45 years ago this month, Lou Reed released his first solo album. A couple of years ago, I wrote this article about the latest box set of material surrounding 1969's The Velvet Underground, an album I suggest forecasts Reed's solo career. DA
Lester
Bangs’ Rolling Stone review of The
Velvet Underground’s eponymous 1969 album asked the question that seems to
stand for most of the discussion that came after: “How do you define a group
like this, who moved from ‘Heroin’ to ‘Jesus’ in two short years?” Even if he
didn’t know what would soon be part of the conventional wisdom (John Cale had
left the band, taking a great deal of noise with him), what follows is a smart
review that paints a useful picture. Bangs notes the increasing focus on
lyricism, spirituality and the Byrds influences that were, indeed, working to
soften the band’s touch. He also oversimplifies in ways most discussion still
oversimplifies not just the story of The Velvet Underground but the real issue
here, Lou Reed as an artist.
It’s
great fun but not particularly accurate when Bangs notes that the album’s new
sense of compassion is alarming from Reed, “the malevolent Burroughsian Death
Dwarf who had previously never written a complimentary song about anybody.” Two
things here. First, nothing on The Velvet
Underground can be reduced to “complimentary.” In “Some Kind of Love,”
Marguerite is called a “bore” but “not without your charm.” So, there’s that.
The great love song here, “Pale Blue Eyes,” continuously returns to the
summation, “Mostly you just make me mad.” Reed's character also implies his lover’s strange
and less than self-aware about the sins she shares with the singer. By
contrast, the first album’s “I’ll Be Your Mirror” is pure love letter. For that
matter, all of the World of Warhol characters on the first side of that debut are only interesting because of the compassion in the songwriting. Never mind that the
grief in album closer “European Son” and the second album’s “Lady Godiva’s Operation” and “I
Heard Her Call My Name” are a polar distance from insulting.
All of
that said, Bangs is capturing a true contrast in tone. Just as there is truth
in the ongoing assumptions that, with Cale gone, Reed was now pursuing shades
of pop more accessible than the music on the first two albums. Of the Velvets
initial collaborators, it is Reed who could and did write the lyric, “her life
was saved by rock and roll,” a statement without a trace of irony. For all of
his literary aspirations (and pretensions), Lou Reed believed in rock and roll.
So the
real irony of The Velvet Underground
album is that, left to his own devices (new bassist Doug Yule, original rhythm
guitarist Sterling Morrison and drummer Maureen Tucker have all spoken frankly
about deferring to Cale and Reed when it came to the general direction of the
band), Reed made what may be the least conventional of The Velvet Underground
albums. The bulk of the more commercial material recorded alongside this work
in 1969 (available in the new 67-cut Super
Deluxe Velvet Underground set) was shelved until its release after Reed’s
departure on 1970’s Loaded and 1985’s
V.U.
Of the
three albums the original band crafted together, 1967’s The Velvet Underground & Nico is the most conventionally
structured—a sunny morning opener followed by fast rocker, mid-tempo rocker,
fast rocker and trippy meditation (Side
A) then a weirder second side softened by a couple of very catchy pop songs.
It’s the seedy precursor to Sgt. Pepper’s
Lonely Hearts Club Band. 1968’s White
Light/White Heat is certainly the most aggressive modernist
experiment—droning noise from start to finish—but in some ways that simply
underscores John Cale’s longstanding relationship with the avant garde (in 1963
classical composer Aaron Copeland helped bring him to the United States and
John Cage worked with him on an 18 hour performance of Erik Satie’s
“Vexations”). Today, it’s the one that sounds the most artsy and punk.
Reed’s
post-Cale album is not so easily placed in musical history. It starts ragged,
in the middle of a conversation, with the sort of quiet number that might be an
interlude on another album, and culminates in a lyrical puzzle followed by a
borderline-suicidal lullaby. It’s decidedly not a pop album or a punk album or
even a Byrds album. What it does sound like, though, is a Lou Reed album, a
genre unto itself that presupposes almost nothing about structure or style.
