The Velvet Underground cranked up the volume and cranked out the dark and seedy visions of this avant-garde proto-punk tour de force with its intense experimentation and improvisation in only two days. After breaking away from Andy Warhol and Nico, the band went into the studio with the intention of capturing the energy and intensity of their live shows. 'White Light / White Heat' was recorded at Scepter Studios in New York City with producer Tom Wilson and engineer Gary Kellgren and featured John Cale on vocals, electric viola, organ, bass guitar, and medical sound effects; Sterling Morrison on vocals, guitar, bass guitar, and medical sound effects; Lou Reed on vocals, guitar, and piano; and Maureen Tucker on drums and percussion.
Morrison remembers: "There was fantastic leakage 'cause everyone was playing so loud and we had so much electronic junk with us in the studio—all these fuzzers and compressors. Gary Kellgren, who is ultra-competent, told us repeatedly: 'You can't do it—all the needles are on red.' And we reacted as we always reacted: 'Look, we don't know what goes on in there and we don't want to hear about it. Just do the best you can.' And so the album is fuzzy, there's all that white noise...we wanted to do something electronic and energetic. We had the energy and the electronics, but we didn't know it couldn't be recorded...what we were trying to do was really fry the tracks ... We were all pulling in the same direction. We may have been dragging each other off a cliff, but we were all definitely going in the same direction. In the White Light/White Heat era, our lives were chaos. That's what's reflected in the record."
Cale considers: "Distortion was something we were very interested in. In that day it was tube distortion and you had a variety of things you could do. I had a little bit of electronic juice from working with LaMonte. But we had far more opportunities with the Velvets to use that stuff. It was really a musical attempt to take those words and make them more novelistic...There were a few overdubs. Backing vocals. That's what Tom Wilson managed to bring to it: we isolated the voices. We didn't really know what he was doing. Everything just sounded so much better and we were very excited...Gary Kellgren was the engineer. He and Tom had to deal with a fairly disorganized unit at that point — we were all at each other's throats. We didn't have time and we didn't care, we hadn't rehearsed anything. He still managed to get some good things, like the backup harmonies on 'I Heard Her Call My Name'. I remember those, when he played them back. He nodded sagely and said, 'Yes, you sound very commercial.' We were 'Woah'. The first album was a year of slog, every weekend, and the second one was just kind of slapdash ... We turned into a rock’n’roll band of the worst kind: a touring band who couldn’t stand being around each other, forced to face situations we didn’t want to be in and, really, given so much attention that we couldn’t deal with it. We got a bomb of publicity from Andy and I don’t think we were ready. The internal dynamics were insecure to begin with but when Lou decides one day he’s going to fire Andy and doesn’t tell anybody, it’s like, ‘Wait a minute...’ Then when difficulties came with what direction the songs should take after ‘Sister Ray’, I knew the strange arrangements were what would keep us where we were, keep us in the future a bit... But at that point, I don’t think Lou was interested in doing that kind of work anymore. There were so many chemicals floating around the atmosphere that it really didn’t lend itself to that, let alone rational thinking. And the sense of propriety, you know: ‘This is mine. This is mine. This is mine.’"
Tucker says: "It turned out that my attitude to drumming fitted in perfectly with their music. I'm totally untrained as I'm sure you know, I couldn't do a roll for nine dollars, which in my case has been a benefit because that's not the kind of drumming they wanted. In the beginning we used to do all sorts of improvisations for 30, 40 minutes - or three minutes, whatever happened. One of the idiosyncrasies would be that Lou would take off in one direction, John would take off in some other direction, all at different tempos, I would be keeping the beat so there was something for them to come back to. That's how I always looked at my role, to keep the beat, to keep them organized."
Reed reflects: “It’s just like, where can you go past ‘Sister Ray’? ... We took the energy thing as far as we wanted to go...We didn’t put things in, we took things out, which is kind of the reverse of the way everybody else works. We never add instruments, we don’t bring people in for sessions, we don’t basically do anything that we can’t reproduce on stage.”
'White Light / White Heat' charted for two weeks on the US album chart, peaking at number one hundred and ninety-nine. It was the last album recorded with Cale.
www.velvetundergroundmusic.com
The title track mimics the experience of amphetamines with a driving burst of demented doo-wop. Reed has expressed an interest in eastern healing which involves “a way of giving off white light … I’ve been involved and interested in what they call white light for a long time.”
White light, White light goin' messin' up my mind
White light, and don't you know its gonna make me go blind
White heat, aww white heat it tickle me down to my toes
White light, Ooo have mercy while I'll have it goodness knows
White light, White light goin' messin' up my brain
White light, Aww white light its gonna drive me insane
White heat, Aww white heat it tickle me down to my toes
White light, Aww white light I said now goodness knows,
Do it
Hmm hmm, White light
Aww I surely do love to watch that stuff tip itself in
Hmm hmm, White light
Watch that side, watch that side don't you know it gonna be dead in the drive
Hmm hmm, White heat
Hey foxy mama watchin' her walk down the street
Hmm hmm, White light
Come up side your head gonna make a deadend on your street
White light, When I moved in me intween my brain
White light, White light goin' makin' you go insane
White heat, Aww white heat it tickle me down to my toes
White light, Aww white light I said now goodness knows
White light, Aww white light it lighten up my eyes
White light, don't you know it fills me up with suprise
White light, Aww white heat tickle me down to my toes
White light, Aww white light I tell you now goodness knows, now work it
Hmm hmm, White light
Aww she surely do moves me
Hmm hmm, White light
Watch that speed freak, watch that speed freak everybody gonna go and make it every week
Hmm hmm, White heat
Aww sputter mutter everybody gonna go kill their mother
Hmm hmm, White light
Here she comes, here she comes, everybody get 'n gone make me run to her
side one:
1. "White Light/White Heat"
2. "The Gift"
3. "Lady Godiva's Operation"
4. "Here She Comes Now"
"I Heard Her Call My Name" was my first exposure to the Velvet Underground; and when that explosive feedback hit my ears I was gone gone gone.
"Sister Ray" was recorded in one take with the band improvising in the studio. Reed reveals: "'Sister Ray' was done as a joke—no, not as a joke—but it has eight characters in it and this guy gets killed and nobody does anything. It was built around this story that I wrote about this scene of total debauchery and decay. I like to think of ‘Sister Ray' as a transvestite smack dealer. The situation is a bunch of drag queens taking some sailors home with them, shooting up on smack and having this orgy when the police appear ... The engineer said, 'I don't have to listen to this. I'll put it in Record, and then I'm leaving. When you're done, come get me.'"
'White Light / White Heat'
full album:
All tracks written by Lou Reed, except as noted.
Side A
1. "White Light/White Heat" 2:47
2. "The Gift" Reed, Sterling Morrison, John Cale, Maureen Tucker 8:18
3. "Lady Godiva's Operation" 4:56
4. "Here She Comes Now" Reed, Morrison, Cale 2:04
Side B
1. "I Heard Her Call My Name" 4:38
2. "Sister Ray" Reed, Morrison, Cale, Tucker 17:28
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