Words & Music, May 1965
In May 1965, Lou Reed was a 23-year-old staff songwriter and session musician for Pickwick Records in New York, churning out doo-wop and rock ’n’ roll “soundalike” singles to be sold in drugstores. There he was introduced to his future Velvet Underground bandmate, the Welsh-born John Cale, when the label put the two of them together for a house band called The Primitives. (They would go on to make the jokey novelty song “The Ostrich.”) Reed could write teen pop hits at a rapid clip, but his real creative focus essentially starts with this foundational document, *Words & Music, May 1965*, which he made with Cale and which includes the first known recordings of some of the Velvets’ most well-known songs. There’s almost nothing thematically linking his former dime-store hits-for-hire and these strands of The Velvet Underground’s underbelly-surveying DNA. But the collection (the first in a series of archival releases) does highlight the songwriting discipline and rigor that would see Reed through countless stylistic changes and a 50-plus-year career as one of America’s most important artists. After he made these recordings, Reed mailed the original reel-to-reel tapes to himself, and they remained unopened until four years after his death in 2013, when his wife, artist Laurie Anderson, gave them to the New York Public Library as part of an archival exhibition. They reveal a lot. Even just their existence suggests that Reed was protective of his intellectual property and took his day job as a songwriter seriously: The package\'s seals and postmarks served as an ad hoc copyright (should anyone have questioned the songs\' provenance), and he introduces each song here by its title and the boilerplate verbiage “words and music, Lou Reed.” Much more importantly, though, the recordings not only unearth the root structure of one of American music’s most quietly influential bands, but they lay bare some unexpected inspirations along the way, while offering all kinds of surprises in terms of how the songs were originally conceived. The demo of “I’m Waiting for the Man” isn’t the propulsive, distorted, seedy, swaggering ode to scoring that you know it as. Instead, it’s almost jaunty; like porch-light folk and doo-wop more suited to Gerde’s than CBGB’s. “Heroin” is similarly rootsy—not a dark, droning, screeching dirge but a fingerpicked Woody Guthrie-esque ballad with different lyrics (most notably the opening line, “I *know* just where I’m going,” before the Velvets introduced a little uncertainty years later). Of the other classics here, Cale’s harmonizing, along with a doleful harmonica, gives the demo of “Pale Blue Eyes” a distinctly country-folk feel. And while it would later appear on Nico’s *Chelsea Girl*, “Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams,” sung here by Cale, takes on a minimalist, musique-concrète-like form. (It’s by far the most experimental of the lot.) There are, of course, plenty of song sketches that never became fully fledged Velvets or Reed releases: “Buttercup Song” is a particularly goofy folk ditty (Velvets fans have long referred to this unheard song by its lyric “Never Get Emotionally Involved With a Man, a Woman, a Beast or a Child”), and “Stockpile” and “Buzz Buzz Buzz” are rambling 12-bar blues-rock numbers—revelatory for a band that would outright ban blues licks in their music. What’s underscored mostly by these recordings is, not surprisingly, Reed’s strength and range as a songsmith. Todd Haynes’ 2021 documentary *The Velvet Underground* attempted to position Reed as a pop songwriter—thorny and polarizing as he might’ve been—and foil to violist Cale, a devout student of the avant garde. And *Words & Music, May 1965* does, to some degree, support that thesis. The songs do establish a lot of the central themes of the Velvets and Reed\'s solo work to follow: the casual pursuit of drugs, the ecstatic effects of their consumption, the equally ecstatic effects of falling in love, the New York character sketches, the existential questing, the occasionally corny throwaways. But in their folksy original form—and without Cale\'s more left-field influence on arrangement and production, which would shape the band’s official recordings a couple years later—they also imagine a very different Velvet Underground.
