Free I'll Be Your Mirror: The Selected Andy Warhol Interviews by Kenneth Goldsmith Page B

Richard Ekstract, publisher of Tape Recording, a fanzine devoted to the then-new art of home audio taping. Ekstract contacted Warhol in 1964 to ask him to be a judge in a contest called “Pop Sounds” put together by Tape Recording, which was seeking the audio equivalent to Pop Art. Unfortunately, most of the submissions received were gags and the contest was cancelled. However, soon after, Warhol started calling Ekstract for advice on audio and video equipment, and subsequently Ekstract became Warhols tech guru for the better part of the 1960s.
    In early 1965, Norelco came out with the first affordable video recorder. “Andy called me up and said he had been making these underground movies and asked for a loaner on this Norelco video recorder for both a black & white and a color camera” recalled Ekstract. “I thought it would be good publicity for Norelco to lend him one and have a world premiere underground party for him.”
    Ekstract had heard that there was an unused train tunnel beneath the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel and thought the location would be an ideal setting for the premiere of Warhols videos made with the new equipment. The party was held on Friday, October 29, 1965. Entering through a hole in the street, denizens of the New York underground mixed with Park Avenue housewives, all dodging rats and roaches. The party was a success but the exact content of the tapes–recorded on an obsolete one-inch format which makes playback virtually impossible today–remains unknown.
    In conjunction with the party, Tape Recording ran the following interview with Warhol featured on the cover of the September-October 1965 issue of the magazine. The interview was conducted at the 47th St. Factory by Ekstract with Robert Angus, the editor of Tape Recording. The piece was unedited except for Ekstracfs amending of technical facts that Warhol himself was unclear about.
    –KG
    If you think recording sound is fun (and it is), just think of the tremendous possibilities available when you can tape sound and pictures with the same recorder. That day was brought much closer to tape enthusiasts this summer when Ampex, Matsushita and Sony introduced home video tape recorders in the $1000 price range. The race is now on to produce video tape units for $500 or less. When that happens tape recording will surely be America’s number one hobby.
    To test the new medium, TAPE RECORDING magazine approached tape enthusiast and home moviemaker Andy Warhol to produce some experimental home video tapes. Warhol, for the uninitiated, is an artist who rose to sudden fame a few years ago when the Pop Art movement swept America. His paintings of such common objects as Campbell Soup cans and Brillo boxes became the rage in art circles and now hang in many of the most prominent homes and museums both here and abroad.
    About two years ago, Warhol began experimenting with 16mm movies. He was welcomed by the members of the “Underground Movie” camp who make experimental films in the hope of extending the art of motion pictures to new and exciting visual art forms.
    Warhol made his reputation in the Underground film movement with films such as “Sleep,” eight hours of film of one person sleeping. Another of his epics was “Empire,” eight hours of film recording the Empire State building. Warhol and his group have now made underground movies on home video tape to give TAPE RECORDING’S readers a preview of the techniques involved in the new medium. Thus we embarked on an adventure which is continuing even as this is being written.
    Warhol used a Norelco slant-track video recorder which retails for $3950 and operates in the same manner as its lower priced counterparts. With the recorder, Norelco supplied a remote control television camera with a zoom lens. For special applications, he also used a Concord model MTC 11 hand-held video camera with a Canon zoom lens. Video tape was supplied by Reeves Soundcraft. The rotary head recorder operates at a tape