and authors.'
Songs For Drella (1990)
By Lou Reed & John Cale
When in late October, 2013,
I heard that Lou Reed had died, it reminded me that Songs For Drella was on my ‘to do list’ of underrated albums to
retro-review. So now seems an appropriate time to get on with it. A few words
first though, about the man himself and the reaction to his passing.
I was somewhat surprised by the outpouring of ‘grief’ in the media – the I newspaper, for instance, featured a centre-spread of fulsome
celebrity tweets – whilst substantial obituaries in the qualities may have
puzzled readers who didn’t also incline towards the Mojo side of the music press. A seminal figure in the history of
Rock music, Reed was to be sure, but as a personality he could be infamously
arrogant, irascible and charmless (possibly a side-effect of his brains being jangled by the electric shock treatment inflicted on him at the behest of his parents during his troubled youth). Apart from ‘Walk On The Wild Side’ (UK # 10,
US # 16, 1972) and the Various Artists charity single, ‘Perfect Day’ (UK # 1,
1997), his solo records and those of his band, The Velvet Underground, had
never seriously troubled the charts*1. Offsetting, but by no means
overshadowing the lamentations, was grudging praise from the likes of The Daily Mail, which was however, at
pains to characterise Reed as one of a significant number of Rock luminaries
from the Sodom & Gomorrah Sixties who were the toxic junky libertines
responsible for polluting generations of the young and innocent ever since. Mail readers who might have had ‘Perfect
Day’ played at weddings and funerals must have felt betrayed and doubly bereft
by the revelations that the song was not about a lovely walk in the park, but
was instead a paean to that hardest of drugs, heroin…apparently*2.
I doubt that I need to remind readers here of how important
The Velvet Underground were. Suffice to
say that few, if any Rock artists have exerted so much influence with so little
commercial success*3. Notably, however, it is difficult to point to people who
conspicuously influenced Reed or The Velvets: a sign of their unusual level of
originality as artists.
Although Lou Reed was by far the principal songwriter, Welshman
John Cale was a key creative member of the otherwise American Velvets, bringing
both classical training, multi-instrumentalism and an avant garde sensibility
to the band. As a solo performer, he has built up a varied and often daring
body of work, operating in a realm where commercial success has not been a
priority. He has also been a notable producer of albums by early Velvets guest
vocalist, Nico, as well as The Stooges, Patti Smith, The Modern Lovers,
Siouxsie & The Banshees and The Happy Mondays amongst others.
 |
| L-R -Nico, Warhol, Tucker, Reed, Morrison, Cale |
*
* * * *
Reed & Cale had parted company in 1968 after the second
Velvets album, and it came as something of a surprise when they teamed up again
on Songs For Drella. The catalyst for
the reunion was the death in 1987 of their mentor, the modern artist Andy
Warhol, who designed the cover and was also credited with production of their
momentous debut album (the actual producer was Tom Wilson*4). Not only had
Warhol involved the band in the cutting edge goings on at his New York base of
operations, The Factory, and put them into his happening multimedia circus, The Exploding Plastic Inevitable show,
he’d also become their personal friend. Their tribute to him, Songs For Drella, provides a deeply felt
and fascinating insider view of one the most remarkable artists of the C20th -
no matter what you may think of his work (personally, I can take or leave
Warhol, but there’s no denying his impact or influence and Reed & Cale’s
album is a moving portrait of the man).
In the sleeve note, which includes Reed’s admirably concise
summary of the fifteen songs on the record, Cale admits that Reed ‘did most of
the work’ whilst allowing him ‘to keep a position of dignity through the process’
(a phrase which hints at the fundamentally uneasy relationship between the two
men). Although all of the songs are credited as co-compositions, Reed takes
lead vocal on ten of them. The instrumentation is sparse, with Reed on guitars,
Cale on keyboards and viola, with no other musicians taking part.
The album’s title, by the way, derives from Warhol’s Factory
nickname, a conflation of Dracula and Cinderella, presumably inspired by the
artist’s rise from humble origins to multi-media maestro, as well as his
deathly pallor and albinoid mop of silver hair (the pallor was the product of
pancake foundation whilst the hair was actually a series of wigs that he
alternated and had trimmed…)
The songs on the record quote from Warhol’s journals, his
conversation and the stock of homilies which he would bestow on friends, fellow
artists and employees. The lyrics herein could only have been written by really
close insiders such as Reed and Cale.
Cale’s vamping solo piano and Reed’s typically laconic
vocal, gets proceedings underway with the lively ‘Smalltown’, a ‘gotta get
outta this place’ song in which a first-person Warhol resolves to leave his
Pittsburgh*5 roots far behind:-
‘Bad skin, bad eyes, gay and fatty –
People look at you funny…
I hate being odd in a small town –
If they stare, let them stare in New
York City
On ‘Open House’, we find Warhol in 1950s New York drawing
shoes at an industrial rate for an advertising agency – ‘550…today…It almost
made me faint’ – whilst following his old Czech mother’s advice about
cultivating friends by inviting them round for tea and giving them little
presents. Warhol was both garrulous and shy – ‘I like lots of people around me
/ But don’t kiss hello and please don’t touch’. Reed’s gentle intonation with Cale’s
dark synthesiser chords and two-note piano motif - perhaps hinting at a
doorbell’s chimes, evoke this personal delicacy.
