Circus, February 1971
THE VELVET UNDERGROUND ARE FAMOUS FOR THEIR ASSOCIATION WITH Andy Warhol, for singing songs about heroin and sex, for having rock’s first female drummer, for being mysterious and remote, for being perverse and esoteric, for having a banana on their first album cover and for being written about with love by Lenny Kaye.
Like the Grateful Dead they remained the darlings of a relatively small set, either unwilling or unable to pierce the needle hole of hit record radio, and like the Dead, in spite of their long tenure as everybody’s favorite starving superstars, their basic inborn instinct for rock and roll has driven them, albeit gradually, to the ranks of the finest and most popular American rock bands. The reasons have to do with their talent and perseverance (the band has been together more or less for five years!), with their vision and their integrated style, but mainly with the Mick Jagger of the group, its song-writer, lead singer, guitarist, pianist, and sex symbol, Lou Reed.
The Velvets’ history is well known. They got together in Syracuse, surfaced in New York in 1966 playing the Cafe Bizarre where they met and fell in love with Andy Warhol, who was then at the peak of his pop art success. They teamed up with Nico, a Warhol superstar beauty, sang songs with lyrics that made the Rolling Stones look like prudes, and made history as part of a multi media event (the first and best . . . ) called the Plastic Exploding Inevitable [sic] where they turned their back to the audience, and played very very loud. A legend of decadence evolved about the group as well as one of mind expanding music. They were the first and only east coast acid rock band of the period. They released three excellent albums on Verve and now MGM has released a “Best of” collection.
But the point of this article is not to further rehash what New York City acid was like in 1967 (an adorable but rather over reported square inch in the many acred farm of contemporary American consciousness). The point is to tell you about a new Atlantic album by the very same Velvets. It is an LP which neither imitates nor forgets the past. It’s called The Velvet Underground Loaded, has a nondescript cover, and conveys the wonderful feeling that the Stones have in the past exclusively reserved: unforeseeable growth, immediate excitement and memorable new material.
Typically, Loaded is the completion not the beginning of another Velvet chapter; the album changed producers in midstream, resulted in some group dissension and ended an all summer engagement at Max’s Kansas City where Lou Reed had returned rock joy to the sweaty cynical summer empire city. It’s hard to tell what caused what—who left whom if at all, or what will happen in the months to come. Suffice it to say that the summer of 1970 has become instant Velvet Underground history as sure as 1967 was—and luckily for the present and future, Loaded exists as a lasting relic of the recent time.
Rock and roll, as we all know, went through somewhat of a plateau most of this summer. Festivals were plagued by government fear and quick buck promoters, and no revolutionary supergroup seemed on the horizon. New York, more than any other part of the country, craves freshness from its entertainers. Charles Manson could have been talking about New York when he wrote “Restless people from the sick city—but they’re home now to make the sky look pretty. What can I do—I’m just a person?—this is the line we always seem to hear—you just sit—things get worse—watch TV and drink your beer.” And if things are difficult for the average person, the imagined woes of the large core of avant garde are even worse. The Velvets were one of the first genuine rock groups to win the affection of the New York City art crowd. In June, Danny Fields, the young Atlantic Records savant who brought the group to the label, arranged for them to play the upstairs room at Max’s Kansas City, the sprawling “in crowd” center of Gotham. Within the red lit walls of Max’s, stars from Brian Jones to Bob Dylan, from Janis Joplin to Penny Arcade, have whiled away their late night hours.
The upstairs room is usually a “discotheque” but for the Velvets it became a concert hall. And for their opening night of a one week engagement—their first in native New York for close to two years— uncountable hundreds squeezed together at midnight hoping for a glimpse into the recent past that more had read about (or written about) than lived through.
But Lou Reed was too soulful to be an ivory tower golden oldie. There were changes from the old days. John Cale, producer of the first few albums, had left the group and was replaced on bass and organ by Doug Yule. Maureen Tucker was back with the group and played on the album.
The old Velvet sound combined a Dylanesque vocal with an eastern rock freak backing. In the old days Reed had concocted complex feedback systems where he would get dozens of notes for every string he touched. The new Velvets were unpretentious, tight, throbbing hard hard rock and roll, blistering with Reed’s super voice of pleasure/ pain which sang songs no one had ever heard before. “Dance,” he demanded raising his left hand with an intensity and grace which made him appear some beautiful combination of Frank Sinatra and Mick Jagger. And dance they did, even the most hardcore wallflowers. The diehard spectators and the impassioned table sitters could not help but move to the driving beat that the new Velvet Underground produced, driven by Sterling Morrison’s lead guitar. It was Reed’s show and no one would dispute it. In black tee shirt, his veins bulging from his muscular neck he played two sets a night—and not for the one week that had been originally scheduled but for the entire summer.
The Velvets’ old professor Delmore Schwartz once wrote, “a cup of coffee can destroy your sadness,” and the Velvet Underground were New York’s cup of coffee throughout the summer smog. It must be observed that New York is one of the most performed-in cities in the nation—in addition to the always busy Fillmore East there is Unganos, the Bitter End, the Village Gaslight, and a dozen lesser known stages where pop music is offered. Yet it was Max’s that led the most sophisticated rock audience in the world to dance as if they were in high school. And to return night after night because they actually enjoyed the music, not merely the social mannerism of a single viewing. Not since the early Lovin’ Spoonful days had a rock band in New York continued to draw crowds for such a long period of time. Quite literally everyone of musical importance came to hear Lou belt out with exquisite contempt: “Oh sweet nothing / you ain’t got nothing at all.”
Naturally a scene sprang up. The group performed a couple of their old classics like “Heroin” or “I’m Waiting for My Man” each night, but they played them the new rock way—commanding respect and a love for their new style. Meanwhile rumors developed. Reed would appear to hate the gig on some nights, or to be at his happiest another. He gave interviews saying things like, “A rock band can be a form of yoga.” And he exuded genuine rock—not an imitation of the fifties, or of the sixties—it was a timeless dynamite feeling that made people dance—and smile.
Meanwhile the Velvets were cutting the record Loaded in an involved and confusing manner. At first Adrian Barber, producer of the Iron Butterfly, was to be their producer—then Atlantic staffer Shel Kagen. Also involved was Geoffry Halsam, who did the final mix, and the group itself. The album is overall softer than their Max’s sets; but the songs are the same and the album is a monument in rock history. Like Dylan, Lou Reed is an artist who changes faster than machines can record him.
At this writing there were rumors that the group had broken up and that Reed was in seclusion writing new songs. But with this group there is no telling what, if anything, the future will bring. The Velvets, thank God, are still unpredictable in an age of rock which revolves around record buying seasons and press releases more often than it does around the artist. Let us be thankful for Loaded, an inadequate but potent expression of that summer of 1970.
If nothing else, the album is concrete evidence of what the Velvet fans have always maintained: the group’s early decadence and its continuing hassles do not change the fact that they are among the most complex, inventive and musical musicians in the world. They express the scathing, often nightmarish reality of the physical world, yet sing of inner love with a sensitivity that beckons angels. And in their most recent stage they combined their lyricism with their most centered rock music to date, maintaining their position in the dwindling handful of groups who perform rock as the divine momentary celebration it can be.
As Lou Reed passionately sings in “Rock and Roll,” “Despite all that amputation you could just go out and listen to a rock and roll station.” Or better still, get Loaded.