Lou Reed vs Andy Warhol's "Empire"

Several months back I did a project where I added a soundtrack to Andy Warhol's 1964 silent film "Empire" which I described at the time as thus;

"Empire" was a black & white art film made by Andy Warhol in 1964 for which he simply pointed a camera at the Empire State building overnight and let it run. The film is silent and runs for eight hours and nothing actually happens other than some atmospheric and lighting conditions. The film starts in the early evening as the sun sets. As darkness falls flood lights in the tower come on and lights from other buildings flash on and off. Clouds roll in, birds fly past, planes fly by. Occasionally the lights go off and the tower is lost in darkness. Since the film is in black & white and silent it has a timeless quality, although shot in 1964 it could easily be from any time since the tower was finished in 1931. This quality is added to by the degradation of the already grainy super 8 film stock.

Of those critics who deigned to take note of the film most dismissed it as a crude gimmick. However there were a few who saw it as a new way of using a film camera to make a landscape just as his later "Screen Tests" would become a new way of portraiture. Due to it's extreme length the film has rarely been shown in it's entirety. Warhol himself refused to show it after 1972. After his death it was shown at MOMA which eventually created an edited down two hour version.

There have been a few tributes filmed using modern video cameras including one that is almost as long as the original but the modern video lacks entirely the grainy authenticity and moodiness of the Warhol version.

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As the original film was silent and had no soundtrack I decided to add one using various tracks from the British band Cabaret Voltaire, one of the pioneers of Industrial Music starting in the late 1970's and into the 80's. The Cabs were not only pioneers in creating the new genre of music but also in making videos using grainy found footage synched up to their electronic drones. As such I figured they were the perfect soundtrack for a Warhol film, I also added a bunch of their tracks to a number of Warhol's infamous "Screen Test" portraits. Basically I thought they turned out like something that Warhol would have found interesting but than I remembered there was a possibly even better candidate for a posthumous collaboration. Like someone who actually had collaborated with Warhol.

Lou Reed's classic 1967's band the Velvet Underground were discovered by Warhol who built a multi-media show around them called "The Exploding Plastic Inevitable" in 1966 and then "produced" their 1967 debut album. I put produced in quotes because the band themselves always said Warhol, who had little knowledge or interest in music had little presence in the studio other than to occasionally say "Can it be louder"? (The answer by the way was; "Yes. Yes it can"). What he was able to do is use his clout to get them a deal in the first place and convince the label to give them leeway in the studio to do what they wanted. He did introduce them to the German singer Nico and have her sing a couple songs on the album over their protests. He also designed the album's classic banana album cover. The result was an album that every survey of most influential albums lists as one of the top ten most important. At the time the album was however a flop and Warhol and the Velvets drifted apart. The band would put out three more classic albums before breaking up in 1972. Warhol would occasionally dabble in music from time to time; doing a screen-test of Bob Dylan, designing album covers for the Rolling Stones "Sticky Fingers" and Billy Squires's "Emotions In Motion" and a video for the Cars "Hello Again" which he also appears in as the worlds worst lip-syncher. He died in 1987. As for Reed he went on to a long and influential career as one of the cranky Godfathers of Punk. In he reunited with former Velvets member John Cale to record a tribute to Warhol in 1989's "Songs For Drella" which got mostly negative reviews. In 2011 he collaborated with Metallica in recording "Lulu", a tribute to the classic Louise Brooks film "Diary Of A Lost Girl" which got even worse reviews. He died in 2013.

Before that however he recorded one of the more controversial albums of the era with 1975's "Metal Machine Music", a double album of nothing but layers of screeching feedback, distortion, static and white noise that was by any objective standard completely unlistenable. Reed and the Velvets had been pioneers in experimenting with feedback on their first two albums but this time there were no actual songs, just the feedback. Suffice it to say the reaction was not friendly with the album getting universally hostile reviews and no chart action or airplay and it swiftly went out of print. Reed himself once said; "Nobody I know has actually listened to all of it. Including me". The 1991 book "The Worst Records Of All Time" ranked it as number two, behind only an album of a non singing Elvis Presley giving rambling stage banter and ahead of the likes of The Shaggs, Pat Boone, John Travolta, Bruce Willis, Joey Bishop, Joel Grey, America, Milli Vanilli and the much despised Starland Vocal Band. However the album would take on a second, if limited life as an inspiration for the next generation of extreme Industrial and Noise band like Throbbing Gristle, Cabaret Voltaire, the Severed Heads, Residents, SPK and Sonic Youth and eventually got re-released on CD which I kinda forgot I had.

Anyway when I remembered it I realized it was perhaps a better candidate for a mashup with Warhol's "Empire" with it's soundtrack of urban cacophony, and one that Warhol and Reed themselves would have agreed to if one of them had thought of it. I'm still going to leave the Cabaret Voltaire set I already did as it's frankly more varied and interesting, not to mention listenable, but here's the Warhol/Reed mashup in all it's screeching post-modern glory.

Since "Metal Machine Music" was a double album I divided it into four parts, one for each side.

LOU REED vs ANDY WARHOL ~ "METAL EMPIRE MUSIC" pt.1;


LOU REED vs ANDY WARHOL ~ "METAL EMPIRE MUSIC" pt.2;


LOU REED vs ANDY WARHOL ~ "METAL EMPIRE MUSIC" pt.3;


LOU REED vs ANDY WARHOL ~ "METAL EMPIRE MUSIC" pt.4;


2022 UPDATE; As I mentioned above the full eight hour Warhol film is locked away in the bowells of MOMA and not currently available but somebody did shoot an eight hour tribute of the Empire State Building. Since it was shot using video rather than the super 8 Warhol used it doesn't have the grainy charm of the original but it's the only eight hour version available so I got the idea of taking it and adding a version of Lou Reed's "Metal Machine Music" which I slowed down 100% thus stretching it out to a full eight hours (as well as making it way more ambient and dreamy) to get the closest approximation of the full project in one film. Note I also had to serioulsy compress the sound file to make it fit and uploadable.

"EMPIRE"(REDUX) vs "METAL MACHINE MUSIC" (Slowed down 100%);



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By way of context here's some actual footage from the Warhol's "Exploding Plastic Inevitable" with the Velvet Underground circa 1966. The first few minutes have actual live sound while the rest obviously are Velvets tracks that were added later.


And while we're at it here's the video Warhol made in 1984 for the Cars "Hello Again" including Warhol himself as the world's worst lip-syncher. The video has references to his "Screen Tests" and the "Exploding Plastic Inevitable". It was his last major project.

THE CARS ~ "HELLO AGAIN";