{"id":4306,"date":"2018-06-27T15:14:40","date_gmt":"2018-06-27T14:14:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kennywilson.org\/?p=4306"},"modified":"2018-06-27T15:14:40","modified_gmt":"2018-06-27T14:14:40","slug":"overloaded-the-story-of-white-light-white-heat-mojo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kennywilson.space\/index.php\/2018\/06\/27\/overloaded-the-story-of-white-light-white-heat-mojo\/","title":{"rendered":"Overloaded: The Story Of White Light\/White Heat | MOJO"},"content":{"rendered":"
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<\/div>\n<\/header>\n
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BY DAVID FRICKE (Mojo Magazine)<\/div>\n<\/header>\n
<\/div>\n
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\u201cNO ONE LISTENED TO IT. BUT THERE IT IS, FOREVER \u2013\u00a0THE QUINTESSENCE OF ARTICULATED PUNK<\/span>. AND NO ONE GOES NEAR IT.\u201d\u2013 Lou Reed, August, 2013<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

BY MID-1967, ONLY a few months after The Velvet Underground\u2019s debut album was released, their iconic ice queen singer Nico was a solo artist, and pop art svengali Andy Warhol was no longer managing and feeding the group. Warhol\u2019s parting gift: the all-black cover idea for their follow-up \u2013 the album they would name\u00a0White Light\/White Heat<\/em>. Meanwhile, the band scrabbled to survive in the drug-soaked art-scene demi-monde of Manhattan\u2019s Lower East Side.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur lives were chaos,\u201d VU guitarist Sterling Morrison told me in 1994. \u201cThings were insane, day in and day out: the people we knew, the excesses of all sorts. For a long time, we were living in various places, afraid of the police. At the height of my musical career, I had no permanent address.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Test
Test pressing of Lady Godiva\u2019s Operation, the \u201cexperimental noir\u201d from the White Light\/White Heat sessions.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

There were mounting internal tensions, too, over direction and control between Lou Reed and John Cale, the group\u2019s founders, especially after their debut album\u2019s failure to launch. \u201cWhite Light\/White Heat<\/em>\u00a0was definitely the raucous end of what we did,\u201d Morrison affirmed. But, he insisted, \u201cWe were all pulling in the same direction. We may have been dragging each other off a cliff, but we were definitely all going in the same direction.\u201d<\/p>\n

From that turbulence and frustration, Reed, Cale, Morrison and drummer Moe Tucker created their second straight classic. Where\u00a0The Velvet Underground And Nico<\/em>\u00a0was a demonstration of breadth and vision, developed in near-invisibility even before the band met Warhol \u2013 \u201cWe rehearsed for a year for that album, without doing anything else,\u201d Cale claims \u2013\u00a0White Light\/White Heat<\/em>\u00a0was a more compact whiplash: the exhilarating guitar violence starting with the title track, peaking in Reed\u2019s atonal-flamethrower solo in I Heard Her Call My Name; the experimental sung and spoken noir of Lady Godiva\u2019s Operation and The Gift; the propulsive, distorted eternity of sexual candour and twilight drug life, rendered dry and real in Reed\u2019s lethal monotone, in Sister Ray.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy this time, we were a touring band,\u201d Cale explains. \u201cAnd the sound we could get on stage \u2013 we wanted to get that on the record. In some performances, Moe would go up first, start a backbeat, then I would come out and put a drone on the keyboard. Sterling would start playing, then Lou would come out, maybe turn into a Southern preacher at the mike. That idea of us coming out one after the other, doing whatever we wanted, that individualism \u2013 it\u2019s there on Sister Ray, in spades.\u201d<\/p>\n

