Artist bio

See also: Lou Reed

The Velvet Underground made music imbued with the depth and richness of real life, and their work remains among rock's most powerful.

So many bands have just that one thing they do really well, and they can't always stretch out into other realms without losing a bit of what makes them great. But there's so much to love about music. Somehow, VU's got it all. The Velvets' range ensures that there's something in here for any mood that might strike you. Driving down the highway with the windows rolled down? Throw on Loaded for some enervating rock and roll. A late-night conversation with old friends? Maybe the soul-baring melancholy of the third album. Got those blues again and ready to be sonically assaulted? Try the extreme sound palette of White Light/White Heat. You can wake up on Sunday morning listening to the sunbeam instrumental "Ride Into The Sun," a non-album track from the Another View compilation. But if you're walking down 2nd Avenue with headphones on, you might want to go with the steady urban pulse of the group's 1967 debut, The Velvet Underground And Nico.

Because the Velvets were able to accomplish so much in so little time -- six years at the end of the '60s -- their catalog is easily consumed. They only released four records, easy enough to purchase at once (more than one box set includes all four). Yes, there are other places to go -- live albums, two LPs worth of non-album tracks released in the '80s -- but you can hold the Velvets' entire catalog in hand.

Each of the band's four records is a radical, unexpected departure from its predecessor, and each is a rock and roll classic in its own right, offering benchmark songs and timeless inspiration to its listeners. Of course, the group only had its first two albums hit the Billboard charts, and even those with paltry showings. But in retrospect, this lack of any real commercial success made them immune to a lot of common fame-induced pratfalls. During the band's life, none of its members accumulated a great deal of material wealth, they didn't become huge stars, and most importantly, they didn't get stuck in the dangerous mindset of "people will buy our music if it sounds like THIS, so let's keep churning it out." There were no hastily issued follow-up albums to capitalize on chart successes. There was no laughable '80s period. And they dissolved before they put out anything subpar.

The Velvet Underground is the classic rock band for people who really dig music. If they're not your favorite band, odds are that your favorite band was in some way influenced by VU. And if not, you're probably not reading this! Or something like that.

Albums by this artist

Bootleg Series Volume 1: The Quine Tapes (2001)

Loaded (1970)

The Velvet Underground (Recommended) (1969)

White Light/White Heat (Recommended) (1969)

Features

The Velvet Underground: The NATN Pantheon
Published December 11, 2006

The Velvet Underground

White Light/White Heat

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» MARK T.R. DONOHUE | STAFF WRITER

NATN Recommended The Velvet Underground White Light/White Heat Verve, 1969 RiYL: Sonic Youth, Pixies, Nirvana

Entirely abrasive, noisy as hell, almost completely uncommercial -- of course White Light/White Heat is my favorite Velvet Underground album! Essentially a collection of a few experiments, a stray pop song or two left over from the first album, and one timeless, monster jam, White Light is the most confusing VU album, but ultimately the most rewarding.

The first album is somewhat stilted, thanks to Andy Warhol's underproduction and Nico's igorant treatment of some of Lou Reed's best lyrics. Number three is too heavy on acoustic guitars and harmonies, leaving only "The Murder Mystery" to provide the weirdness factor. By Loaded, there's only two real Velvets left, and Reed was just too exhausted of the whole process to write a whole album's worth of songs. Not that all these albums aren't essential -- these are hardcore fan quibbles, not genuine critiques.

But on to White Light/White Heat. The album is coated in distortion, from the otherwise sort of pedestrian call-and-response blues stomp title track to the remarkably evil guitar solo to "I Heard Her Call My Name." "The Gift" is an odd but very cool studio goof -- the band grinding away an instrumental stomper isolated in one stereo channel, John Cale's very Welsh voice reading a college creative writing class story of Reed's in the other. The first two times you hear it, you listen to the story, afterwards, you try and concentrate on the music, but Cale's odd cadences keep drawing you back. It does weird things to your head.

The same thing could also be said for "Lady Godiva's Operation," the ahead-of-its-time song that attempted to merge weird oxygen machine sound effects (provided by Cale's mouth) with vocal overdubs and some rather nice, pastoral slow music. Something seems to have gone wrong with the tape speed, and Reed is an entirely different key altogether than Cale, but it's still a fascinating failure. "Here She Comes Now" closes side one completely anomalously, with gentle acoustic picking and sensitive singing replacing the stomp, thump, and shout of the rest. On its own, it's a brief but nice break, as part of the album, it's more important, as it sets you up for the two mindblowers about to come.

The first one is "I Heard Her Call My Name," which begins with a very straightforward, quintessential Moe Tucker beat. (She plays four-time. That's it. You got a problem with that?) Then Sterling Morrison's implacable rhythm guitar comes in, steady as a rock. It's a nice little uptempo number for a bit, Reed singing about a girl who cares for him. How sweet! Then Reed shouts "and then my mind split open!" and activates some medieval torture device attached to his guitar which creates the most horrifying, ear-piercing squall in modern history. Reed actually plays a solo through this thing, and it simply must be heard to believed. As loud as possible. If you have a roommate you don't particularly like, this is one good way to get rid of him in an emergency.

Then, "Sister Ray." A seventeen-minute, one-take hail of guitar noise, the source of every disheveled indie axe slinger since, from Jon Spencer to Sonic Boom. Morrison and Tucker crunch away with out missing a beat for the full length, while Reed scrambles his guitar and Cale makes noises you wouldn't think possible with a mere electric organ. It goes without saying that this one needs to be listened to at full volume (and at full length). Guitar mass had no meaning until "Sister Ray," and since it has been defined as such. Reed babbles about hookers, sailors, and transvestites on the streets of New York at random intervals. Tucker pounds. Cale fiddles with the stops on the organ so it keeps getting louder and louder. Morrison slashes, Reed burns. It just gets denser. Rock critics weep about stuff like this.

White Light/White Heat is the least ripped-off of the Velvets' albums, and hence sounds now like the most personal. It represents the only time the full band -- Lou Reed, John Cale, Sterling Morrison, and Moe Tucker -- recorded without any outside influences or managerial pressures. Afterwards, Cale left -- it takes great tension to produce music this monumentally noisy. They never sounded quite the same again. I think it's safe to say, however, that their legacy lives on.

MARK T.R. DONOHUE | Mark T.R. Donohue is a prolific freelance writer whose areas of expertise include Rockies baseball, video games, genre television, English soccer, and pub rock. He lives in Colorado, where he cultivates the largest and creepiest private collection of Alyson Hannigan memorabilia in the Mountain West.