Shortly after this, he formed The Know,[10] with Joel Turrisi and Richard d'Andrea who were the first band to play the infamous Madame Wong's Chinese restaurant-turned-new wave venue.

[12] In 1980, The Know released a single "I Like Girls" backed with "Dreams" on Planet Records and were the only bi-coastal US power pop band, developing large followings in New York and Los Angeles.

[17] In 2006, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a former member of Blondie, although vocalist Debbie Harry prohibited Lachman and other ex-members from performing with the current line-up at the ceremony.

[18] After leaving his music career behind in 1982, Lachman went back to school and received a philosophy degree from California State University, Los Angeles, and later began a doctoral program in English literature for a short period.

[25] The following years saw several more books, on the related themes of consciousness, the counterculture, and the influence of the occult and esoteric thought on mainstream western culture, including biographies of the Russian philosopher P.D.

Ouspensky (2004), the Austrian "spiritual scientist" Rudolf Steiner (2007), the Swedish religious thinker Emanuel Swedenborg (2006), the Swiss psychologist Carl Jung (2010) and Colin Wilson (2016).

[27] Recent years have seen Lachman lecturing on a variety of esoteric and cultural topics in Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, France, the Netherlands, Great Britain, and the United States.