White Light\/White Heat<\/em>\u00a0was also the Velvets\u2019 truest record, the most direct, uncompromised document of their deep, personal connections to New York\u2019s avant-garde in the mid-\u201960s; the raw, independent cinema of Jack Smith, Jonas Mekas and Piero Heliczer; Cale\u2019s pre-Velvets experiences in drone, improvisation and radical composition with John Cage and the early minimalists La Monte Young and Tony Conrad; Reed\u2019s dual immersion, from his days at Syracuse University, in the free jazz of Ornette Coleman and Cecil Taylor and the metropolitan-underworld literature of William Burroughs and Hubert Selby, Jr.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m in there with a B.A. in English \u2013 I\u2019m no naif,\u201d Reed told me shortly before his death. \u201cAnd being in with that crowd, the improvisers, the film-makers, of course it would affect where I was going. We said it a hundred times; people thought we were being arrogant and conceited. We\u2019re reading those authors, watching those Jack Smith movies. What did you think we were going to come out with?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/section>\n

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\"The<\/p>\n

The Velvet Underground as they were on the eve of White Light\/White Heat\u2019s release. Clockwise from top left: Maureen \u201cMoe\u201d Tucker, Lou Reed, Sterling Morrison, John Cale.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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\u201cWE WERE ALL PULLING IN THE SAME DIRECTION.<\/span>\u00a0WE MAY HAVE BEEN DRAGGING EACH OTHER OFF A CLIFF\u2026\u201d\u2013 Sterling Morrison<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/section>\n

The Velvets were also a rock band, with roots in that ferment but ambitions charged by the other modern action around them. \u201cThere was close competition with Bob Dylan,\u201d Cale admits. \u201cHe was getting into people\u2019s heads. We thought we could do that.\u201d\u201cMaybe our frustrations led the way,\u201d Morrison said of\u00a0White Light\/White Heat<\/em>. \u201cBut we were already pretty much into it. We had good amps, good distortion devices. We were the first American band to have an endorsement deal with Vox.\u201d The album, he contended, \u201cwas just us using the Vox amps and playing them emphatically.\u201d\u201cThey say rock is life-affirming music,\u201d Reed says. \u201cYou feel bad, you put on two minutes of this \u2013 boom. There\u2019s something implicit in it. And we were the best, the real thing. You listen to the Gymnasium tape [the live set included with December\u2019s Deluxe reissue], this album \u2013 there is the real stuff. It\u2019s aggressive, yes. But it\u2019s not aggressive-bad. This is aggressive, going to God.\u201d<\/section>\n
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The Players<\/h3>\n
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\"Lou<\/div>\n
LOU REED<\/h5>\n

1942-2013. Guitarist\/vocalist and primary songwriter. \u201cNo one censured it,\u201d he said of\u00a0WL\/WH<\/em>. \u201cBecause no one listened to it.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\"John<\/div>\n
JOHN CALE<\/h5>\n

Bass guitar\/viola\/keyboards. The classically trained Welshman provided the deadpan monologue for The Gift: \u201cEveryone was hellbent on being heard.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\"Sterling<\/div>\n
STERLING MORRISON<\/h5>\n

1942-1995. Guitar and \u201cmedical sound effects\u201d on Lady Godiva\u2019s Operation: \u201cMaybe our frustrations led the way.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\"Moe<\/div>\n
MOE TUCKER<\/h5>\n

Drums. Provider of the group\u2019s relentless, unfussy propulsion. \u201cThe songs were the songs,\u201d she drily notes.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\"Andy<\/div>\n
ANDY WARHOL<\/h5>\n

1928-1987. Pop art icon, art-director and manager of The Velvet Underground. Parted ways with the group in the run-in to\u00a0White Light\/White Heat<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\"Ornette<\/div>\n
TOM WILSON<\/h5>\n

1931-1978.\u00a0WL\/WH<\/em>\u00a0producer and babe magnet. Notable track record with Dylan, Zappa, Simon & Garfunkel, the VU and Nico (pictured).<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\"Hubert<\/div>\n
HUBERT SELBY JR.<\/h5>\n

1928-2004. Novelist\/poet of the New York demi-monde. Inspired Sister Ray: \u201cIt\u2019s a taste of Selby, uptown,\u201d said Reed.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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\"Ornette<\/div>\n
ORNETTE COLEMAN<\/h5>\n

