No one doubts that the 1960s was a time of discovery and revolution, especially when it came to rock music. Huge bands formed, released albums that are still being touted as the best of all time, and left lasting impressions on the face of the music world. Of all those bands, there were the behemoths like the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix Experience, and Led Zeppelin. All were bands that became more than musicians, they became cultural icons. Standing in the shadows at the time was the Velvet Underground, a band that didn’t find their audience until they were long broken up.
The lineup for their debut album, Lou Reed, John Cale, Maureen Tucker, Sterling Morrison, and the inimitable Nico, was one that set a template for their sound. Despite the fact that the individual sounds of the songs are diverse, the combination that makes up the sound is constant as are some of the ideals that seemingly drove the writing of them.
The primary sound of The Velvet Underground and Nico, save for the three songs where Nico took over lead vocals, was Reed’s sauntering, swaggering vocals, Tucker’s pounding, primal drumming, and Cale’s screaming electric viola. This was not a combination that typically came together to form an explosive rock group but that’s exactly what it did. Unconventional sound was part of the VU’s expression. The Velvet Underground and Nico can almost be seen now as a preview of what was to come with the band. Aspects of later albums began to shine through in their first.
The noisy anger and frustration of White Light/White Heat were present in “European Son” and “The Black Angel’s Death Song,” the calmer introspection of The Velvet Underground on “Sunday Morning,” and the Lou Reed’s version of radio-friendly pop like Loaded on “There She Goes Again.” These flashes of future brilliance create a map that their career would take.
Starting out with what is without a doubt one of their quietest songs, “Sunday Morning,” the listener isn’t prepared for what comes after. Kurt Loder wrote in the liner notes for the compilation of unreleased songs that “VUThe Velvet Underground and Nico contained three songs guaranteed to appall radio programmers,” listing “I’m Waiting for the Man,” “Venus In Furs,” and “Heroin,” as the offenders. Back in 1967, only a few years after The Beatles “appalled” parents and middle aged sensibilities all around the world with their crazy “long” hair and teenage love songs. To imagine those same parents hearing Reed talk about a “whiplash girl child” is verges on the absurd. Of course, those parents wouldn’t hear Reed sing those words because to say that the VU weren’t a big commercial band would be an understatement for a band that reached #171 on the Billboard charts at their highest point.
The Velvet Underground and Nico was a fitting introduction to Lou Reed’s twisted lyrical genius. The simplistically stream-of-consciousness lyrics of “Heroin,” one of the stand out tracks on the album, may be the best example. Reed has said in the album’s entry into the 331/3 series of books that the song is not meant to condone heroin use but instead to provide an unbiased presentation of the experience of shooting heroin and it only goes to show the talent that he nurtured. Lyrics such as “when the heroin is in my blood / and that blood is in my head / then thanks god that I’m as good as dead / then thank your god that I’m not aware / and thank god that I just don’t care,” evoke the building madness and borderline insanity that heroin users presumably feel. And while Bob Dylan and The Beatles flirted with the idea of slipping drug references into their lyrics subversively, Reed and company didn’t flirt. They fucked. The effect was not lost on future generations.
Right from the start, founding member John Cale doubled on bass and viola duties, among various other instruments. That viola sound helped add another dimension to the VU’s music and made it more than simple rock and roll with a sinister bent. It gave them a devil’s libido and blood in their stool. It made them seriously twisted and not in a Dee Snider way. It gave them the backbone to the first version of their sound.
Another aspect of the first album that should not be overlooked is Andy Warhol’s involvement. Without him, there would be no icy, Germanic supermodel singing her busted little vocal chords out. Without him, there would be no iconic banana gracing their record sleeve. Without him, they may not have gotten as much exposure touring with his Exploding Plastic Inevitable group. But by shedding him and Nico, the VU were able to move on and enter the next stage of their career.
Undoubtedly, the band’s time with Warhol opened them up to the avant-garde scene, an affinity that would be present in the band’s sound at least through their sophomore album, White Light/White Heat.
The follow up to The Velvet Underground and Nico was a revelation. Flashes of the art-rock and noise-rock that would appear on White Light/White Heat were apparent in songs like “The Black Angel’s Death Song” and “European Son.” In December of 1967, the record buying public didn’t know what to think about this attack on modern decency and conventional sound.
From the opening blast of the titular track, it is obvious that this incarnation of the VU, unhindered by Warhol and Nico, was a whole different beast entirely. Thick distortion covers the entire album, save for “Here She Comes Now,” like a glaze. Feedback was the fifth member of the band at this point and it showed up frequently for White Light/White Heat. Not the Jimi Hendrix or Eric Clapton distortion and feedback that was popular at the time but a sick, demented cousin of it.
The art scene that they soaked up during their time may have affected the songwriting and recording of their sophomore effort. Taking where they left off from “European Son” off of The Velvet Underground and Nico, “The Gift” is over eight minutes long and “Sister Ray,” the masterpiece of the album, is over seventeen.
