Tuesday 12 November 2013

UNDERRATED ALBUMS # 20

'Its lack of cliché and sentimentality make for a memorable, if low-key listening experience and an unusually authentic insight into the lives of its subject
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.


L-R -Nico, Warhol, Tucker, Reed, Morrison, Cale
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.



                                                                       * * * * *

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.

Here is a rock group called The Velvet Underground,
I show movies on them
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.’

 In ‘Starlight’ there is a roll-call of the ‘real people’ who populated Warhol’s avante garde counter-cultural films - ‘Viva, Little Joe, Baby Jane and Edie S.’*6 – his so-called ‘superstars’ of the street who he tried to sell to Hollywood (‘Starlight open wide…open up your door’). The low-key, chorus-free ‘Faces And Names’ closes the first half . Sung by Cale, it’s again in the first person with Warhol wishing everyone could look the same:-

                           ‘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.’

 And there we have a vivid illustration of Reed’s fundamentally difficult, prickly nature: even in a valedictory concept such as this one, there is little room for sentiment, but space is saved in which to rake back over old scores. Nevertheless, the fact that both Reed and Cale include references in the songs that portray themselves in a less than flattering light, make Songs For Drella an unflinching and admirable project. Its lack of cliché and sentimentality makes for a memorable, if low-key listening experience and an unusually authentic insight into the lives of its subject and authors. 

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 chart positions (# 22), it failed to hit the US Top 100. His previous album, New York (1989), a UK # 14 and US # 40, had been his most successful since the mid-‘70s. Riding this wave, Magic & Loss (1992) gave him his highest UK placing at # 6, but its gloomy concept about the death of friends lost Reed more listeners than he would ever regain.
 
*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…

*3 – The Velvet Underground proper made only three albums in as many years: The Velvet Underground & Nico (1967), White Light/White Heat (1968) and The Velvet Underground (1969). Of the two subsequent albums that bear their name, Reed, who wrote all of the songs, left during the recording of Loaded (1970). Remarkably, Reed turned his back on the music industry at this point and returned to his troubled family roots in Long Island, New York, where he worked as a typist in his father's tax accountancy office for some months before beginning his solo recording career in 1971.

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 and, in 1901, was actually the 8th largest. During the 1930s and ‘40s when he was growing up, the population was at record levels – more than twice what it is today. Clearly Pittsburgh was metaphorically a small town to Warhol who, in the song, reflects ‘there’s no Michelangelo… [and] no Dali coming from 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 debutnot 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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