Songs for Drella (1990)

This is a bit of a solemn project, a memorial album for Andy Warhol that Lou Reed and John Cale collaborated on after many years of estrangement, coming together in memory of their mentor and friend and blowing apart again almost immediately after. Perhaps because of lingering strains between them—or perhaps for some other reason entirely—the result is closer in feel to Double Fantasy than any kind of Velvets redux. Both artists are credited coequally for all 15 songs here but the styles veer about quite wildly, settling in two distinct places, one that sounds like John Cale and the other like Lou Reed. If the old Lennon & McCartney strategy for figuring out the real songwriter applies here, namely, who's got the lead vocal, then it's Reed by 10-5. But because it's not actually that simple (and isn't either with the Beatles), Songs for Drella also works as the Velvets redux everybody wanted. But that is more because the sense of Andy Warhol is so potent, taking off from the manifold images of him that Reed, Cale, and we as listeners carry around with us. They explore his biography, as in the opening "Smalltown," or in "Slip Away (A Warning)," which remembers the aftermath of his shooting. They play with his aesthetics and background milieu on "Trouble With Classicists" and "Images." Mostly they just heap love on him. You can feel it. This is a side of that whole scene that partly got lost in all the mess, but the degree of affection for Warhol that is on every song here, however melancholy, guilty, and defensive, is bracing. It's impossible to miss, the one thing I always take from it again. They liked Warhol. They resented him. They got exasperated by him. But more than anything they admired and loved him fiercely. They are humbled and proud to have been associated with him, and grateful. All that comes through the weird tensions and cross-currents that are nearly as palpable here. It's all good music, for all these reasons and more, but I think Reed has the advantage of Cale (which he evidently pressed with twice as many songs). This is the year after his mini-comeback New York, one of his better periods. He's all over his controlled noisy guitar squall thing here, and when he goes into his Coney Island Baby adorable pouty confessional style at the very end, in the song "Hello It's Me," he gets the last word and uses it to nearly steal the show. But I think the whole dang thing is just prime really, an interesting collaboration and a great album, testament, and set, tender and very moving at its best.