‘Style It Takes’ is another quiet one, Cale reproducing the
seductively camp lilt of Warhol’s voice as he cajoles and flatters people into
backing or taking part in his projects. Reed’s guitar appears for the first
time here, subtly weaving into Cale’s billowing synth melody. We’re in the
1960s now and the song neatly depicts one of Warhol’s famous artworks and also
introduces its authors’ antecedents:-
‘I’ve got a Brillo box and I say it’s art,
It’s the same one you can buy at any supermarket
‘Cause I’ve got the style it takes
And you’ve got the people it takes.
‘Cause I’ve got the style it takes
And you’ve got the people it takes.
Here is a rock group called The Velvet Underground,
I show movies on them
Do you like their sound?
Do you like their sound?
‘Cause they have a style that grates
And I have art to make.’
That grating style is evident on the next track, ‘Work’,
which revolves around a rattling electric guitar figure and plinking piano,
whilst Reed recalls in the third person how Warhol would exhort him to knuckle
down, get on with it and stop wasting time. Andy’s credo was ‘It’s just work /
All that matters is work’ and this Factory ethic clearly still inspired Reed as
he remembers being told to write fifteen songs, not just ten, keep in ‘the
dirty words’ the better to ‘make trouble’ and not ‘think too much / ‘Cause
that’s just work that you don’t want to do’.
‘Trouble With Classicists’, a muscular guitar and piano
workout, sees Warhol rejecting the art establishment in favour of:-
‘…the
druggy downtown kids who spray-paint walls and trains,
I
like their lack of training, their primitive technique,
I
think sometimes it hurts you when you stay too long in school,
I
think sometimes it hurts you when you’re afraid to be called a fool.’
‘I always fall in love with someone
Who looks the way I wish that I could be…
‘People who want to meet the name I have
Are always disappointed when they meet me.’
‘Images’, which follows on logically, finds Warhol
celebrating his famous method of repeating images – sometimes of prosaic
household objects, sometimes of iconic celebrities - via the process of
silk-screening. Reed sings and the relentless industrial grind of his guitar
and Cale’s viola complement the song well.
The next two songs feature more conventional
chord-progressions and take us into the period following the attempt on
Warhol’s life in 1968 by the radical feminist writer, Valerie Solanas, who had
nurtured a brooding hatred of him after he’d lost the script of a play that
she’d submitted to him*7.
The tender ‘Slip Away (A Warning)’, anchored by a bass
guitar, finds the recuperating Warhol reluctantly withdrawing from The Factory
at the advice of friends and associates or his own safety. Fearing the loss of
his creative powers, the artist resigns himself to the changes happening around
him, but vows to stay true to himself. A lyrical guitar leads into ‘It Wasn’t
Me’, in which Warhol confronts the increasing mortality of those around him,
paying the price for the dissipated life-styles that tended to be the norm at
The Factory. Depending on your point of view, the tone is belligerently
defensive and/or irresponsible: ‘You wanted to work – I gave you a chance at
that…I never said give up control / I never said stick a needle in your arm and
die’. The instrumental break with Reed’s solo soaring above Cale’s swirling,
Debussyan piano is pure Prog-Rock and perfectly captures the anger and anguish
at the heart of the song.
‘I Believe’ sees Reed in a bracingly Old Testament mood, looking back on Solanas trying to kill
Warhol and righteously wishing her dead, swearing that he ‘would’ve pulled the
switch himself’. The galloping piano and distorted guitar point not only to the
retributive rage, but also the guilt felt by Reed, who apparently failed to
visit his stricken friend in hospital. It ends with Warhol’s poignant,
accusatory cry, ‘Visit me! Why didn’t you visit me?’
The Country-styled ‘Nobody But You’ cuts two ways with
post-shooting Warhol (who, in the 1970s, increasingly devoting himself to
cultivating high-profile patrons and making money) despising the people around
him as ‘nobodies’ whilst realizing he’ll ‘never be a bride’ and that underneath
his celebrity he craves anonymity.
The self-pitying tone at the end of ‘I Believe’ is picked up
again in ‘A Dream’. The longest track on the record at 6.33, it was apparently
lifted verbatim from Warhol’s journal. Cale again catches the flat rhythm of
Warhol’s voice, as he sinks further into lonliness, feeling old, unloved,
creatively bereft and abandoned by friends. After a visit from Cale, he gets to
thinking how he’d ‘never gotten a penny’ from the Velvets and how Reed snubs
him (‘I hate Lou, I really do!’) and didn’t even invite him to his wedding. And
he ‘did a cover for John, but I did it in black and white and he changed it to
colour. It would have been worth more if he’d left it my way, but you can’t
tell anybody anything – I’ve learnt that.’
