Do Angels Need Haircuts?: Early Poems by Lou Reed, with Laurie Anderson, Anne Waldman and Friends

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A new collection of Lou Reed’s rare early poetry, culled from the performer’s archive at NYPL, is brought to life by family and friends.

At the age of 28, Lou Reed — then the Velvet Underground’s lead singer — took a hairpin turn in his creative life: he quit the band, moved home to Long Island, and began writing poetry. The resulting work of that period — much of it never published — has been relegated to an obscure chapter in the life of one of America’s most uncompromising voices. Until now. Do Angels Need Haircuts?, published this spring by Anthology Editions, shares for the first time this mostly-unpublished and rarely-seen work.

The collection of poems, photographs, and ephemera is bookended by Anne Waldman and Laurie Anderson, who provide the foreword and afterword. To celebrate the publication of the book, the first produced from the Lou Reed Archive, Anderson and Waldman will come together with Don Fleming, Merrill Reed Weiner, and Hal Willner to talk, reminisce and read aloud from Reed’s previously unheard poetry.

The New York Public Library announced in March of 2017 its acquisition of the Lou Reed Archive, which documents the history of Reed’s life as a musician, composer, poet, writer, photographer, and tai-chi student through his own extensive papers, photographs, recordings and other collections of materials. The collection is housed at The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts in Lincoln Center.