THE VELVET UNDERGROUND @ 55

The third, eponymous LP from The Velvet Underground is turning 55 years old this month, being released in March of 1969. After the searing abrasiveness of their previous album, White Light - White Heat, which pinned the VU meters on people's hi-fi systems as it attempted to be the loudest album ever released, Lou Reed was determined to do a complete about face with their third release, aiming for softness and emotional tenderness, with songs focused on relationships and spiritual/religious introspection. For Reed, it was essential to demonstrate the band's versatility in order to thwart any attempts to pigeonhole them into any particular style or sound. The result was an album of predominantly gentle beauty, packed with some of Reed's most memorable songs.

After recording their second album, John Cale found himself on the outs with the band and ended up being fired in September of 1968. His replacement, Doug Yule, was suggested by Sterling Morrison after being scouted by the band's road manager. Yule was warmly welcomed to the group, especially by Reed, who some band members claim may have gone somewhat overboard in his praise and encouragement of the new recruit, inflating his ego somewhat. Regardless, when they went into the Hollywood based TTG studios to record, the mood among the band was jovial, and by all recollections, the process of creating the album was an enjoyable experience for all involved.

Reed was eager to have all of the band members contribute to the album as lead vocalists, even managing to persuade the shy Maurine Tucker to contribute her voice to the album's closing track, After Hours. It was a challenging task for the drummer, who insisted on recording her vocal with a minimum of people present in the studio during her final take. Lou was insistent on her taking on the task though, as he felt her frail, childlike voice was perfect or the song's themes of social anxiety and isolation. After she finished her take, she said that she wouldn't sing it live unless someone requested it.

Though the recording process for the album was a pleasant experience for the band, when it came to mixing, Reed's insistence on doing the mix himself, without consulting the other members, stepped on toes and resulted in a lot of dissatisfaction and animosity from the rest of the band. An alternate mix of the album was done, with both finding their way into pressings, so there's some confusion around as to the preferred mix. Reed's version, dubbed the "closet mix", emphasized his vocals and drowned out the backing parts, alienating the rest of the band. This was the initial mix that was released, but an alternate mix by MGM staff engineer Val Valentin ultimately became the more commonly available version of the album.

With only The Murder Mystery, which featured songwriting and vocal credits from all four members, harking back to their more experimental tendencies, the remainder of the album was accessible enough that the band had high hopes that it would be a breakthrough for them when it came to sales, but poor promotion from their label, again, meant that their efforts would be under appreciated at the time of the album's release, even though it received roundly positive reviews from the critics. It would only be in later years, as the band's influence and legacy grew, that their records would receive the attention they deserved, as generations of new fans continued to rediscover the group and began to comprehend their influence on so many who came in their wake. Retrospectively, the album is considered, not only essential in terms of the band's canon of work, but in terms of landmark recordings from that era, frequently resulting in the LP being counted among numerous "best of" and "must listen" critic and fan lists.
 

THE VELVET UNDERGROUND - WHITE LIGHT / WHITE HEAT @ 55

 

Marking its 55th anniversary today is the sophomore album from the Velvet Underground, White Light / White Heat, which was released on January 30th, 1968. It was the Velvet’s most aggressive outing and, while perhaps pushing their production limits beyond their capacity, it still became a critical influence on the worlds of extreme music making for decades to come.

After the disappointing sales for their debut album the year before, the relationship between the band and producer Andy Warhol began to deteriorate. Not that Andy actually did much of anything in the studio to influence the band’s sound, but the decision to dismiss Andy would impact them more in terms of name recognition as they couldn’t leverage Andy’s fame anymore. The band also decided to part ways with Nico, a move which she interpreted as being “fired” as well. For the second album, the group brought Tom Wilson back to produce and set about assembling material largely inspired by the harsh noise jams they’d been exploring during their live performances over the previous year. These excursions would form the conceptual backbone for the new album. The group had also worked out an endorsement deal with VOX, who provided a slew of brand new guitars, amps and, most notably, distortion pedals, for them to exploit.

The feel of the album was designed from the get-go to be opposed to the “summer of love” vibes of the West Coast hippy scene. It was a deliberate bracing against that tide and the group, especially Lou Reed, wanted to push the tone of the record into the realms of excessive volume and distortion. The problem with this disposition was that the group didn’t quite understand how to achieve this effect without compromising the production quality of the album. As a result, when it was eventually mastered, additional compression resulted in an over saturated sound which brought in additional, unplanned levels of distortion. Where the debut album had a balance between their more aggressive nature and softer moments with songs like Sunday Morning, what ended up on WL/WH was pretty consistently harsh and volatile with little relief from the assault.

The album kicks off with the title track, with lyrics referencing the effects of intravenous injection of amphetamines - a speed rush. But the title also references Reed’s interest in certain esoteric teachings which involved healing through the use of a kind of “white light” inspired by Alice Bailey and her occult book, A Treatise On White Magic. It’s a pulsing fusion of doo-wop and proto-heavy-metal. This is followed by The Gift, the first VU track to feature John Cale on vocals. It’s an oddly mixed extended dirge which features the band improvising away on one side of the stereo field while Cale recites a story about a lover who’s surprise for his girlfriend goes terribly wrong. After a few more shorter songs like Here She Comes Now, the album wraps up with a 17 minute jam about a drag queen orgy that goes off the rails. A rather progressive theme when you consider how far ahead of the curve Reed was with the whole trans culture.

Recording of the album was done quite quickly over the course of a couple of weeks and the band didn’t have a lot of songs to work with at the time, thus the minimal track listing. Producer Tom Wilson never worked with the band again after struggling to accommodate their insistence on pushing the volume and distortion throughout the sessions. Reed purposefully wanted to go "as high and as hard as we could" and, though there were brewing conflicts with Cale, which would ultimately result in his leaving the band after this album, during the recording sessions, the band were essentially all pulling in the same direction, though that may have resulted in them going over a cliff, but at least they went as a unit.

The cover for the LP was based on an idea which originated with Warhol, but he was not credited for it. It shows a barely visible tattoo of a skull. The tattoo was that of Joe Spencer, who played the lead role in Warhol's 1967 film Bike Boy. Spencer starred as a hustler in a motorcycle gang and is seen taking a shower in the movie. Reed selected the image from negatives of the film, and it was enlarged and distorted by Billy Name, one of the members of the Factory. Sterling Morrison, however, states that the cover was picked by him.

At the time of its release, it was a commercial failure, selling even less than the group’s debut. References to drugs and sex resulted in numerous stations banning the record and its single from airplay, which didn’t help generate interest. MGM didn’t promote the album much either, which disappointed the band, who came off the session feeling confident in what they’d done. They wanted a record that rejected the “flower power” of the day, but that also meant turning off those record buyers, leaving only a small cult to appreciate its edginess. Rolling Stone refused to even review it and Melody Maker, on the other hand, wrote off the album as "utterly pretentious, unbelievably monotonous”. Not all critics were so negative and dismissive, but those voices were sparse and had no impact on record buyers.

Yet its legacy would eventually make it an inspiration for punk, No Wave and noise music in decades to come. Its brutal aggression, searing distortion and blistering raw energy would inspire future generations, who saw the bankruptcy of the hippy culture and its failure to engender any real change, to use it as a clarion call to arms for a disaffected generation of rejects and rebels. There are few examples in popular music of a band pushing itself into such a starkly confrontational stance and it stands as a rare breed of outsider art.