But I think if we take
Bangs’ original question and tackled it from a different angle, we might make
more sense of the progression. How do you define a band that can follow
“Heroin” with “Jesus” at all? I don’t find it a remarkable achievement that
there’s a space of two years between that noisy drug reverie and that
delicately sung prayer. The achievement is the effort to go deep—first, into
the drug experience itself and, second, into the intimacy of a call for spiritual
help. In fact, they fit well together, “Jesus” nicely suiting what one of
Reed’s favorite writers, Edgar Allan Poe, once called “the after-dream of a
reveler on opium—the bitter lapsing into every-day life—the hideous dropping
off of the veil.” After that high in “Heroin” when Reed calls out, “I feel just
like Jesus’s son,” a come-to-Jesus is no doubt on the way.
And not a literal
come-to-Jesus because, unlike Bob Dylan, Lou Reed made no famous conversions
away from Judaism. This is simply a prayer, in American vernacular, as is the
whole of The Velvet Underground, at
the very least a plea for hope. In an exploding counterculture based upon new
technologies and mass media, Lou Reed appeals for legitimate understanding,
acceptance and intimacy.
The quietest
of moments are its hallmark, beginning at the prayerful volume of pillow talk.
Lou Reed’s “Closet Mix” of this album went on the original LP, which emphasizes
subtleties of breath only possible with lips close to the ear. On album opener
“Candy Says,” Reed uses Doug Yule’s considerably sweeter voice to convey the
quiet fears of the woman in the song. Much is made of the fact that the Candy
in the song is trans-gendered Candy Darling, an actress and writer on the
Warhol scene (and that certainly explains the emphasis in the lyric). But the
song’s concerns are as universal as self loathing, and that’s what makes it work, regardless
of the listener’s familiarity with Warhol’s Factory.
Over the
most delicate guitar, bass and brushes, Candy confesses that she hates her body.
She doubts and fears the choices she has to make, so she distracts herself
every way she can. She confesses these things to the listener with the
heartbreaking dream of a question: “What do you think I’d see, if I could walk
away from me?”
Chugging
rhythm guitars and propulsive drums offer the rock and roll response on “What
Goes On.” Lou Reed’s sandpaper vocal plays all the characters in this dialogue
that reads like a rough draft for the next album’s more narrative “Rock and
Roll.” One speaker asks “What’s going on in your mind?” and the other answers,
“I think that I am upside down.” The music insists upon the refrain that
concludes each movement, “You know it will be alright.” As the Velvet
Underground always did so well, the band makes the main argument--pushing
forward with the urgency of the rhythm, the wild energy of the soloing guitar
and the serene certainty of organ making sure that this moment is worth
living to help guarantee the next.
“Some Kind of Love” is
the third conversation in a row—on the regular mix with a wonderful dialogue
between Morrison’s and Reed’s guitars, on “The Closet Mix” with only Reed’s
searching notes to make the point. Marguerita’s explains to Tom the
impossibility of her fidelity, and Tom tells her that her adventurousness
shows a certain lack of creativity. Though they never come to any long term
agreement, the couple uses the argument for foreplay, and the sensuality of the
guitar, the cowbell, and Reed’s lip biting vocal all suggest that’ll be all
right for the time being.
Still, what
follows is the remorse of lost love. If “Pale Blue Eyes” isn’t the
most beautiful song Lou Reed ever wrote, it belongs in that conversation. And
it is a conversation, if only a conversation with a memory. The instrumentation
is quiet and simple—sparkling guitar over chorded organ punctuated by regular
flicks of tambourine. Again, the feeling is as universal as “I’m So Lonesome I
Could Cry,” mourning a relationship and celebrating its beauty at the same
time. No line captures the infinite moments of romantic love better than this
refrain, “linger on, your pale blue eyes.”
“Jesus” follows those memories as a scene of quiet desperation. Two
notes bounce back and forth on guitar against light chording while Reed and
Yule sing with a quiet reverence that won’t wake the neighbors. It’s a prayer
for new footing and “my proper place.” Of course, this song might be placed
almost anywhere in the Velvet Underground line up because the characters Reed
sings about tend to not know where they fit in, a modernist theme if ever there
was one--at the end of this side-long effort to communicate that which
doesn’t fit into polite conversation. Like so many writers before him, Reed
believed that the secret self and the social self were at war, that society was
designed to run on lies. “Jesus” is a prayer for a more compassionate world,
where all these fears and lies can be brought out in the open.
