No one ought to be surprised to hear that Lou Reed was one of my favourite songwriters and I’m really excited that Light In the Attic (in collaboration with Laurie Anderson) have launched the Lou Reed Archive Series, in good time for what would have been the artist’s 80s birthday. The first instalment is Words & Music, May 1965 and is the first recording of several songs that later ended up in the VU repertoire. They’re given a folk take here, with contributions by John Cale as well. The songs were committed to tape and sent to Reed’s address as a way of copywriting them. Apparently the envelope was left unopened for almost 50 years.
