Released - March 1967
Genre - Art Rock
Producer - Andy Warhol & Tom Wilson
Selected Personnel - Lou Reed (Vocals/Guitar); John Cale (Viola/Piano/Bass); Sterling Morrison (Guitar/Bass); Maureen Tucker (Drums/Percussion); Nico (Vocals)
Standout Track - Heroin
This is one of those albums that cool people go on about. It's another daunting listen at first given its enormous significance and the cultural relevance it's gone on to acquire, but it's very different to the daunting sense of pressure one feels to like Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band or similarly earth-shatteringly popular albums. Whereas listening to Sgt. Pepper's... one feels like they have to like it because otherwise they're at odds with generations of people who won't hear a word said against it, here, although there's a lingering sense of how important this record is, there's never a tangible sense that you have to like it. It certainly took me a while to really start to appreciate it beyond a few obviously great songs it's really difficult to dislike. This didn't emerge from any Beatles-esque attempt to apply unconventional compositional or recording processes to mainstream music and to try and take their legions of loyal fans into uncharted territory. This was made with zero concern for the preferences of the audience, and was effectively just a playground for Lou Reed and his bandmates to indulge in the dark, twisted visions they wanted to portray.
As discussed in my review for Nico's Chelsea Girl previously, the Velvet Underground had become a part of Andy Warhol's Factory scene since he became their manager in 1965, and were among a huge host of culturally significant figures to be mentored to success by him. Warhol's direct involvement with this album is actually minimal, save for his insistence that they use German singer Nico, one of his "superstars" that he had been working with over the last few years, as a co-lead vocalist on some songs (her contributions here are relatively forgettable, and Chelsea Girl is a far better showcase for her talents). Other than that, the astonishingly cheap and rushed recording sessions for this album were simply an opportunity for the band to do whatever they wanted, and it shows. The experimentalism on display here is a world away from the innovations of the psychedelic scene as pioneered by the likes of the Beatles and Jefferson Airplane, where the main aim was to make the music more complex, more strange and otherworldly. Here, the focus always returns to scratchiness and earthiness and bleak reality. The audio quality is lo-fi to the point of sounding amateurish, while the instrumental performances are several light years away from virtuosity. Bassist John Cale was the chief innovator in terms of the musical arrangements, favouring unusual guitar tunings that rendered the songs discordant and harsh, and also adding his own viola playing to the songs to create screeching, unsettling drones to accompany Reed's spaced-out, emotionally blank renderings of these songs.
As for Reed, the subject matter of a number of his songs caused a huge stir at the time and got the album banned from several radio stations. Never before had rock music been used to discuss such themes as drug abuse and sado-masochism, but Reed, a big fan of writers such as William S. Burroughs of the American Beat generation, felt no qualms about using music as an equally valid place to discuss such themes as literature. In general, this is painting a fairly bleak picture of this album, and it's certainly a challenging listen, but there's still room for fun and occasionally beauty here. The opening "Sunday Morning" is a pleasant, chiming and lyrically throwaway affair, hugely upbeat and serene and one of the most misleading album openers ever. On a separate note, "Heroin," a passionate depiction of somebody experiencing the effects of the drug, starts off as one of the most musically beautiful pieces of music the band produced, at odds with its dark subject matter, before it descends into a spiral of anarchy and noise and chaos by the end, chiefly defined by those whines and screams from John Cale's viola. Then there's "I'm Waiting For The Man," a song about somebody waiting for their drug dealer which, again in contrast to its lyrical content, is one of the most fun, energetic and pounding romps on the album. It would later be memorably covered (and improved upon) by David Bowie at his celebrated concert in Santa Monica in 1972, where Mick Ronson's firebrand guitar elevates the song to classic status.
Like I say, it's not an easy album to love. It's a very easy album to appreciate with regard to its innovative spirit and its grittiness, but when I first listened to it it was only the tinkling charm of "Sunday Morning," the rollicking joy of "I'm Waiting For The Man" and the epic grandeur of "Heroin" that made an impression on me. But it's an album with such attitude that it's one you can't help but keep returning to, and every time you do something else about it uncurls and entices you in and you begin to feel increasingly like you understand what makes it great. It took me a good year or so before "Venus In Furs," which I initially hated, managed to worm its way into my brain enough for me to consider it one of the album's best songs. Perhaps one day I'll even come to love this record as a whole enough that I even have time for the closer "European Son," a lengthy and tuneless jam which thrashes its way noisily to its conclusion without ever developing musically. It was a style the band would push even further on their next release, White Light/White Heat, an album frequently heralded as a work of genius but, to my ears, at least for the time being, almost unlistenable. They would come back with a much more refined work in 1969.
Track Listing:
All songs written by Lou Reed except where noted.
1. Sunday Morning (Lou Reed & John Cale)
2. I'm Waiting For The Man
3. Femme Fatale
4. Venus In Furs
5. Run Run Run
6. All Tomorrow's Parties
7. Heroin
8. There She Goes Again
9. I'll Be Your Mirror
10. The Black Angel's Death Song (Lou Reed & John Cale)
11. European Son (Lou Reed; John Cale; Sterling Morrison & Maureen Tucker)
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