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.

LOU REED - TRANSFORMER @ 50

 

Celebrating half a century of walking on the wild side, it’s the sophomore solo LP from Velvet Underground main man, Lou Reed, with Transformer being released on this day, November 8th, 1972. It’s the album which would secure his place as a rock ’n’ roll legend and break him out from the shackles of cult obscurity into the realm of commercial accessibility.

After his years fronting The Velvet Underground, Reed had become infamous in certain circles, though his record sales would belie the far reach of his influence on the next generation of music makers who were starting to shape the decade of the 1970s. Principal among these was no less than the “Starman” himself, David Bowie, who had embraced Lou’s work and incorporated a number of VU songs into his live repertoire, including White Light/White Heat and I’m Waiting for My Man. Bowie had made reference to Reed on the liner notes for Hunky Dory and had struck up a friendship with him on his visits to NYC. After the failure of Reed’s eponymous debut to make any kind of commercial impact, Bowie and fellow Spider from Mars, Mick Ronson, offered to produce Lou’s next album and duly packed him off to London to record.

The duo proved to be the perfect conduit for Reed’s music and Ronson, in particular, ended up offering much more than production as he contributed session guitar, keyboards, recorder and, along with Bowie, backing vocals. Their prowess at the studio console was equally matched by the quality of the songs Reed brought to the table, several of which had been lurking around since the VU days. Andy’s Chest, Satellite of Love, New York Telephone Conversation and Goodnight Ladies had all been performed or demoed by the Velvets before they found their place on Transformer.

Overall, the album boasts a host songs which would become quintessential for Reed like Satellite, Vicious & Perfect Day, but the most significant of all has to be Walk on the Wild Side. It was released as a single and became a major hit and Lou’s most successful single ever. Over the years, it’s been used repeatedly in soundtracks for feature films and TV and become the most iconic piece of music Lou ever produced. It’s also one of his most controversial and prophetic songs. Given the evolution of transgender identity in the last 50 years, it can legitimately be seen as a flashpoint for igniting awareness of the culture within the minds of the mainstream. It’s gender bending was so unsettling for some that the single was edited in some markets and outright banned in others because of its reference to what was perceived as sexual depravity.

The cover for the album utilizes an image by legendary photographer, Mick Rock. The look of the photo was a total accident, however, as it came about when Rock overexposed the negatives. Lou loved the look and it ended up becoming the perfect image to represent the album.

At the time of its release, it became an immediate pillar within the “glam rock” scene of the early 1970s. Along with Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust and Bolan’s Electric Warrior, it was an album that was a must-have if you were part of that movement. Since then, it has become one of Reed’s most essential albums. Personally, my opinion is that, if you’re gonna have two Reed albums, you should have Transformer and Metal Machine Music though for entirely opposing reasons.

THE VELVET UNDERGROUND & NICO @ 55

 

Celebrating its 55th anniversary today is the debut album by The Velvet Underground and Nico, which was released on March 12th, 1967. It was an album that had limited sales when it first left the gate, but as Brian Eno famously remarked, pretty much every person who bought it in those early days went out and started a band themselves, with often revolutionary results. After over five decades in the world, it is surely one of the most profoundly influential records ever produced within the realm of rock and popular music.

It’s an album that came about at a time when youth culture was intoxicated by the psychedelic swirl of groups like The Beatles and albums like Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. The summer of love was about to happen and flower power and hippy utopianism were all the rage. As such, even though the Velvets were honing their craft as part of Andy Warhol’s LSD freakout Exploding Plastic Inevitable “happenings”, the essence of their music was on another level entirely. Rather than singing songs about peace and love and togetherness, they were exploring drug addiction, sexual perversion, sadomasochism, prostitution and a generally darker, New York style street hustler vibe that was on a completely different wavelength than the hippies. They dressed in black and seemed like a bunch of dour, unsettling people. Musically, their sound was harder and sharper and had a strangeness to it that felt off center and, at times, distinctly dissonant. They were, quite literally, ahead of their time.

The kind of attitude that the VU fostered wouldn’t become in vogue until a decade later, when punk, new wave, post-punk and industrial music sprang up in the late 1970s. By that time, the VU’s first album, along with the the ones that followed it, had become musical touchstones for that next generation. The naiveté of the hippies had long since lost its sheen. The reality of the crumbling cities and the failure of the “love” revolution to influence any real change had fostered a deep sense of disillusionment and that zeitgeist became the perfect ground for the VU legend to take root and grow.

