Why Don't You Smile Now: Lou Reed at Pickwick Records 1964-1965

A review of a new reissue of Lou Reed's time at the cheapo label Pickwick chronicles the first act of a major artist while also serving as a document of a specific moment in pop music history.

Lou Reed signed on to be a staff writer at Pickwick Records in 1964, a year associated with two major music explosions: the British Invasion and the rise of Motown. Pickwick wanted the fledgling songwriter to help the label create knockoffs of those styles and the other swinging sounds of the '60s: surf-rock, uptown soul, hot rod ravers, girl group pop, teenage melodramas…anything that crossed the pop charts, really. 

Pickwick specialized in cheap records, the kind designed to hoodwink unsuspecting listeners into taking home an LP filled with facsimiles of actual hits. If one of their 45s happened to make a run on the charts, that was a bonus; they made a living on the fringes of pop culture, spinning out exploitation records that sometimes had their own peculiar charms. All the label needed to keep their operation humming were musicians itching for their first big break. 

Enter Lou Reed. Fresh out of Syracuse, he accepted an offer to join Pickwick extended through the cousin of his former manager's girlfriend—a roundabout way to enter their stable. Operating from the template created at the Brill Building, Pickwick pushed Reed into an office with three other songwriters: Terry Phillips, who previously worked at Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller's Trio Music, Jerry Vance, and Jimmie Sims. Their agreement with the label dictated that all compositions would be jointly credited to the four songwriters, so discerning which songs are the creation of Reed is difficult but not impossible. Often, the four writers would rush into Pickwick's in-house studio to cut their new tunes, recordings that would then be issued under a variety of invented monikers. Reed played scratchy guitar on a number of these tunes and sang lead on occasion, although murky studio records mean that it's possible some of his contributions have been lost to history.

Why Don't You Smile Now: Lou Reed at Pickwick Records 1964-1965, the third entry in Light in the Attic's ongoing Lou Reed Archive series, rounds up 25 tracks that either certainly or most likely bear Reed's stamp. A good chunk of Why Don't You Smile Now originally appeared on Soundsville!, a 1965 Pickwick LP designed to be a sampler of all the different sounds emanating from all the different scenes across the United States of America—the only catch was, each of the cuts were emulations invented by the label's staff. Not everything on the '65 album wound up on this collection—"It's Hard for a Girl in a World Full of Men," a clever sendup of the folky sound of "The Campus" credited to Connie Carson, isn't here—but with its ever-changing styles and singers Why Don't You Smile Now nevertheless plays like an expanded version of Soundsville!. 

The on-the-fly recordings on Why Don't You Smile Now can sometimes seem brittle, particularly when the arrangement is overstuffed with vocal harmonies, percussion, piano—anything that mimics either Phil Spector's Wall of Sound or the big beat of the Motor City. These compressed, trebly productions can be appealing artifacts, especially when the song is an effective replica, as it is on the driving "Soul City," where Reed and company ably write an infectious Motown dance number. Where Why Don't You Smile Now gets interesting is when the sides are stripped down to rock & roll basics, relying on echoey guitars, bass, and drums. Here, the arrangements can be slightly off-kilter, woozy enough to seem purposeful, amateurish enough to seem accidental. "Ya Running, But I'll Getcha" hits its circular hook so hard it stumbles into a monochromatic chant, whereas the guitar drone propelling the R&B of "Why Don't You Smile" seems oddly prescient; underneath the group harmonies, there are hints of the Velvet Underground. 

As it happens, "Why Don't You Smile" is the first song to bear a co-writing by Reed and John Cale, the pair of musicians who would soon form the Velvet Underground. Reed and Cale met when Pickwick decided Reed needed an actual band to play live dates to promote "The Ostrich," an absurd wannabe dance craze record written and sung by Reed under the name the Primitives. Reed wrote "The Ostrich" with a tuning Jerry Vance discovered while messing around with his guitar: all the strings were tuned to the same note, giving it a strangely big, shimmering sound. It was a technique not far removed from that of avant-garde artist La Monte Young, whose group included John Cale and Tony Conrad, a pair of musicians improbably recruited to play in the touring Primitives. Conrad and Cale were thrilled by the droning guitar, so they accepted the offer thereby igniting the spark that led to the Velvet Underground.

"The Ostrich" doesn't sound too similar to the Velvet Underground—it is first and foremost a throwaway dance number, distinguished by its wobbly guitars and a yelping Reed—but it, like a handful of other cuts here, do point toward the Velvets. The breakneck "Cycle Annie," a spin on hot rod rock that flips gender stereotypes upside down, bears a sharp lyric from Reed that he delivers with a hipster grin that he'd later hone during mid-period Velvets. "You're Driving Me Insane"—a Rolling Stones rip credited to the Roughnecks—finds Lou singing with a sneer and playing the thin, frenetic rhythm guitar that became his signature.

That scratch guitar and flat vocal affect is scattered throughout Why Don't You Smile Now, sometimes popping up in seriously incongruous settings, such as singing a dorky cover of "Little Deuce Coupe" for a Beach Boys songbook album. Moments like these don't quite suggest Reed's future as much as place him within the context of his time. He cut his teeth by chasing trends, gaining skills that'd pop up in unexpected places. The fun of Why Don't You Smile Now is how it doesn't separate the misfires from the moments of inspiration. The result is a raucous and ridiculous blend that not only chronicles the first act of a major artist but serves as a document of a specific moment in pop music history when much of the record business was driven by cheerfully sleazy exploitation.