Well here it is, the “lost” album—or part of it—The Velvet Underground recorded after 1969’s The Velvet Underground, their first and only album with MGM Records. The songs on VU were intended as their second MGM release. But in the meantime the druggy-hating Mike Curb (leader of the totally Squaresville Mike Curb Congregation) was brought in to save the struggling label, which he accomplished by engaging in a Stalinesque purge of the label’s less popular and more controversial acts. The Velvets fell into both categories. As a result what would have been the VU’s fourth album ended up on a shelf and didn’t see the light of day until the release of 1985’s VU and 1986’s Another View.
But it’s not that simple, because both VU and Another View include songs that wouldn’t have been on the lost album. They’re five in number, and they date back to 1967–68, when John Cale was still the band’s Welshman in residence. And “lost” is a relative term—it wasn’t as if most of these songs had never been heard before the releases of VU and Another View.
Many had been bouncing around for eons. Some were part of The Velvet Underground’s live set; two of the songs on VU appear on 1969: The Velvet Underground Live, released in 1974, while two others can be heard on 2001’s Bootleg Series Volume 1: The Quine Tapes. And six appear, in reworked fashion, on Lou Reed’s solo albums. Only three of the songs on VU came out of the blue, and one of them dates back to Cale’s tenure in the band.
None of which diminishes the power of VU. These may not have been “finished” tracks, but the engineering remixes vary from good to excellent, making VU an exquisite listen as well as a historical marker of where the band stood, in terms of sound and style, between The Velvet Underground (the least of the band’s studio releases unless you count 1973’s Squeeze, which no sane person does) and their sublime parting shot, 1970’s Loaded.
Robert Christgau was flat-out wrong when he called VU “their most listenable record” (that would be Loaded) and out of his mind when he dubbed it “A Basement Tapes for ‘80s.” But he was more on the money than Mick Farren (of the Deviants fame), who wrote in Spin, “As a piece of entertainment—even a period piece—[the songs on VU] provoke the feeling that, if it had been released in sequence, the album probably would have been greeted as an almost unqualified dog.” Personally, I think an argument can be made that VU stands up favorably beside The Velvet Underground, and by God I’m making that argument. If VU is a dog, it’s a dog that hunts.
VU includes the best eight songs from the lost album (the scrapings found their way onto Another View) and two songs dating back to Cale’s day. Reed handles lead vocals on eight songs. Maureen Tucker and Doug Yule share vocal duties on “I’m Sticking with You” while Yule sings lead on “She’s My Best Friend.” VU is less adventurous than the albums that came before it—”Ocean” comes as close to an art statement as the band makes on the album, and it’s pure Strawberry Alarm Clock when compared to say, “European Son” or “Sister Ray” or “The Murder Mystery.” Reed was bending over to make The Velvet Underground popular, and decadence, chaos and horrible noise had gotten the band nowhere. It shouldn’t be forgotten that the title of Loaded referred to Atlantic Records’ desire for an album “loaded with hits,” and that while that Loaded has a double meaning, Reed shared the label’s agenda.
VU is the historical bridge between The Velvet Underground and Loaded. Or it might be more accurate to say that VU is a point on the bridge between the two albums, and that point is located closer to the former than it is to the latter. Case in point is the triple-time jangle rocker “Foggy Notion,” which brings “What Goes On” to mind. Over Tucker’s primitive beat and Yule’s throbbing bass, Reed and Morrison lay down lots of great guitar, while Lou laughs, goes woo, and says he’s got his Calamine lotion (wonder what he’s going to do with it?). In short he’s in an excitable mood, exuberant even.
“I Can’t Stand It” is slower but also boasts primal guitar thrust and a pounding beat. It’s a jumpier and twitchier beast than the heavier version Reed would include on his 1972 eponymous debut. And it works better. On the VU version Lou sounds like his hair’s standing on end, thanks no doubt to the methedrine he liked to shoot himself full of until he was pure, crackling electricity.
Doug Yule handles lead vocals on the very pop “She’s My Best Friend,” which is one of the three songs on VU that never appeared anywhere. It’s a friendly pop number with velocity but hardly shoots off sparks. Yule has a pleasant voice but he’s not the star material the band’s manager, who was grooming him as a possible replacement for troublesome Lou, thought he was. Still, it’s a very catchy little ditty, even if its lyrics made it a dubious choice for a single. Lines like “Here’s to Mullberry Jane/She made jam when she came/Somebody cut off her feet, now jelly rolls in the street” are Reed at his most absurd, and absurdity is a hard sell when it comes to the kids who buy rock records.