The album was recorded during the latter part of 1966 with Andy Warhol listed as the “producer”, though he actually had no direct hand in its sound. Rather, Warhol was the band’s facilitator. The credibility his name offered allowed the group to do basically whatever they wanted with the recordings. That “hands off” approach, however, is still considered by the band to have been a valid production technique as it allowed them to realize their music the way they wanted. However, Warhol did contribute the distinctive album art for the record, featuring the infamous “peel and see” banana, which resulted in some exorbitantly expensive and complex manufacturing in order to realize. It was hoped that Warhol’s name would help to bolster sales of the record, but even with his branding firmly affixed to the project, the sales didn’t materialize.

But it’s not always about the numbers in the bank accounts and The Velvet Underground and Nico proved that sometimes art requires a long game in order to realize its potential. One has to wonder if this kind of influence is still possible in today’s modern music industry. Is it possible for a group of outsiders like this to set anything in motion that can flow into so many sub-genres throughout the decades. How many touch points are there in contemporary music that can trace their roots back to this album? Are there any contemporary artists around today that have the potential to plant that kind of seed for the future?

DAVID BOWIE - HUNKY DORY @ 50

December 17th marks the 50th anniversary of the release of David Bowie’s fourth studio album, Hunky Dory, which was issued this day in 1971. While his previous album had not quite “Sold the World”, this would be where he’d put together the core of his “Spiders from Mars” and set the stage for the music revolution he’d lead with its follow-up.

After the somewhat lackluster reception of The Man Who Sold the World, upon returning from a US tour to promote that album, Bowie sequestered himself in his home, eschewing touring and studio time for the moment, and planted himself at his piano in order to start composing songs for his next album. Shifting his writing process off the guitar sent him veering away from the more hard-rock styling of his last album and into a more “pop”, melodic sound. When it came time to start assembling his band for the new album, he managed to bring back guitarist Mick Ronson and drummer Mick Woodmansey, despite some creative fallout after the previous album, but bassist Tony Visconti was replaced by Trevor Bolder to create the core ensemble which would become known as The Spiders from Mars.

Inspired by his trip the the US, Bowie came up with a number of songs that paid tribute to some of the personalities he’d become enamored with over there. These included Andy Warhol, Lou Reed and Bob Dylan, all of whom found themselves immortalize in song on the new album. Moreover, Bowie’s agenda for this album was freed from the influence of the demands of record companies and their executives insisting he pursue some vision of success which was outside his own agenda. For this album, he only sought to satisfy himself and it’s one of the main reasons it is looked back upon as a turning point in his career and the moment when he fully began to cut his own path through the popular music landscape. While most artists of the time were looking to revisit the past after the wild experimentation of the late ‘60s, Bowie was keen to discover new musical lands to inhabit.

While it met with immediate critical praise upon its release, commercially, it stalled and failed to chart prior to the release of the Ziggy Stardust album in 1972. Part of the problem when it came to sales for Hunky Dory was down to Bowie's new label, RCA Records, pulling back on promoting it when they got wind that he was about to change his image AGAIN for the Ziggy album, which was already being recorded. It gave them cold feet and caused them to pull their support for Hunky Dory until they saw where he was going. However, once Ziggy took off, the backlash of success ended up sweeping Hunky Dory off the scrap heap and pushed it up the charts as well where it eventually peaked at #3 in the UK.

For many Bowie aficionados, Hunky Dory is the turning point in Bowie’s career where his artistic vision and abilities finally came into complete focus at their full potential. It’s the album which put all the pieces in place to set the stage for his success on his next album. While on it’s own, it wasn’t the spark that lit the fire, it provided the additional fuel to help reinforce his trajectory once that flame was ignited. The album is loaded with songs that have become classics in Bowie’s canon of essential works. Changes, Oh! You Pretty Things, Life On Mars, Andy Warhol & Queen Bitch all attest to his ability to craft solid, inventive pop music that has stood the test of time for half a century.

INFLUENTIAL ALBUM - THE VELVET UNDERGROUND AND NICO

It was sometime in 1984 when The Velvet Underground first made a notable impression upon me. I had probably heard the odd song here and there before, but was mostly familiar with Lou Reed as a solo artist for his song, Walk On the Wild Side, which had featured in the "punk" movie soundtrack of the film, Times Square (1980). Other than that, I didn't know a hell of a lot about the group. I just recall one summer Sunday morning, after a long night of warehouse partying when the last dregs of us were lounging around the space that the song, Sunday Morning, came on and it was such a perfect expression of the moment that it burned the groups essence into my mind and I started to look more closely at them and what they had achieved.

