143. The Velvet Underground, "The Velvet Underground"

 


After the noisy squall of White Light/White Heat, John Cale left the Velvet Underground and was replaced by Doug Yule.  They then invented dream pop.

The first four songs on this album are as solid a set as has ever existed in rock music: "Candy Says," sung by Yule, about Warhol's Factory favorite Candy Darling ("I've come to hate my body/And all that it requires in this world"), a gentle, soft song that sets the tone for the album, with its heartbreaking high note at the end of the chorus ("What do you think I'd see/If I could walk away from me").  "What Goes On," taking the energy and tempo up, with one of the best choruses of all time ("Baby, be good, do what you should/You know it will work alright") an incredible guitar solo by Lou Reed, and Yule's long long organ solo at the end.  Then "Some Kinda Love," a swaying, nodding meditation on love, punctuated by cowbell and kick drum.  And finally "Pale Blue Eyes," about adultery, but just one of the prettiest songs of the era, or ever.

Whew.  That would be enough to base a career on for most bands, but that's not even the first side.  Jesus.  (Which, by the way, is the name of the next track, the last song on the side, and is lovely enough in its own right.)

Side two starts with "Beginning to See the Light" - are you picking up on a religious theme here?  Reed uses religion and faith as a lens to view the world, replacing the devotion a believer might feel for the Almighty with the devotion one feels for a lover.  It's a nice uptempo rocker.  The only low point on the record for me is "The Murder Mystery," a spoken word shambles that probably should have stayed in the "experiment" pile.  "After Hours," the closer, is one of those Mo Tucker-sung tracks that sounds like a children's song or something from a dusty 78 you found at a garage sale.

MGM never properly promoted the Velvets, and this album was no exception.  They put a couple of print ads in some music magazines and that was it.  Incredibly, it's never been certified even gold (500,000 units).  What if you had a revolution and no one came.

Does this album deserve to be in the Top 500? Of course.

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