Another
chugging rocker (the Velvet Underground’s specialty, though this one’s
decidedly acoustic), “Beginning to See the Light,” suggests old time gospel
redemption. It shouldn’t be surprising
that the group sung refrain here comes closest to actually sounding like the
country-rock Byrds, who all but created roots-rock incorporating old time
gospel elements into a counterculture world view.
What is
interesting about that refrain is the way it sums up the social mask The Velvet
Underground and Lou Reed would wear so frequently it led to their exotic
oversimplification—“Here we go again, playing the fool again/Here we go again,
acting hard again.” And there is an irony here that complicates the song
considerably. Though this song is about some level of self- acceptance—“I met
myself in a dream, and I just want to tell you everything was all right"—it’s
also about the light shining on ugly truths. That “Jesus” prayer does not
typically get answered, and at the end of the song, the singer’s left asking
over and over again, “How does it feel to be loved?”
“I’m Set
Free” takes the concept of redemption down another dark hallway. Tucker’s tom
toms herald the significance of the hippie declaration of the title. But the
kicker is that the singer’s liberation has come through some form of death.
He’s let go of past dreams, he’s had a vision of his himself as a decapitated
fool, and he’s now “set free to find a new illusion.”
The rollicking little
country rocker that follows, “The Story of My Life,” is a return to the conversation
format of the album’s first side. A character named Billy (we know today was a
Factory photographer, but again, such trivia matters little) says
that the concept of “wrong and right” are meaningless. If he’s learned nothing
else, he’s learned that. It’s a nihilistic perspective that’s made to not sound
cynical. And maybe in the context of an album about society’s tendency to
silence differences, it can rightfully be heard as modestly liberated.
Reed then closes with a
couple of different kinds of statements of support for the Velvet Underground
itself. On “The Murder Mystery,” Sterling Morrison reads a poem in one channel
while Lou Reed reads its sister poem in the right channel. Reed’s voice moves
deliberately, like the bass; Morrison’s runs fast, alongside the guitar. The
verses feature urgent guitar runs and drum punctuation followed by meandering
organ and guitar refrains on which Doug Yule and Maureen Tucker sing short
verses. You can actually follow each poem by turning the balance fully to one
side or another, or you can listen to the whole as a piece of music with
largely unintelligible lyrics. One side contemplates the romantic dead ends of
political adventurism while the other side contemplates the futile compulsions
of poetry itself. In the context of this album, though, the song’s the very
definition of making space for what can’t be easily understood—a test of the
ears that grows more colorful and dynamic with each listen.
Brokenness,
alienation and experimentation, these are the aesthetics of modernism and the
themes of this album, but the whole of this album is invested in a fundamental
belief in music offering a way to put together the pieces and make new kinds of
connections. And if modernism had dominated the “high arts” at least since World
War I, it’s telling that Reed reaches back to Tin Pan Alley pop for the final
number, “After Hours,” featuring Maureen Tucker with a vocal all-but-child-like
in its innocence. There’s an equivalence made here. Next to the grand experiment
of “The Murder Mystery,” this ditty of a song breaks all walls down with a
simplicity that goes right for the heart. At a key point, Tucker sings over an
acoustic guitar that may as well be a uke, “Oh, someday I know, someone will
look into my eyes and will say….” The guitar drops out, and she continues in
echoed a capella, “Hello, you’re my very special one.” As gentle a moment as it
is, it’s liable to make a listener smile and tear over at the same time, all
the more poignant because this woman sounds like she wants to give up (or hide away forever),
repeating her desire to “never have to see the day again.” She’s the character
in every one of these songs, beat up by life but still, in prayers and stolen
moments of love, hoping for something better.
What
makes The Velvet Underground, at its
heart, the first Lou Reed album, is an intimacy inextricably tied to his
character that Reed was only fully able to explore when he was freed from the
push pull of his relationship with Cale. That intimacy came with a mix of
vulnerability and realism Reed no doubt saw as essential to gaining anything
like truth through rock and roll. And what made Lou Reed great was that he
believed in the power of the music—“despite all the amputation….you could dance
to a rock and roll station. And it was all right.” More than anything on the
band’s first two albums, The Velvet
Underground shows the logic behind this signature understanding.
