(Credits: Far Out / Apple Films / Album Cover)
Sat 31 January 2026 23:00, UK
Everybody has to start somewhere, even the veritable king of New York’s underground, Lou Reed.
Before the songwriter changed the music landscape forever, giving a voice and an artistic direction to The Velvet Underground before presiding over one of the most expansive solo careers in history, he was a quiet kid from Freeport, armed only with a tape recorder and an acoustic guitar.
Back in 2022, on what would have been Reed’s 80th birthday, Light In The Attic Records uncovered and released a deluge of early Lou Reed demos, thought to be some of his earliest known recordings, packaged together as Words and Music, May 1965. That date might be significant to some of the most anal-retentive of the songwriter’s fans as being months before The Velvet Underground recorded their first demos – or, indeed, settled on that fateful name.
Reportedly, Reed created those demo tapes as a budding 23-year-old songwriter, aiming to get an idea of his work across to his newly established bandmate, John Cale. Instead, they spent over 50 years rotting away in an envelope, only to be discovered and finally released long after the songwriter had sadly left this mortal coil.
Within the ever-expanding vinyl industry, demo releases have quite a divisive reputation. On a yearly basis, particularly around Record Store Day, artists and labels tend to use the guise of ‘rare never-before-heard demos’ in an effort to make a few quid off recordings that have been sitting in vaults for decades, deemed not good enough to be released when they were originally created. Reed, of course, has had his name attached to a plethora of these releases over the years.
Lou Reed – Words & Music – May 1965. (Credits: Album Cover)
Words and Music is vastly different to those cash-in albums, however. After all, the tracks encased on the record are hardly off-cuts from some forgotten album, or discarded tracks that Reed hoped would never see the light of day. They are the earliest origins of some of the most groundbreaking, beloved, and important songs of the 20th century.
The Velvet Underground’s early material went on to change the musical landscape indefinitely, influencing everybody from David Bowie to Joy Division. Without these scratchy, often warbled tape recordings of a seemingly reserved, softly spoken Lou Reed, there is no telling just how different the history of rock and roll would look. Even without that essential context, though, Words and Music still offers an incredible level of intrigue.
Given just how heavily The Velvets immersed themselves in experimental techniques and subversive arrangements, hearing tracks like ‘I’m Waiting for the Man’ or even ‘Pale Blue Eyes’ so stripped-back and bare feels like some kind of unnatural privilege.
What’s more, they sound pretty fantastic in their stripped-back form, placing ultimate focus on the still somewhat innocent voice of Lou Reed as he gently plucks at what sounds like a battered old acoustic guitar.
While these primitive records aren’t likely to replace the versions of these legendary tracks that originally saw release, once they had been moulded by Cale and the rest of The Velvet Underground, Words and Music is an invaluable resource when looking at Reed’s earliest origins. Those tape recordings, after all, were his first introduction to a world he would soon come to dominate.
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