Do What You Fear Most

Do What You Fear Most is the authoritative tome on the band that changed music, fashion and culture forever. Blending new archival insights and first-hand accounts, Richie Unterberger illuminates the band's radical global impact on New York's progenitors of punk, who bridged pure rock'n'roll, avant-garde experimentation and literary songwriting to take rock music into previously uncharted territory. Beginning with each member's path to the band, it details their influences, successes and (many) failures, the whirlwind with Warhol, the triumph of the Banana album, the fractured and strained relationships and egos, and beyond to the end of the Velvets and the beginnings of various solo careers. Rigorously researched and packed with previously undocumented insights, this book features first-hand interviews with the group's associates, as well as a substantial amount of material newly unearthed from the Lou Reed Archive and the Andy Warhol Archive, as well as never-before-seen images and ephemera. An entertaining and exhilarating narrative, Do What You Fear Most vividly captures the grit and uninhibited creativity of the 1960s New York cultural scene and is an essential portrait of one of the 20th century's most visionary and influential bands.