Lou Reed: Words & Music, May 1965 album review — an intriguing time capsule

The inaugural release from the Lou Reed Archive Series, working with reissue specialist label Light in the Attic, is an intriguing time capsule from the dawn of The Velvet Underground. Words & Music, May 1965 is based on a tape recording that Reed mailed to his parents’ address in Freeport, New York, a cut-price way of copyrighting music. Among the tracks are “Heroin” and “I’m Waiting for the Man”, which featured on the first Velvet Underground album in 1967.

Remaining sealed in its package until recently, the tape was made as the band was beginning to take shape. The songs are performed by Reed and John Cale, the Welsh experimental musician with whom he co-founded The Velvet Underground. The pair met while Reed was working as a hack songwriter at Pickwick Records, a low-budget Brill Buildings setup that churned out surf pop and British Invasion knock-offs. This was the brashly commercial backdrop to Reed’s much higher aspirations for his own songs, through which he wanted to fuse literature and rock music.

The album takes its name from his mumbled introductions to the songs on the reel-to-reel tape recording. “Words and music: Lou Reed,” he says, establishing his authorial rights. There are two versions of “I’m Waiting for the Man”, his mordant account of an uptown trip to buy drugs from a Harlem dealer. Both have a folky, fingerpicked feel, with almost yodelled vocals from Reed and Cale. The second version adds a tired clip-clop beat, as though the journey to 125th Street were undertaken on a mule rather than a subway train or bus.

Bob Dylan’s influence is powerful. “Men of Good Fortune”, which later turned up on Reed’s 1973 album Berlin as stentorian rock, is here played as a strummed Dylan affair with a harmonica solo: the ear for pastiche that Reed honed at Pickwick Records is obvious. Other songs try to move beyond this dated folk-revival sound. “Buttercup Song” is a satirical version of coffee-house folk with a hip sneer, at once an act of tribute and rejection, while “Wrap Your Troubles in Dreams” is a repetitive avant-garde mantra sung by Cale.

“Heroin” points towards the downtown demimonde that The Velvet Underground would soundtrack so magnificently. Hazy acoustic guitar melodies wreath Reed’s voice, which alternately sounds strung-out and babbling as the effects of the drug are dramatised. Dissipation is shaped by artistic certainty. “I know just where I’m going,” he sings, a tyro willing the way ahead into view.

★★★★☆

‘Words & Music, May 1965’ is released by Light in the Attic