Songs for Drella

Twenty years after Lou Reed and John Cale broke up in the Velvet Underground, they briefly reunited to record the album Songs for Drella and play a few concerts of their co-written songs. They would never perform together again or play the album’s original material. Songs for Drella is an honest exploration of the life, dreams, aspirations and fears of the band’s mentor and manager Andy Warhol, captured on camera with deep visual intimacy in this concert film.

Its director Ed Lachman, perhaps best known as a director photography for his international art house work, filmed this richly observed, immersive performance in the rhyme of the music. The beautiful 4K restoration becomes a classic work in itself, to be appreciated over and over again. As Lou Reed sings in “Images”: I love multiplicity of screenings / things born anew display new meanings / I think images are worth repeating and repeating and repeating.