The lyrics of “Andy’s Chest”—which found its way onto Reed’s breakthrough album, 1972’s David Bowie-produced Transformer, are just plain silly (‘Cause you know what they say about honey bears/When you shave off all their baby hair/You have a hairy-minded pink bare bear”) and a needless distraction. Maybe he wrote them for Warhol and Andy found them cute—I have no way of knowing. The tempo of The Velvet Underground version is faster, the guitars sound tinny, and on this one I have to give the nod to the Reed version, if only because of the better production (love the backing vocals). But the VU version has its rough charm.
The slow and lovely “Lisa Says” beats the bluesier (yes blusier) version on Lou Reed—it’s more stripped down and proceeds, poignantly, at a more regal pace. And the chorus is both powerful and lovely. The impossibly pretty “Stephanie Says” dates back to the Cale days and benefits greatly from Cale’s viola, celeste, and backing vocals, and would have fit well on either of the two VU albums Cale played on. And it’s far superior to the dour version Reed reworked and re-titled “Caroline Says II” on his 1973 bummer of a masterpiece, Berlin.
“Ocean,” another song that made its way onto Reed’s debut, is slow, portentous, and possesses a spartan beauty. Reed delivers a powerful vocal performance, Tucker’s all over the cymbals, and the lyrics are great; the lines “Insects are evil thoughts thought of by selfish men/It nearly drives me crazy/I am a lazy son, I never get things done/Made up mostly of water” are as good any Reed ever came up with. And the outro, where Reed and Morrison harmonize on the repeated lines “Here come the waves” while Tucker pounds the drums and Yule throws in on organ, is sublime. Do I prefer Reed’s solo version? Yes. It has more rock ’n’ roll momentum, the bass is bigger, in fact everything is bigger, and more baroque, right down to Rick Wakeman’s fancy piano work. Reed throws in everything but a gong, and guess what, there’s a gong. And his vocal performance is downright impassioned. But if it’s simplicity that gets you off, The Velvet Underground version is the one you’ll keep going back to.
“One of These Days” is another song you won’t find anywhere else, and it’s a relaxed but funky little number that would have fit right in on Loaded. You get a slinky guitar riff, a loose vocal performance by Lou (love the way he stretches out that “peculiar,” and nearly cracks up later on), but the best comes at the end when the band breaks into a bass-and-cymbals-driven guitar jam that gives you a taste of what the Velvets were prone to do live—namely stretch out.
“I’m Sticking with You” is a sweet and childlike number sung by Tucker and Yule, and a song that can be heard on The Quine Tapes. Tucker starts things off backed only by Yule’s simple piano figure, then Yule joins in on vocals, accompanying Tucker at first, then swapping lines before finally taking over, singing “I’ll do anything for you” and “I’m sticking with you” as the entire band comes in at the end. It’s good stuff.
The last of the never-before-heard songs, “Temptation Inside Your Heart,” also dates back to 1968 and John Cale, and in this guy’s humble opinion it steals the show. At one level it’s a throw-away and a lark—Lou sings while Cale provides a running commentary, and it’s hilarious. A jaunty but simple guitar vamp that never varies from a cheerful gallop, it has Cale tossing in crazy noises, laughter, calls of “Motown” and “You Don’t Look like Martha and the Vandellas” (and more!) while Lou does lots of extemporizing himself, starting with “Somebody shut the door” (something he comes back to again and again) before moving on to “Electricity comes from other planets,” to which Cale responds with a mock impressed “Oooo.” The Velvets never sounded like they were having so much fun, right down to the end when Reed says, “The Pope in a silver castle,” at which point both men crack up.
Your reasonable person will say the Velvets would never have released something like this off-the-cuff piece of tomfuckery. Your reasonable person does not understand that the Velvets released far stranger. Like “Lady Godiva’s Operation,” where Lou casually cuts in on Cale’s vocals with some… er, commentary. I once heard a rumor that Lou snuck into studio and added his vocals to the song. I’ve never been able to corroborate it, but it sounds like something Reed would do, and the fact that the band released it as is speaks volumes. Strange was the norm, and upside down was right side up.
Had the 1969 cuts on VU and Another View seen the light of day as the fourth Velvet Underground album nothing would have changed. It certainly wouldn’t have improved their commercial prospects—if “Sweet Jane” and “Rock and Roll” couldn’t take The Velvet Underground to the big leagues, songs like “Foggy Notion” and “I Can’t Stand It”—as great as they are—sure weren’t going to. Posterity would have adjudged it as the logical—but hardly epochal—link between The Velvet Underground and Loaded. It would have been listened to with pleasure, but not with awe. That’s what the band’s first two albums and Loaded are for.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A-
