OK, this song is awful. But it’s a bit of pop history because even though it wasn’t Lou Reed’s first recording it was the catalyst for the creation of The Velvet Underground.
It’s also the first example of Reed’s innovative “ostrich tuning,” in which all six strings of the guitar are tuned to one note to create a drone effect – a technique he went on to use on Venus In Furs and All Tomorrow’s Parties.
At the time of this song, Reed was working as an in-house musician and composer at Pickwick Records, a company churning out cheap knock-offs of popular hits, to be sold in drugstores and supermarkets.
I believe this is the era that also produced the far superior Cycle Annie by another made-up group called The Beachnuts and a tune called You’re Driving Me Insane.
In fact ‘Lewis Reed’ had made his recording debut way back in 1958, when he was just 16, playing guitar on a song he’d written called So Blue by his high-school group, a duo called The Jades.
He made his singing debut in 1962 on two pop songs, Your Love (which features a filthy sax solo) and Merry Go Round (with a nice cheesy organ break).
The Ostrich was written (by Reed and three fellow Pickwick employees Jimmy Sims, Jerry Vance and Terry Phillips) to cash in on a craze for novelty dances; an era later referenced by Patti Smith when she sang about The Mashed Potato, The Alligator and The Sweet Pea in her song Land.
Because they were not an actual group, Pickwick hired some musicians to promote the song. They found them at a party, approaching John Cale, Tony Conrad and Walter de Maria because they had long hair and “looked commercial.”
The trio – all members of avant-garde composer La Monte Young’s ensemble Theatre Of Eternal Music – travelled out to Pickwick Records’ pressing plant on Long Island City, where there was a tiny studio in a back room.
There they met Lou Reed and two other musicians “who were into trying anything,” Cale recalled later. “They played me this thing that they had recorded on an Ampex two-track tape recorder. All three of them had bottles of vodka and downed them in one night, and each had a guitar tuned to one note.”
From this single encounter, the Velvets were born. Cale, who had moved from Wales to study music in New York, noted the similarity between Reed’s “ostrich tuning” and the drone techniques employed by Young, and they decided to pursue their interest in pushing the boundaries of music in that direction.
They found fellow travellers in another Young alumnus, percussionist Angus MacLise, and guitarist Sterling Morrison, who had studied with Reed at Syracuse University.
On the eve of their first ever gig in November 1965, at a New Jersey high school, MacLise left in protest at the band accepting a fee – he believed accepting money for art was a sellout – so Morrison hurriedly recruited his old school friend Jim Tucker’s sister Maureen, whom he remembered as a drummer.
With her minimalist style – no cymbals and a standing style that involved hitting an upturned bass drum with mallets – she was the perfect fit for the new band and, after that impromptu debut, was asked to stay on. And the rest really is history.