Saxophonist\/composer, architect of free jazz. His lines influenced Reed\u2019s splintering lead guitar approach on I Heard Her Call My Name.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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\"Cecil<\/div>\n
CECIL TAYLOR<\/h5>\n

Jazz pianist and poet admired by Lou Reed. His experimental approach fed into\u00a0WL\/WH<\/em>. Tom Wilson produced his 1956 album,\u00a0Jazz Advance<\/em>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Players Photos: Getty \/ Rex<\/em><\/p>\n<\/section>\n

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II.<\/h3>\n
\"White
That\u2019s the single! Test pressing of the ill-fated White Light\/White Heat 45.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

In September 1967 at Mayfair Studios \u2013 located on Seventh Avenue near Times Square and the only eight-track operation in town \u2013 The Velvet Underground put\u00a0White Light\/White Heat<\/em>\u00a0to tape. \u201cI think it was five days,\u201d Cale once told me.<\/p>\n

Gary Kellgren, Mayfair\u2019s house engineer, previously worked with the Velvets on part of the debut \u2018Banana\u2019 album and engineered the spring-\u201967 recording of Nico\u2019s solo debut,\u00a0Chelsea Girl<\/em>. The producer, officially, was Tom Wilson, also with a track record with the group. In 1965, when the producer was still at Columbia, he invited Reed and Cale to play for him in his office. \u201cWe dragged Lou\u2019s guitar, my viola and one amplifier up there,\u201d said Cale. \u201cWe played Black Angel\u2019s Death Song for him. He knew there was energy and potential.\u201d At Mayfair, Cale mostly remembered Wilson\u2019s \u201cparade of beautiful girls, coming through all the time. He had an incredible style with women.\u201d<\/p>\n

But the Velvets\u2019 volume and aggression posed problems for the recording men, and Reed insisted that Kellgren simply walked out during Sister Ray. \u201cAt one point, he turns to us and says, \u2018You do this. When you\u2019re done, call me.\u2019 Which wasn\u2019t far from the record company\u2019s attitude. Everything we did \u2013 it came out. No one censured it. Because no one listened to it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"White
Press ad for WhiteLight\/White Heat. None, none more black.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

On Sister Ray, Reed sang live across the feral seesawing of the guitars, drums and Cale\u2019s Vox organ as each pressed for dominance in the mix. \u201cIt was competition,\u201d Cale says. \u201cEveryone was hellbent on being heard.\u201d The ending, though, was easy. \u201cWe just knew when it was over,\u201d Morrison remembered. \u201cIt felt like ending. And it did.\u201d<\/p>\n

There was a real Sister Ray: \u201cThis black queen,\u201d Reed says. \u201cJohn and I were uptown, out on the street, and up comes this person \u2013 very nice, but flaming.\u201d Reed wrote the words, a set of incidents and character studies, on a train ride from Connecticut after a bad Velvets show there. \u201cIt was\u00a0a propos<\/em>\u00a0of nothing. \u2018Duck and Sally inside\u2019 \u2013 it\u2019s a taste of Selby, uptown. And the music was just a jam we had been working on\u201d \u2013 provisionally titled Searchin\u2019, after one of the lyrics (\u201cI\u2019m searchin\u2019 for my mainline\u201d).<\/p>\n

\u201cThe lyrics aren\u2019t negative,\u201d Reed argues. \u201cWhite Light\/White Heat \u2013 it has to do with methamphetamine. Sister Ray is all about that. But they are telling you stories \u2013 and feelings. They are not stupid. And the rhythm is interesting. But you\u2019d think that. I studied long enough.\u201d<\/p>\n