“The Gift” is a short story written by Reed about a man who misses his long-distance girlfriend, ships himself in a box there, and is accidentally beheaded. While the story’s subject is novel and fairly par for the course in terms of black humor and grotesqueness, the very idea of setting an entire short story to music was a new idea. Even more, the idea of using one channel for the reading of the story and the other for the musical instrumental to create a unique mixture of the soft, accented voice of Cale and the hypnotic backing music was unique at the time.
“Sister Ray,” on the other hand was a study in the amount of chaos one could create in a single song. Seventeen straight minutes of aural assault, all frantically pounding drums and stuttering, overdriven guitar, and unearthly howls from Reed’s throat, it doesn’t let up at all. Organized anarchy and healthy exercise of controlled insanity rules the song and, one has to imagine, set the stage for noise musicians, drone musicians, and even punk and metal musicians.
It’s important to note, at this time, how truly different the Velvet Underground was in comparison to the rest of the music and people and atmosphere of the late 1960s. In an era often stereotyped as a time of free love, experimental drug use, and protests for peace, it must’ve been mind-blowing to hear the barely contained aggression and unchecked sleaze of the VU.
On the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s website of the VU’s induction, they write that the band “brought rock and roll into theretofore unexplored experiential realms with a literary and unabashedly adult voice.” That’s exactly on point. The Velvet Underground dragged America out of its infanthood and introduced it to puberty. Before Reed, the lyrical messiah was Bob Dylan. Needless to say, Reed and Dylan often wrote about very different material and while Dylan’s was still full of anger and adult frustration, it was a young man’s anger. Reed seemed to have the soul of a much older, perverted degenerate.
By the time 1969 rolled around, John Cale was gone and his bass guitar duties were taken up by Doug Yule. However, while the bass role was easily filled, Cale’s demonic viola would be missing on the last two official studio releases by the Velvets. It also meant that the reigns to the band were handed solely to Reed and allowed him to pull them in the direction that he wanted to go in, a softer and more introspective sound without Cale’s proclivity for the avant-garde.
Thus, The Velvet Underground was born. An album that took the feel of songs like “Sunday Morning” from The Velvet Underground and Nico and improved upon it and created others like it. The folky sound was a much different type of the Velvet Underground than had been seen before.
One of the main contributing factors of this was Reed relinquishing vocals on a number of the songs. Mo Tucker took the lead on “After Hours,” a song so upbeat and, while not cheerful, certainly more innocent than their earlier work, that it sounds like a completely different band. Musicians often play with their sound but this was a drastic change. In addition, new bassist Doug Yule also lent his voice on several tracks, singing the album’s opener “Candy Says,” a song about notorious Warhol-ite and transsexual Candy Darling, showing that while they may have lost their nasty distortion and feedback, they didn’t lose their tendency to tackle subjects that other bands would cower before.
Instead of Cale’s viola, there is a backing organ that takes the droning responsibilities admirably, notably on “What Goes On.” Even that, though, is different on this album. It’s not as intimidating as the viola’s wall of dissonance and actually compliments the music.
The gentle folk of “Pale Blue Eyes,” one of the standouts on the album, was a big step forward. Reed’s simple lyrics and oddly plaintive vocals combined with the soft tambourine in the background and surprisingly nimble guitar playing combined to make something more akin to a complete song than they had perhaps ever reached before. For a band that had strayed from commercialism so much in their earlier years, “Pale Blue Eyes” had enormous pop potential. Oddly enough, The Velvet Underground failed to break into the Billboard charts at all after the band’s first two, more inaccessible, albums appeared on them, though at very low spots.
Following up “Pale Blue Eyes” is “Jesus.” Soft finger-picking and harmonized vocals provided a totally new atmosphere for Reed’s songwriting to show through. “Jesus, help me find my proper place,” Reed sings. Not exactly the kind of song one would expect from a band named after a book on sexual sadomasochism. But it just showed that, as the next song explained, they were “beginning to see the light.”
The natural progression from the folky pop of The Velvet Underground to the actual, polished pop-rock on Loaded should have been obvious. By this time, the VU was a complicated mess. Mo Tucker doesn’t perform drum duties on the album due to pregnancy, leaving them up to Doug Yule and other drummers. Also, by the time Loaded was released in September of 1970, Reed had left the group. Atlantic Records wanted to push Reed into producing a hit single and the band’s fourth album was his response. Certainly it’s more of a commercially appealing album and contains two of their best known songs, “Sweet Jane” and “Rock & Roll,” both becoming live performance staples for Reed.
All of the songs on the album sound like they’re coming out of an old-timey stereo and it wouldn’t be surprising at all to hear some of these songs. The opening guitar riff on “Who Loves the Sun” to start off the album has the right about of twang to make it era appropriate. The lyrics too, are more cutesy romantically sappy than anything Reed had written for the band before. “Who loves the sun,” Yule croons. “Who cares that it is shining, who cares what it does since you broke my heart?”
The sound production on Loaded is crisp and polished, it is possible to pick out every separate instrument and the part they’re playing, though much of that could be attributed to the loss of their avant-garde tendencies when Cale and his John Cage obsession left.