Surrounded by a clanging guitar and spooked keyboards in an
echo chamber, Cale’s recitation is oddly compelling and catches the creeping,
nightmarish fear of death that Warhol suffered for the last two decades of his
life. The next track ‘Forever Changed’ breaks out of the miasma, upping the
tempo, with Cale again on vocals, voicing Warhol’s conviction that he was right
to leave it all behind and forge ahead in his own peculiar direction. The
propulsive playing reinforces this resolve although lines like ‘I lost myself
and never came back’ hint at Warhol’s inherent sadness.
Cale’s elegiac viola provides the background on ‘Hello, It’s
Me’, the bitter-sweet closer. Nostalgically, Reed tells his dead friend how
much he misses him and apologises for the belated nature of the tribute. Reed, also however, takes one
last shot at Valerie Solanas, reflecting that ‘You get less time for stealing a
car’ (surely, he meant more time?)
and scratching an old personal sore:-
‘They really hated you – now that’s all changed,
But I have some resentments that can never be unmade;
You hit me where it hurt – I didn’t laugh;
Your diaries are not a worthy epitaph.’
Inspired by their time together on the album, Reed and Cale reconvened the original Velvet Undergound with Mo Tucker and Sterling Morrison and, in the summer of 1993, embarked on a European tour which included an appearance at Glastonbury and some dates with U2. The reunion was abandoned however, when Reed and Cale once again decided their working relationship was insupportable. Apart from a brief appearance in 1996 by the two of them with Tucker (Morrison had died the year before, aged fifty-three, Nico in '88, aged 49) when they were inducted into The Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame, they never worked together again.
It is interesting to consider what Songs For Drella would have sounded like as a Velvet Underground record. Had Morrison and Tucker been on board, a fuller, more rhythmic sound might well have resulted, but perhaps the listener's focus may not have been so concentrated on the exceptional lyrics and the strange but true story related by Reed and Cale. As it stands, the album is an under-appreciated highlight of both men's careers.
N. B.
*1 – Although Songs
For Drella provided Reed with one of his best UK New York (1989), a UK UK
*2 – ‘Apparently’ indeed…the only mention of intoxicants of
any kind in ‘Perfect Day’ is the reference to ‘drinking sangria in the park’
and the song can be listened to very closely without any implication of heroin
arising. The fact that it appeared on the OST of the drug-drenched UK film, Trainspotting (1996), the year before
the BBC blithely arranged for its epic re-recording, may well have
substantiated the notion of it being about smack – well, hey, Reed did write
‘Heroin’ back in the ‘60s, right?
Right – and anyone who hears ‘Heroin’ – one of the great
art-songs of the C20th – as a glorification
of drugs simply isn’t listening,
either to its words (‘Heroin, be the death of me’) or its brilliantly unhinged
music. And while we’re on the topic, ‘Waiting For The Man’ is definitely about
hoping to score dope, but it’s equally about ‘feeling sick and dirty, more dead
than alive’. OK – there will always be a certain kind of teenager drawn to
Death Metal and black-draped Goth fantasies, but it’s not the responsibility of
the artist to hand out hymn books, and Reed was nothing if not an artist.
Having said that, I do seem to recall Reed in 1974,
supporting The Who in an epic concert at The Valley, stadium of Charlton
Athletic FC, performing ‘Heroin’ whilst simulating shooting up…But then, memory
plays tricks: apparently Humble Pie came on before The Who and were stunningly
good. So stunning, in fact, that I have no recollection of them whatever, despite
Steve Marriott being one of my favourite singers of all time…
Only Sterling Morrison of the original band also appears on Loaded, whilst none of them feature on Squeeze (1973). Nonetheless, Loaded – unlike Squeeze - remains a very good record and is worthy of exploration by Reed fans who may somehow have missed it.
*4 – Tom Wilson – unusually for the time, a black producer
of mainly white artists – worked with
Bob Dylan, Simon & Garfunkel, The Animals, The Blues Project and The
Mothers Of Invention. Notably, he was also at the desk for Nico’s first and
best album, Chelsea Girl (1967).
*5 – Pittsburgh ,
famous for its steel industry, may have seemed like a small town to Warhol, but
it’s currently the 20th largest city in the US Pittsburgh Pittsburgh
*6 – A similar cast of characters inhabit Reed’s ‘Walk On
The Wild Side’ – Holly, Candy, Little Joe, Sugar Plum Fairy and Jackie. They
too all appeared in Warhol’s ‘art movies’. ‘Little Joe’, who figures in both
lists was the hunky junky bisexual, Joe Dallesandro (who according to ‘WOTWS’
‘never once gave it away / Everyone had to pay and pay’). Shots of Joe taken by
Warhol are used on two famous album covers – the infamous zipper sleeve of The
Rolling Stones Sticky Fingers (1971) and
The Smiths (1984) eponymous debut – not that you’d know it, as his face
isn’t visible in either picture.
*7 – Solanas shot Warhol at The Factory, also wounding an
art critic and attempting to shoot Warhol’s manager before her gun jammed.
Following her release from prison just three years later, she continued her
feminist activities until her death, aged 52, in 1988, satisfyingly for her
perhaps, seeing out Warhol who had died, aged 58, the year before.
(C. IGR 2013)
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