White Light\/White Heat<\/em>\u00a0is renowned for its distortion and unforgiving thrust. But it also features the simple, airy yearning of Here She Comes Now, one of the Velvets\u2019 finest ballads. And there are telling, human details even in the noise, like the breakdown at the end of White Light\/White Heat, when Cale\u2019s frantic, repetitive bass playing leaps forward in an out-of-time spasm. \u201cI\u2019m pretty sure it broke down,\u201d he says of his part, \u201cbecause my hand was falling off.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"White
The WL\/WH press campaign hots up: \u201cReverberate in exploding whispers, electrifying echoes.\u201d<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Lady Godiva\u2019s Operation was, Cale explains, \u201ca radio-theatre piece, trying to use the studio to create this panorama of a story\u201d \u2013 lust, transfiguration and ominously vague surgery that goes fatally wrong. The Gift was just the band and Cale\u2019s rich Welsh intonation. Reed wrote the story \u2013 an examination of nerd-ish obsession peppered with wily minutiae (the Clarence Darrow Post Office) and ending in sudden death \u2013 at Syracuse University, for a creative writing class. Reed: \u201cThe idea was two things going at once\u201d \u2013 Cale in one stereo channel, music in the other. \u201cIf you got tired of the words, you could just listen to the instrumental.\u201d<\/p>\n

Cale\u2019s reading was a first take. The sound of the blade plunging through the cardboard, \u201cright through the centre of Waldo Jeffers\u2019 head,\u201d was Reed stabbing a canteloupe with a knife. Frank Zappa, also working at Mayfair with The Mothers Of Invention, was there. \u201cHe said, \u2018You\u2019ll get a better sound if you do it this way,\u2019\u201d Reed recalled. \u201cAnd then he says, \u2018You know, I\u2019m really surprised how much I like your album,\u2019\u201d referring to the \u2018Banana\u2019 LP. \u201cSurprised? OK.\u201d Reed smiled. \u201cHe was being friendly.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wayne McGuire\u2019s ecstatic review of\u00a0White Light\/White Heat<\/em>, in a 1968 issue of rock magazine Crawdaddy, cited Reed\u2019s playing in \u201cI Heard Her Call My Name\u201d as \u201cthe most advanced lead guitar work I think you\u2019re going to hear for at least a year or two.\u201d McGuire also noted the jazz in there, comparing the album \u2013 especially Sister Ray \u2013 to recordings by Cecil Taylor and the saxophonists John Coltrane and Albert Ayler. \u201cSister Ray is much like [Coltrane\u2019s] Impressions,\u201d McGuire wrote, \u201cin that it is a sustained exercise in emotional stampede and modal in the deepest sense: mode as spiritual motif, mode as infinite musical universe.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was rare understanding for the time. A brief review in the February 24, 1968 edition of Billboard was more measured: \u201cAlthough the words tend to be drowned out by pulsating instrumentation, those not minding to cuddle up to the speakers will joy [sic] to narrative songs such as The Gift, the story of a boy and girl.\u201d Still, the trade bible promised, \u201cDealers who cater to the underground market will find this disk a hot seller.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/section>\n

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\u201cTHERE WAS CLOSE COMPETITION WITH BOB DYLAN.\u00a0HE WAS GETTING INTO PEOPLE’S HEADS.<\/span>\u00a0WE THOUGHT WE COULD DO THAT.\u201d\u2013 John Cale<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/section>\n

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\"The<\/span><\/div>\n<\/section>\n
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III.<\/h3>\n

That didn\u2019t happen. There was a single, the title track coupled with Here She Comes Now. It didn\u2019t help. By the fall of 1968, Cale was gone. Forced to leave the group he co-founded, the Welshman embarked on a second career as a producer, composer and solo artist that continues to this day.<\/p>\n

The Velvets went back on the road, and soon into the studio, with a new bassist, Doug Yule. They found a new power in quiet and more decorative pop on their next two albums, until Reed left in 1970 to begin, eventually, his own extraordinary solo life. Live, without Cale, the Velvets still played Sister Ray.<\/p>\n

This new Deluxe collection includes Cale\u2019s last studio sessions with The Velvet Underground. Temptation Inside Your Heart and Stephanie Says were recorded in New York in February, 1968, produced by the band for a prospective single (according to Cale and Morrison). Temptation was their idea of a Motown dance party, with congas and comic asides caught by accident as Reed, Cale and Morrison overdubbed their male-Marvelettes harmony vocals. Stephanie Says was the first of Reed\u2019s portrait songs, named after women in crisis and overheard conversation (Candy Says, Lisa Says, Caroline Says I and II). Cale\u2019s viola hovered through the arrangement like another singer: graceful and comforting.<\/p>\n