I didn't actually get a copy of The Velvet Underground and Nico album (on CD) until sometime in the early 1990s, but I would become very familiar with it from copies owned by various friends and acquaintances. I'd also become well aware of the scene around the group at the time of its creation; the Factory crowd, Exploding Plastic Inevitable multimedia live extravaganzas and the auteur of the scene, Andy Warhol. It was all a big influence on us in the mid 1980s as we were looking to create our own little version of it in Vancouver, occupying disused warehouse spaces and filling them with mind altered denizens of the night, dancing to strange electronic sounds amid whatever setting we could manage to concoct with no money and scraps of whatever.

It was another case where I understood that the revolution in music and art we were seeing in our times was inspired and influenced by something from the past and that it wasn't all happening in a vacuum. The sounds the VU managed to create became massively influential to the most extreme examples of new music we were seeing from our generation. When you understood the connections and heard the linkages, you could appreciate the continuity of culture being expressed through the decades that separated these artists.

Learning about the VU also put their era in a completely new light. Having lived through it, albeit as a child who was only impressed upon by virtue of the media of the day, namely the TV, my biggest sense of culture for the late 1960s was often the caricature of hippies which had managed to permeate the popular shows of the day. Even at that, the hippies were much more subversive in their core, and I'm talking about the Merry Prankster branch here, than what was seen on the small screen. But there was another, much darker tangent to those years which remained hidden and obscured until you took the time to brush away the detritus of popular representations and explore below the surface.

In this regard, The Velvet Underground represented the ultimate "hard core" of the most significant artistic influence to emerge from the decade. While groups like The Beatles would have admittedly massive influence on popular culture in the decades to follow, The Velvets would prove to be far more insidious, perverse and persistent in terms of providing a foothold for subversive evolution within the arts. Personally, I continue to consider them "ground zero" for the most original and alienating strands of artistic expression within the realm of experimental and alternative music.

INFLUENTIAL ALBUM - LOU REED, METAL MACHINE MUSIC

Early in 1983, I was living in a house in Vancouver, sharing the main floor with some band mates. The property was managed by this odd older fellow who lived in another house a couple of doors down. All three houses in this row were owned by the same person and managed by this dude, who happened to be an avid record collector. He had a little garage in the back of our house which was stuffed from top to bottom with records. There were shelves lining the walls from floor to ceiling with all these LP's neatly stored inside. We got friendly enough with the guy that he eventually gave us the green light to have a dig and borrow any records we wanted to check out. This is where I first discovered Lou Reed's most iconoclastic release of his career, Metal Machine Music.

Released on the heels of one of Reed's most commercially successful periods in the early 1970s, 1975's double LP monolith of noise came screaming out of the gate to the immediate confusion of fans and critics. Assumed to be no more than a contractually obligated prank on his record label, whom Reed was about to terminate relations, few suspected Reed's earnestness in delivering this slab of apparent antisocial discord.

At the time of its release, the idea of "noise" music was virtually anathema within the commercial record buying markets. There may have been some obscure fine arts conceptual dalliances throughout the 20th century, but it was strictly academic stuff for students and art snobs. It was never dropped headlong into the midst of a mainstream record buying public.

Prior to unearthing the record in that garage, I'd only come across a few references to it in the music press and most of it was either dismissive with the occasional glancing comment indicating some form of reverence. I recall one review by Lester Bangs of another LP where he referenced MMM as a form of antidote for the horrible album he'd just reviewed. Given that, I wasn't quite sure what to expect when I dove into it. It didn't take long to discover the reality of the impenetrable wall of noise I would encounter.

I can't say I "enjoyed" listening to this album, but across those 4 sides of brain cell shattering treble piercing frequencies, something got lodged in my consciousness. Without any chemical augmentation, my brain chemistry changed. At the time, I couldn't put it into words or describe what process had occurred and I still don't really know how to give it a proper description, but I do know that the idea of "noise" and the concept of using it creatively was firmly lodged into my consciousness by this record. It also impressed a sense of personal determinism upon me in the manner in which Reed had put this product out there in accordance with nothing more than his own desires and with no concern for the judgements or reactions of anyone else.

It wasn't until years later that I finally got a CD copy of it and I don't listen to it often, but I do find it necessary to listen to at least once a year. The day Lou Reed died, it was the first recording of him that I had to listen to and I played it from start to finish. I don't find it a chore to listen to either. I find it is, as Bangs noted, a cleansing experience. It's like sandblasting all the gunk off your brain. It's a way to give your mind a bit of a reset. Reed's motives for creating the album have, since its release, become more understood as a tool for meditation rather than as a "fuck you" to any record label. It is, perhaps, the most fundamentally useful record he ever created in terms of practical application.