A Scholar Has Discovered a Previously Unknown Tape of Lou Reed Singing Bitter Songs About Andy Warhol

Deep in the archives of the Andy
Warhol Museum, a lost piece of musical history has been discovered:
A tape of unreleased recordings by Velvet Underground frontman Lou
Reed with lyrics based on Andy Warhol’s 1975 book The Philosophy of Andy Warhol: From A to B and
Back Again.

Judith Peraino, a Cornell music
professor, discovered the cassette tape two years ago, while
researching a book on Warhol in the 1970s. She has since published
her findings in the new issue of the Journal
of Musicology.

One of nearly 3,500 audiotapes
in Warhol’s archives—the artist often recorded conversations for
books, plays, or Interview magazine—the newly discovered tape contains 12
completed songs and parts of a 13th. Only a handful of the songs
have ever been heard before.

“What makes this rare is the
gift aspect of the tape—that Lou Reed intentionally created both a
curated set of songs and a composed set of songs on tape meant only
for Warhol.” Peraino told the
Cornell Chronicle. “This is a harbinger of the mixtape culture
and gift-giving that flourished in the 1980s and 1990s.”

Reed is the only musician on the
recording. “He sings softly and close to the microphone with a
slight nasal voice and lisp,” Peraino wrote in the
Journal of
Musicology. “The chord
changes are basic and repetitive, drawn from the vocabularies of
folk music or rudimentary rock.”

Warhol managed the Velvet
Underground in 1966 and ‘67, but Reed fired him before beginning
work on the band’s second album. Nevertheless, the two artists
remained friends, and were even considering collaborating on a
Broadway play version of Reed’s album Berlin in 1974. But the project never came to fruition
and Warhol instead produced the musical Man on the Moon, which bombed and closed after just five
performances. 

Peraino speculates that Reed’s
tape based on Warhol’s Philosophy is related to their aborted project, but that
it was recorded at a time that Reed was no longer interested in
collaborating with Warhol. “I think he was making fun of the idea
[of a musical], digging at Warhol,” she told the New York Times.

Indeed, the recording includes
some bitter words from Reed, in which he accuses Warhol of using
people and claims it would have been better if the artist had died
after being shot in 1968. After the song ends, Reed adds a spoken
apology. 

Due to copyright concerns, it’s
unlikely that the public will hear the recording any time soon—only
professional scholars have access to the archives, and even Peraino
was prevented from quoting any of the lyrics directly. Both the
Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and the Reed estate
could conceivably claim rights to the tape, as well as Reed’s
record label at the time of the recording. 

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of Lou Reed Singing Bitter Songs About Andy Warhol appeared
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