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\"White
Original studio tape box for I Think I\u2019m Falling In Love, aka Guess I\u2019m Falling In Love. An instrumental outtake on the WL\/WH reissue, a vocal version also appears on the Live At The Gymnasium disc.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n
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\"White
The original mono master tape of the White Light\/White Heat album. Note correction of \u201cSearching\u201d, the original title of Sister Ray.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

On a spare day in May, 1968, between shows in Los Angeles and San Francisco, the Velvets returned to L.A.\u2019s T.T.G. Studios \u2013 where they had worked on\u00a0The Velvet Underground And Nico<\/em>\u00a0\u2013 and taped two versions of another viola feature, Hey Mr. Rain. In a 1994 interview, Cale described the song\u2019s droning melancholy and rhythmic suspense as \u201ctrying to have a pressure cooker. That\u2019s what those songs were about \u2013 Sister Ray, European Son [on\u00a0The Velvet Underground And Nico<\/em>], Hey Mr. Rain. They were things we could exploit on stage, flesh out and improvise. But we were driving it into the ground. We hadn\u2019t spent any time quietly puttering around the way we did before the first album.\u201d<\/p>\n

The classic quartet cut another song at T.T.G., a recently unearthed attempt at Reed\u2019s Beginning To See The Light. The song, briskly redone with Yule, would open Side Two of the Velvets\u2019 third album. This take has a vintage kick \u2013 Martha & The Vandellas\u2019 Dancing In The Street taken at the gait of I\u2019m Waiting For The Man. You also hear the impending change. \u201cHere comes two of you\/Which one would you choose?,\u201d Reed sings, an intimation of the cleaving that would alter the Velvets for good.<\/p>\n

\u201cJohn has said we didn\u2019t get to finish what we started \u2013 that is sadly true,\u201d Reed acknowledged. \u201cHowever, as far as we got, that was monumental.\u201d\u00a0White Light\/White Heat<\/em>, everything leading to it and gathered here \u2013 \u201cI would match it,\u201d he says, \u201cwith anything by anybody, anywhere, ever. No group in the world can touch what we did.\u201d<\/p>\n

Back in 1994, I asked Moe Tucker about the fuzz and chaos of\u00a0White Light\/White Heat<\/em>\u00a0\u2013 how much they reflected the daily trials and tensions of being The Velvet Underground, always first and alone in their ideals and attack. She replied with her usual, common sense: \u201cI don\u2019t know if I go along with that. The songs were the songs, and the way we played them was the way we each wanted to play them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Anything else, she declared with a grin, was \u201ca little too philosophical.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/section>\n

\u201cTHAT WAS MONUMENTAL. I WOULD MATCH IT WITH ANYTHING BY ANYBODY, ANYWHERE, EVER.\u00a0NO GROUP IN THE WORLD CAN TOUCH WHAT WE DID.\u201d<\/span>\u2013 Lou Reed<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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\"New<\/span><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n<\/section>\n<\/article>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BY DAVID FRICKE (Mojo Magazine) \u201cNO ONE LISTENED TO IT. BUT THERE IT IS, FOREVER \u2013\u00a0THE QUINTESSENCE OF ARTICULATED PUNK. AND NO ONE GOES NEAR IT.\u201d\u2013 Lou Reed, August, 2013 BY MID-1967, ONLY a few months after The Velvet Underground\u2019s debut album was released, their iconic ice queen singer Nico was a solo artist, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4337,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,13,63],"tags":[103,127,160,261,323,475,487],"class_list":["post-4306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-andy-warhol","category-counterculture","category-the-velvet-underground","tag-art","tag-bob-dylan","tag-counterculture","tag-jazz","tag-new-york","tag-velvet-underground","tag-warhol-factory"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kennywilson.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4306","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kennywilson.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kennywilson.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kennywilson.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kennywilson.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4306"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kennywilson.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4306\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kennywilson.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kennywilson.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kennywilson.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kennywilson.space\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}