Lou Reed, Words & Music, May 1965 (Light in the Attic)

“I’ve had some strange experiences since returning to ny, sick but strange and fascinating and ultimately revealing, healing and helpful,” Lou Reed wrote sometime in 1965, the year the recordings collected here were made. He was writing to Delmore Schwartz, his first mentor: “ny has so many sad, sick people and I have a knack for meeting them. They try to drag you down with them. If you’re weak ny has many outlets. I can’t resist peering, probing, sometimes participating, sometimes going right to the edge before sidestepping. Finding viciousness in yourself and that fantastic killer urge and worse yet having the opportunity presented before you is certainly interesting. Interesting is not the word.”