Light in the Attic Records, in cooperation with Laurie Anderson, proudly announces the inaugural title in their ongoing Lou Reed Archive Series: Words & Music, May 1965. Released in tandem with the late artist’s 80th birthday celebrations, the album offers an extraordinary, unvarnished, and plainly poignant insight into one of America’s true poet-songwriters. Capturing Reed in his formative years, this previously unreleased collection of songs—penned by a young Lou Reed, recorded to tape with the help of future bandmate John Cale, and mailed to himself as a “poor man’s copyright”—remained sealed in its original envelope and unopened for nearly 50 years. Its contents embody some of the most vital, groundbreaking contributions to American popular music committed to tape in the 20th century. Through examination of these songs rooted firmly in the folk tradition, we see clearly Lou’s lasting influence on the development of modern American music – from punk to art-rock and everything in between. A true time capsule, these recordings not only memorialize the nascent sparks of what would become the seeds of the incredibly influential Velvet Underground; they also cement Reed as a true observer with an innate talent for synthesizing and distilling the world around him into pure sonic poetry. Featuring contributions from Reed’s future bandmate, John Cale, Words & Music, May 1965 presents in their entirety the earliest-known recordings of such historic songs as “Heroin,” “I’m Waiting for the Man,” and “Pale Blue Eyes”—all of which Reed would eventually record and make indelibly influential with the Velvet Underground. Also included are several more previously-unreleased compositions that offer additional insight into Reed’s creative process and early influences. Produced by Laurie Anderson, Don Fleming, Jason Stern, Hal Willner, and Matt Sullivan, the album features newly-remastered audio from the original tapes by GRAMMY®-nominated engineer, John Baldwin. Rounding out the package are new liner notes from acclaimed journalist and author, Greil Marcus, plus in-depth archival notes from Don Fleming and Jason Stern, who oversee the Lou Reed Archive. The centerpiece of the inaugural Lou Reed Archive Series release is the Deluxe 45-RPM Double LP Edition of Words & Music, May 1965. Limited to 7,500 copies worldwide, this stunning collection was designed by multi-GRAMMY®-winning artist Masaki Koike and features a stylized, die-cut gatefold jacket manufactured by Stoughton Printing Co., with sequential foil numbering. Housed inside are two 45-RPM 12-inch LPs, pressed on HQ-audiophile-quality 180-gram vinyl at Record Technology Inc. (RTI) featuring the only vinyl release of “I’m Waiting for the Man – May 1965 Alternate Version.” A bonus 7-inch, housed in its own unique die-cut picture sleeve and manufactured at Third Man Record Pressing includes the only vinyl release of six previously-unreleased bonus tracks providing a never-before-seen glimpse into Reed’s formative years, including early demos, a cover of Bob Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right,” and a doo-wop serenade recorded in 1958 when the legendary singer-songwriter was just sixteen years old. An accompanying saddle-stitched, die-cut 28-page book features lyrics, archival photos, and liner notes Also included is an archival reproduction of a rarely-seen letter, written by Reed to his college professor and poet, Delmore Schwartz, circa 1964. The set includes a CD containing the complete audio from the package, housed in a die-cut jacket.
Featuring the earliest known renditions of several Velvet Underground classics, this archival set of acoustic demos highlights a formative period in Lou Reed and John Cale’s artistic partnership.
Unearthed after nearly 50 years, you can hear (and feel) the Velvet Underground taking shape in this compelling collection of lost demos featuring John Cale
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Similar to Blind Willie McTell’s Last Session, the fact that Lou Reed’s Words & Music, May 1965 exists is as stunning as anything the recording contains.
Whenever I hear that a musician is releasing lost demos, and live performances, from their personal archive I start to question why. Do these recordings
The 23-year-old Reed and John Cale try things out for size in this treasure trove of previously unreleased demos
Lou Reed and John Cale hint at the other side of the swinging '60s with a fascinating collection of mid-'60s demo recordings for the Velvet Underground.
Lou Reed has this reputation as a provocateur with one foot in the avant-garde, and while that is certainly a reputation he properly earned over the course of his long career, it isn’t what initially drove him.
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