journalist, radio presenter and filmmaker Howard Smith (left) releases the recording of his Warhol interview next month

Hear Warhol in Conversation, next month

'68 radio recording, also featuring Paul Morrissey is to be made available via iTunes Nov 20

 

There's very little Warhol ephemera that hasn't been brought to the market by one means or another. However, next month, a rare radio interview will be made available for the first time, as 60s counterculture journalist and filmmaker Howard Smith begins to digitize his interview archive.

Though he made a name for himself as a Village Voice columnists and documentary filmmaker, Smith also hosted nighttime weekend show on New York radio station WPLJ-FM during the last 60s and early 70s. The slot enabled him to interview many of the era's most notable public figures, including Lou Reed, Hugh Hefner and D.A. Pennebaker; Smith preserved many of the conversations on reel-to-reel tapes.

Smith and his son - the restaurant architect Cass Calder Smith - recently discovered some of these recordings, and, after a little careful remastering, they're going to make them available on Nov 20, as both a set of iTunes downloads and as a 12-CD limited edition box set. The music and film interviews will surely be fascinating, but it's the 44-year-old Warhol clip we're looking forward to. This interview was recorded on 28 November 1968, a few months after the Solanas attack. This assassination attempt is generally regarded as the end of Warhol's more open, collaborative Factory period, and the start of a more cloistered phase of creativity. Warhol came to Smith's station to discuss the upcoming release of his highly sexed western, Lonesome Cowboys. The pop artist is joined by fellow filmmaker and collaborator Paul Morrissey, and the three of them discuss, according to the publicity notes "filmmaking on the cheap, the Valerie Solanas shooting and Warhol's new focus on television." Though the whole thing was fairly impromptu and unscripted, we're sure Warhol will still drop a few insightful bon mots. Can't wait? Then consider our brilliant Warhol Catalogue Raisonne, a multi-volume, scholarly series that documents all Warhol's visual output, obscure radio interviews excepted.