Directed by Ed Lachman, Songs For Drella begins Warhol’s journey by inhabiting his outcast youth in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania: “ I hate being odd in a small town, if they stare let them stare in New York City,” goes the faux-jaunty ‘Small Town’, Reed describing Andy as a “ pink eyed painting albino” with “ bad skin, bad eyes, gay and fatty”.
It’s a hell of a life story too, all the more fascinating to modern audiences for the additional 30-year remove. It made the myth feel human – and pop art deeply personal. And the surgical insight, cold emotion and brutal honesty the two poured out over the course of its 55 minutes opened a window onto the New York art world of the ’60s. Occasionally backdropped by mournful monochrome photographs from the ‘60s, the weight and dignity of the piece was unlike anything we’d ever seen, even in our teen goth phase. Eschewing all showmanship, Reed and Cale faced off over guitar, viola and piano on a pitch-black set. No other live music performances were this funereal and this furious. When the film was first televised in 1990, to this young viewer it was a dark revelation. Sound familiar? In some ways Songs For Drella – the live concert film of Lou Reed and John Cale’s tribute album to Andy Warhol, long-believed lost and now streaming on MUBI – is like The Velvet Underground’s Get Back. Riven with frictions and bad blood, the main players of a legendary and influential 1960s rock act sit down facing each other in an on-camera, quasi-studio environment and play their goddamn hearts out until an album appears.
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