Images

Of course, Cale's longest-running, deepest, most meaningful, most destructive collaboration was with Lou Reed. Those who don't know Cale think of the Velvet Underground as Reed's band. Those who worship at the shrine of Cale tend to view Reed rather negatively, and the reverse seems equally true. Me, I enjoy a lot of Reed's work, but it doesn't engage me as directly or as deeply as Cale's. If you're coming from a different conceptual space I can imagine "Street Hassle" would be more moving than "Cable Hogue" - to me the former's very interesting and intellectually engaging, but weirdly like darkside Harry Chapin.

Anyway, you'd think that both viewpoints would find something appealing about Songs for Drella. The two poles of the Velvet Underground, together to remember their lost friend and mentor. And it just doesn't work out that way. They try to find the old magic of the Velvet Underground on a few tracks, notably "Images" - a seemingly born-of-improv attempt to recapture the assault-drone they produced live for Warhol's film showings. They do some Lou Reed songs, some John Cale songs, many indeterminate ones.

It's an enjoyable album, it's touching in spots and illuminating in others, and it's convincing as a collaboration - it's hard to tell who to credit for most of the songs. (Reed is quite sure he did all of it, but what else is new.)

I don't know why I don't care much for it. It may be the subject matter - Warhol was a catalyst of many interesting things, but his art generally doesn't do much for me. There's also the fact that the album has a decidedly passive-aggressive feel to it - Reed had a lot of animosity towards Warhol, and he couldn't get rid of it completely. There's the little biographical note that both men abandoned and avoided Warhol his last five years of life.

Listening to it, you feel you've intruded on an uncomfortable wake, where the guests are drunk enough to admit past cruelties and to slip in barbs at the deceased, but not drunk enough to let go their masks and hit emotional catharsis. Then, too, they hate each other. Don't you get enough of that in real life?

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Faces and Names

It's hard to know what to do with Songs for Drella, an album where Lou Reed sings most of the tracks. Especially since John Cale writes in his liner notes, "I must therefore say that although I think [Reed] did most of the work, he has allowed me to keep a position of dignity in the process." Cale disavowed this to a certain extent in What's Welsh for Zen ("I did at least as much as Lou, if not more"), but given that several songs are written in Reed's own voice and none are in Cale's, I'm not sure I believe it. Oh, the perils of doing an Andy Warhol bio-album. For now, anyway, I'm going to do the songs that Cale sings or influences unmistakably.

Him and his collaborators - pff.

Anyway, Faces and Names - considered "Cale enough" for inclusion in Seducing Down the Door, for some reason - sounds more like a typical Lou Reed litany to me. The trademark sign is hovering there in the background, a superscript to the whole song. There's the infinite repetition of the title phrase, the focus on identity, the clipped syntax - it all adds up to Lou. It's an interesting lyric, since it is purely from Warhol's perspective. I suppose it taught me something about Andy Warhol, at any rate.

The music sounds like something Cale might come up with - there are even slight similarities with "In the Backroom" from Wrong Way Up. It's your typical 80s/90s Cale electric piano vamping, though Lou Reed's electric guitar accompaniment is very tasty and saves the track from being too somnolent. Cale's vocal is pleasant, but very restrained and undifferentiated - it seems emotionally flat. (Which seems to be the point, mind you.) The effect is hypnotic and depressing.

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