Another view velvet underground rar series#

A computer keypunch operator by day, Tucker listened to Bo Diddley at home and practiced along to Babatunde OlatunjiвЂ™s Drums of Passion. Kickstart your weekend reading by getting the weekвЂ™s best Longreads delivered to your inbox every Friday afternoon.ДЄfter a brief stint with an unreliable percussionist, Morrison contacted a friendвЂ™s sister, Maureen вЂњMoeвЂќ Tucker, to play drums. вЂњWhich is, вЂWham! Bam! Pow! LetвЂ™s rock out!вЂ™ What I expected my audience to do was tear the house down, beat me up вЂ¦ whatever.вЂќ вЂњI was a very unsensitive young person and played unsensitive, uncaring music,вЂќ Morrison remembered. вЂњWhen I met Lou at Syracuse University,вЂќ he told rock writer David Fricke, вЂњwe found that we both had an abiding affection for LightninвЂ™ Hopkins and sundry doo-wop things.вЂќ Guitarist Sterling Morrison, a friend of ReedвЂ™s from college, joined the band next, after a chance meeting with Lou on the subway. вЂњIn the beginning,вЂќ Cale recalled in the Peel Slowly and See liner notes, вЂњLou and I had an almost religious fervor about what we were doing.вЂќ Reed played a few of what he called вЂњserious songsвЂќ for Cale, including a dark piece called вЂњHeroin.вЂќ Soon they moved into a Lower East Side apartment together and formed a band. It would be timeless in the subject matter and the literacy of the lyrics.вЂќ вЂњWhat I wanted to do,вЂќ Reed told an interviewer in 1987, was вЂњwrite rock вЂnвЂ™ roll that you could listen to as you got older, and it wouldnвЂ™t lose anything. вЂњI thought, вЂWhat an amazing sound!вЂ™ So I filed that one away.вЂќ)ДЄs Reed once put it, he was trying to incorporate the sensitivities of novelists like Raymond Chandler and poets like Delmore Schwartz into his music.

(вЂњIвЂ™d seen this guy - I think his name was Jerry Vance - tune the guitar where every string was the same,вЂќ Reed told Guitar World magazine years later. As he once said, вЂњI was playing with La Monte Young in the Dream Syndicate, and the concept of the group was to sustain notes for two hours at a time.вЂќ But the way Lou Reed latched onto it interested Cale much more than his lame dance single or the sketchy Pickwick operation. This type of alternate tuning was well-known among the anti-art Fluxus crowd that Cale ran with. вЂњThe OstrichвЂќ did not impress John Cale much, but the fact that Reed had tuned every string of his guitar to A-sharp did. To capitalize on the success, Lou pulled a band together that included Welsh expat John Cale, normally an avant-garde violist, who showed up to the rehearsal for a laugh and the vague possibility of payment. One of these, called вЂњ The Ostrich,вЂќ caught fire locally. In 1964, 22-year-old Brooklyn-born pharmacological omnivore Lou Reed was a staff songwriter for Pickwick Records, churning out B-rate singles in an attempt to take advantage of the latest dance craze.

Another view velvet underground rar series#

The Velvet Underground were a series of improbables.

The album made a beautiful tombstone for the bandвЂ™s career, at a time when all the members were alive to see it. As a result, VU benefitted from much improved audio technology and was released to a world not only better prepared for the Velvet Underground, but one that had largely absorbed its lessons. They stayed in the MGM vaults, mostly unmixed, until discovered during the process of reissuing the bandвЂ™s catalog in the early 80s. Recorded primarily in 1969, after the ouster of multi-instrumentalist John Cale, and later cannibalized by principal songwriter Lou Reed for his solo career, the recordings that make up VU were shelved for 16 years. The irony is that VU wasnвЂ™t released until more than a dozen years after the Velvet Underground disbanded. In its 10 tracks, it contains refined versions of what the band did well during the four years they lasted. VU has the dark majesty of The Velvet Underground & Nico, the neurotic strut (if not the head-wrecking dissonance) of White Light/White Heat, the tenderness and emotional insight of The Velvet Underground, and the pure pop sensibility of Loaded. The Velvet Underground album VU is the binding agent in a career of releases that differ so dramatically one from another as to be almost artistic reversals. Tom MaxwellВ | Longreads | September 2018 | 18 minutes (3,669 words)