You thought you had heard everything about Lou Reed’s first band? Think again. Unreleased demos dating back to 1965 have just resurfaced, with the oldest known versions of Heroin, Pale Blue Eyes and I’m Waiting for the Man.
This collection of 15 songs titled Words & Music, May 1965 is the fantasy of every rock historian. Imagine. The recordings in question were found behind a pile of books by Lou Reed’s two archivists (Jason Stern and Don Fleming), a few months after the musician’s death in 2013. The tapes slept in an unopened envelope, dating from the 11 May, which the singer had sent to himself in order to protect his copyrights, a method otherwise known as the ” copyright poor “.
What they discovered is a gem for anyone interested in the history of the Velvet Underground and its leader Lou Reed. It is also a precious complement to the handful of previously unreleased tracks released in 1995 on the box set. Peel Slowly and See devoted to the cult New York group of the 1960s.
In 1965, Reed was 23 years old. He has just met John Cale, an avant-garde musician who came straight from Wales. Their improbable meeting will lead in 1967 to the famous banana album of the Velvet Underground, today considered a fundamental milestone in the history of rock. But we can already see the potential of their collaboration here.
Although played on dry guitar, Heroin and I’m Waiting for the Man aren’t that far removed from the electrified, primitive versions that would become famous. The shady world of Lou Reed already seems well placed. Just like his talent as a melodist, striking on this antediluvian version of the song Pale Blue Eyeswhich will not be recorded until Velvet’s third album.
The other tracks, entirely acoustic and embellished with vocal harmonies by John Cale, oscillate between dylanesque folk (Men of Good Fortunere-imagined in 1973 on Reed’s solo album Berlin), crazy country (Buttercup Song), rock’n’roll (Buzz Buzz Buzz) and doo-wop parodies (too late) and experimental (hypnotic Wrap your Trouble in Dreams, repetitive piece of 8 minutes taken up a few years later by the singer Nico on the album Chelsea Girl).
The sound quality is of course approximate. And it would be surprising if Lou Reed won new fans with this unreleased collection. But that does not detract from the historical value of the exhumation.
Words & Music, May 1965 would be the first chapter in a series of unreleased Lou Reed releases to be released over the next few years on the American label Light in the Attic. The musician’s archives are said to have been donated by his wife, Laurie Anderson, to the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center, where a multimedia exhibition (Lou Reed: Caught Between the Twisted Stars) is running through March 2023, a year after the release of a Todd Haynes documentary about the Velvet Underground.
Lou Reed, who would have turned 80 this year, obviously hasn’t said his last word.
Rock
Words & Music, May 1965
Lou Reed (with John Cale)
Light in the Attic