ALBUM RELEASE NEWS

Lou Reed was — and still is, really — one of rock & roll’s most transformative and influential songwriters and performers. Before he made an indelible mark with The Velvet Underground and then as a solo artist over his five-decade career, Reed honed his craft by penning many a song for other artists as a staff writer for a legendary label during the early rock era.

To celebrate that important early chapter of Reed’s history, Light in the Attic — a.k.a. LITA — in cooperation with Laurie Anderson and the Lou Reed Archive, has just announced a new 2LP set covering that period, Why Don’t You Smile Now: Lou Reed at Pickwick Records 1964-65, will be released on October 4, 2024. Following on the heels of Reed’s prior LITA offerings, September 2022’s 2LP Words & Music (a personal favorite of mine, truth be told) and January 2024’s 2LP reissue/update of Hudson River Wind Meditations, this latest installment in the company’s acclaimed Lou Reed Archive Series is a compilation of pop songs written by Reed during his mid-’60s stint as a staff songwriter for the long-defunct Pickwick Records label.

This release marks the first official anthology of Reed’s work for Pickwick, and it features a number of rarities, cult classics, and previously unreleased material. The cover image for Why Don’t You Smile Now, as seen again below, is courtesy Matthew Kloss.

According to LITA, Why Don’t You Smile Now has been restored and remastered by the Grammy-nominated mastering engineer John Baldwin. This 2LP set also comes with an in-depth booklet with unseen photos, liner notes by Richie Unterberger, and an essay by Lenny Kaye. The 2LP package has been designed by multi-Grammy-winning artist Masaki Koike. The SRP for the black vinyl edition of Why Don’t You Smile Now is $43.99, while the color vinyl edition has an SRP of $46.99. Either or both versions can be preordered via the Music Direct link graphic that appears before the tracklisting section at the end of this story.

Some additional background now, as provided by LITA. Before establishing himself as a culturally significant singer, songwriter, musician, and poet, Reed got his start as both an in-house songwriter and occasional session guitarist/vocalist for Pickwick Records, a label specializing in sound-alike recordings that emulated the major pop hits of the day. Encompassing everything from garage rock and girl-group pop to blue-eyed soul and teen-idol balladry, Reed’s output for Pickwick offers a fascinating early glimpse at his then-evolving artistry.

It was a highly prolific period in which Reed — seen above in an iconic latter-era B&W photo by Julian Schnabel — co-wrote dozens of songs that got released, His tenure at Pickwick began soon after connecting with Terry Philips, the label’s chief songwriter and producer who’d envisioned creating an in-house equivalent to the Brill Building’s hitmaking songwriting/production teams. Despite the assembly-line nature of Pickwick’s output, the experience proved to be deeply formative for Reed. In liner notes author Unterberger’s words, this “gave him his first opportunities to filter his love for rock, soul, girl group sounds, Phil Spector, and a bit of far-out experimentation into commercially released material.”

The opening track on LP1 of Why Don’t You Smile Now, a standalone single called “The Ostrich,” finds Reed taking the helm as lead vocalist and delivering a fantastically loopy twist on the dance records that dominated the first half of the ’60s. “It’s as much a parody of dance-craze rock ’n’ roll as an entry into its overcrowded field,” Unterberger observed. “Yet it isn’t without the kind of hooks aimed at sparking a hit single, performed with the all-out élan of a youngster living and breathing rock ’n’ roll at its most devil-may-care corner.”

Co-written by Reed and recorded under the name of The Primitives, “The Ostrich” even paved the way for the formation of The Velvet Underground after Philips enlisted a young avant-garde musician named John Cale to join The Primitives’ live band for a truncated promotional tour.

Over the course of its 25 songs, Why Don’t You Smile Now also covers such wide-ranging stylistic terrain as soul-pop with The Hi-Lifes’ “Soul City” (LP1, Side A, Track 4), surf-tinged doo-wop on The Hollywoods’ “Teardrop in the Sand” (LP1, Side A, Track 7), and riff-driven garage rock on The Roughnecks’ “You’re Driving Me Insane” (LP1, Side A, Track 8), the latter track having been hailed by Unterberger as “a hint of the kind of mental instability, even madness, that would factor into some — though by no means all — of Reed’s most impressive later work, whether with The Velvets or on his own.”

One of the most historically significant cuts on Why Don’t You Smile Now has to be The All Night Workers’ “Why Don’t You Smile” (LP1, Side B, Track 7), which marks the first commercial release naming the aforementioned Cale as a composer, with songwriting credit given to Reed, Cale, Philips, and Jerry Vance. Soon after a 1965 session in which he recorded a series of demos, Reed parted ways with Pickwick and joined Cale in forming The Velvet Underground along with guitarist Sterling Morrison, drummer Maureen Tucker, and later, occasional singer Nico.

For Philips, who initially hired Reed for his lyrical talents then encouraged his development as a singer, guitarist, and songwriter, the departure was inevitable. As Philips told Unterberger, “I thought he could be what he became.” Why Don’t You Smile Now shows us all exactly how Reed got there.

WHY DON’T YOU SMILE NOW:
LOU REED AT PICKWICK RECORDS 1964-65
2LP (Light in the Attic)

Side A
1. The Primitives – “The Ostrich”
2. The Beachnuts – “Cycle Annie”
3. The Hi-Lifes – “I’m Gonna Fight”
4. The Hi-Lifes – “Soul City”
5. Ronnie Dickerson – “Oh No Don’t Do It”
6. Ronnie Dickerson – “Love Can Make You Cry”
7. The Hollywoods – “Teardrop In The Sand”
8. The Roughnecks – “You’re Driving Me Insane”

Side B
1. The Primitives – “Sneaky Pete”
2. Terry Philips – “Wild One”
3. Spongy And The Dolls – “Really - Really - Really - Really - Really - Really Love”
4. The Foxes – “Soul City”
5. The J Brothers – “Ya Running, But I’ll Getcha”
6. Beverley Ann – “We Got Trouble”
7. The All Night Workers – “Why Don’t You Smile”
8. Jeannie Larimore – “Johnny Won’t Surf No More”

Side C
1. Robertha Williams – “Tell Mamma Not To Cry”
2. Robertha Williams – “Maybe Tomorrow”
3. Terry Philips – “Flowers For The Lady”
4. Terry Philips – “This Rose”

Side D
1. The Surfsiders – “Surfin’”
2. The Surfsiders – “Little Deuce Coupe”
3. The Beachnuts – “Sad, Lonely Orphan Boy”
4. The Beachnuts – “I’ve Got A Tiger in My Tank”
5. Ronnie Dickerson – “What About Me”