Loaded also seems to be when Reed finally emerged as an incredible story-teller, not just a genius lyricist but someone who could craft a three of four (or seven in “Oh! Sweet Nuthin”) minute song with a beginning, middle, and end. Though listeners got chances to see this evolution throughout the Velvets’ career, he truly came into his own on their final official release and, as his solo career shows, continued to improve upon it.
“Rock & Roll,” a testament to the saving power of rock and roll as a music seems to serve as an anthem of the band at the time. Though the song has an upbeat and poppy sound, Reed still injected the darkness that made them such a different band at the time. “Despite all the amputations,” Reed sang. “You know you could just go out and dance to the rock and roll stations.” The firey guitar solo that splits the song is an homage of sorts to the solos of the 1950s and early 1960s garage rock bands. Reed’s voice is different as well. He actually sounds like he’s having fun on “Rock & Roll.” Really letting loose, interjecting “come on now” and howling during the rave-up ending of the song.
The liner notes of the Warner Special Products compact disc of Loaded offer an insight as to why the album was a revelation. “There’s nothing particularly fancy about the approach, but Reed’s personality simply burns as he gives a lesson in rock arranging and vocal delivery,” they say. Lenny Kaye’s original 1970 review of the album in Rolling Stone magazine stated that “you could go through any number of the cuts and pick out much the same things, those extra little touches that make each one special and able to stand up in its own right.” That was the thing, they had a style that they began to stick with, it was just a different one than most other bands out there. Loaded put them into full effect, the influences from early rock and roll, the shockingly gorgeous vocal harmonies, alternatively and appropriately scathing and mellow guitar work, and the simple yet powerful drumming (even without Tucker) all come together to form a perfect send-off to the REAL band. Yes, the name continued on after Reed departed, helmed by Yule, and even released another album, the much maligned and disappointingly mediocre Squeeze but the soul, heart, and brain of the band left with Reed.
But they weren’t completely done yet. Between the release of The Velvet Underground and Loaded, the Velvets compiled a number of songs for a different fourth album. MGM, their record label for their first three albums, declined to release it. The songs were collected and released on VU with some songs dating back to when Cale was still with the band. The compilation, despite being mostly random and thrown together tracks, is still a formidable piece of evidence for the excellent songwriting that Reed was capable of and the incredible chemistry of the band together despite tensions brewing inside during the Cale era.
Disregarding VU and Squeeze and after, the four original Velvet Underground studio albums, while not selling millions, were able to shape and form music in the years to come. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s page for the VU says “they are one of the most important rock and roll bands of all time, laying the groundwork in the Sixties for many tangents rock music would take in ensuing decades.” The fountain that the Velvet Underground sprung has nurtured the punk and alternative genres of rock music since their inception.
For punk, the style was just as important as the music. Black sunglasses, black leather coats, black tee-shirts, and a slight sneer at anyone who dares walk into their path was the M.O. for punks to come in the 1970s and 1980s. The 1960s were a time of extreme fashion choices, sure, the skinny ties of the mod scene with the Who, the matching black suits of the Beatles, the bohemian, open chested charm of Led Zeppelin and Hendrix, but somehow, none made as big a statement as the understated menace of Lou Reed, Sterling Morrison, and John Cale. And, as those other styles have died out, those basics have endured for over 30 years.
Of course, the music is not secondary to the clothes. Especially in their first two albums, the Velvets were pioneers when it came to using and abusing noise, dissonance, feedback, and drone in rock music. “White Light/White Heat,” is one of the best examples of this. Starting off without a introduction of any sort, the heaviness hits and doesn’t let up until the end where it lets loose with about 30 seconds of frantic, repetitive guitar and bass riffing. Expanding upon the ideals of early garage rock, the Velvets showed that it wasn’t necessary to use George Martin studio tricks to further the boundaries of music.
Reed’s lyrics are also a big part of the Velvet Underground’s legacy. The 1960s were still a time of lovey dovey songs and, if the band was daring, semi-sexual lyrics hidden under wordplay. With songs like “Heroin,” “Waiting for the Man,” and “White Light/White Heat,” being explicitly about drugs, it’s no wonder why the band didn’t see much commercial success. With other songs like “Candy Says,” “Venus in Furs,” and “Lady Godiva’s Operation” describing, respectively, a transsexual, rough and sadomasochistic sex, and a sex-change operation that turns into a lobotomy, it become clear that Reed was unafraid to take on situations and people that no other lyricists would touch. And still, there was more to explore. “New Age” describes the courting by a young man to an aging, past her prime actress and “European Son’s” poetic qualities that seemed to elevate it above other run-of-the-mill rock lyrics. Reed’s lyric writing elevated words to stories but, unlike Bob Dylan, he walked down a dark, twisted path. And he carved that same path out for many other lyricists such as Trent Reznor, Morrissey, and Frank Black, all of whom have also become icons in their own genres and times as well, but all who will forever be indebted to Reed, one of rock’s first tortured souls.
