the story is a bit one-sided. For instance, she comes across all holier-than-thou for making a stance with him, i.e. that if she ever caught him injecting heroin, she'd be off. Yet she herself openly took marijuana and cocaine with him, like "those two were alright". Pardon? I sincerely think that addicts don't realise how hypocritical they come across to the rest of us.Btw, one wonders is she was under the influence of "something" when she wrote that she could hear the drone of John Cale's organ at the last ever Max's show? Even though he wasn't even there!I thought I'd be getting (e.g.) lots of snippets from the "Transformer" recording sessions, and info about the songs, Bowie and Ronson, etc. but no such luck. I mean, who else was that close to him that could document those missing memories? Instead, we get a woman who continually bleats that no-one worried how "she" was feeling. As for her moaning that the storyline of "Berlin" was based on her own life in some way, nowhere does it mention her name, so how would any fan have the tiniest inkling that it was? Bizarre!I'll give the book one star (for a couple of background facts it DID reveal), but can't give it any more than that.

Intriguing, insightful insider perspective on Lou's early 70s.