On May 11, 1965, Lou Reed went to a post office in Baldwin, Long Island, New York, to send a notarized and sealed package. The recipient of the mail was Lewis Reed, a resident of 35 Oakfield Avenue, Freeport, New York. So himself. For 52 years, the envelope with the package remained intact. In 2013, shortly after Reed’s death, he was found in the musician’s New York office, Sister Ray, where he shared a shelf with unsealed CDs. But no one was really interested in exploring the content until the end of 2017, when producer Don Fleming, chosen by Reed’s widow, Laurie Anderson, to bring order to the musician’s legacy, finally decided to open the envelope. What he found there was an unexpected treasure: a five-inch Scotch tape containing the earliest known versions of some of The Velvet Underground’s most iconic songs.
The contents of this tape, remastered by engineer John Baldwin, now appear in the form of a disc with the prosaic title of Words & music, May 1965, a work presented by Lou as the first reference in a project to recover unreleased recordings. Reed is supported by Laurie Anderson and Light on the Attic label. The next installments are likely to surpass this in terms of sound quality and instrumental solvency, but they are very difficult if not impossible to approach in terms of historical significance.
In May 1965, 23-year-old Reed was working as a songwriter for Pickwick Records (describing himself as “a bad version of Carole King”), where he met Welsh musician John Cale, with whom he was collaborating. had begun to develop the embryo of a group that would soon become The Velvet Underground. By these dates (supposedly it’s 11 on the same day, but Cale can’t remember the exact day or place, and Reed’s cassette envelope doesn’t tell about it), the two recorded a dozen songs, including early versions of future classics. Like the New York band Heroin, I’m waiting for the man and Pale blue eyes.
The purpose of the recording was nothing more than to protect Lou Reed’s copyright on the songs without going through the painstaking process of recording the compositions. That’s why he notarized the package, making the shipping date clearly visible, and the musician’s voice is heard on the tape before each track, saying “words and music by Lou Reed.” The idea was to only open the envelope in case of litigation with Pickwick Records, which has a notorious history of copyright disputes with its own songwriters.
Dylan’s Shadow
Cale wrote What’s Welsh for Zen? with Victor Bockris. In his autobiography, he recalls that when Reed first taught him songs like Heroin and I’m Waiting for the Man, he “played them as if they were ballads”. And that’s exactly what Words & music is in versions from May 1965. The blues and acoustic folk heard at the Greenwich Village joints, where Bob Dylan sharpens his claws, is more than the daunting electrical breach that would turn the band’s first two albums into cult pieces amongst the rock avant-garde.
“Listening to the tape is like coming across a Folkways recording from the ’30s,” Laurie Anderson recently assured in Mojo magazine, referring to the historic record label specializing in traditional American music. “She has an eerie, raspy voice that suggests it was recorded in a trailer. And you wonder: Is heroin a ballad? People will be very surprised.”
A vivid depiction of a heroin addict’s addicted relationship to the substance, the words of Heroin were released in 1965 by Help! The Beatles were an example of audacity and maturity in pop songwriting. The same can be said for Waiting for the man who tells the adventures of a poor devil who wants to buy heroin in Harlem. According to various testimonies, it was Ira Moss, vice president of Pickwick Records, who vetoed the release of these songs because she considered it inappropriate. Velvet Underground.
The band’s third classic, Words & music, included in its prehistoric version in May 1965 is Pale Blue Eyes, although the lyrics here differ from what is heard in the canonical recitation collected on The Velvet Underground’s third LP. , 1969, recorded after John Cale’s departure.
The rest of the tracks on that old five-inch Scotch cassette are hitherto unknown songs, with the exception of Wrap Your Wraps in Dreams, sung by Cale, who is part of Nico’s first solo LP, where his somber and monochord sound is. He somehow prefigures the disturbing minimalism that will characterize his contributions to Velvet. “This is when Lou Reed and John Cale began to evolve into folk duo The Velvet Underground,” emphasizes Laurie Anderson.
Ballads and rock and roll
Among the songs that saw the light for the first time, Men of good fortune stands out (it has nothing to do with the composition of the same name on Reed’s Berlin album), a folk song with such a traditional feel that producer Don Fleming is an expert to clarify whether this is a version or not. turned to musicologists, and among them historian Greil Marcus (it doesn’t seem like it). Of particular note are the song Buttercup, a strange warning about the dangers of emotional attachment offered between parlor chants, and Buzz Buzz Buzz, an early Chuck Berry-style rock and roll song (not the same song played by The Hollywood Flames in 1957). ). ).
In addition to the vinyl edition (and the eight-track cartridge!), which collects 10 songs recorded in May 1965, the new album is available for purchase in compact or cassette format with the added bonus of six previously unreleased records by a very young Lou Reed. Including Bob Dylan’s Don’t Think Twice, a version of It’s All Right, and Gee Whiz (popularized by Bob & Earl, among others), an old doo wop number the New York musician recorded in 1958 when I was 16 years old .