The 500 - #293 - White Light / White Heat - The Velvet Underground

I was inspired by a podcast called The 500 hosted by Los Angeles-based comedian Josh Adam Meyers. His goal, and mine, is to explore Rolling Stone Magazine's 2012 edition of The 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. 

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Album: #293

Album Title: White Light/White Heat

Artist: The Velvet Underground

Genre: Noise Rock, Experimental Rock, Art Rock

Recorded: Mayfair Sound, New York City

Released: January, 1968

My age at release: 2

How familiar was I with it before this week: Not at all

Is it on the 2020 list? Yes, at #272 (moving up 21 spots)

Song I am putting on my Spotify Playlist:  White Light/White Heat

I am delighted to welcome a guest blogger to write about White Light/White Heat, the second studio release by New York City rock band The Velvet Underground. It is the second time I have introduced a guest blogger whom I have never met in person, the first being two years ago when Facebook friend Karen Snell stepped in with a post about PJ Harvey’s Rid Of Me.

This time it is another social media friend whom I have yet to meet personally. Using the pseudonym, Various Artists, he hosts a website, blog and podcast under the banner My Life In Concerts. It is a multi-media diary of experiences attending concerts in the Southwestern Ontario region between 1975 and the present.

After reading a couple of his blog posts, it became apparent the author and I have much in common. We are both Londoners of about the same age, with a love of music who (independently of each other) chronicle our interests through blogging and podcasting.

This summer, we chatted about our interests in music and, generally, about our blogging pursuits. About five weeks ago, Various Artists posted a piece about seeing John Cale, formerly of The Velvet Underground, perform in London in 1983. I asked if he would consider guest blogging for the upcoming VU record and he agreed. Here it is.

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I heard Lou Reed’s Walk on the Wild Side on the radio for the first time in early January, 1973. It was life-changing.

From the song’s New York underground demimonde subject matter to its slow, cool, jazzy sound to Reed’s Sprechgesang vocals, it was unlike anything I had ever heard. It was hugely impactful to a young bored-in-the-burbs misfit who found the world and sound of this record intriguing.

It kicked off a life-long love of the music of Lou Reed. However, it wasn’t until 1974 that I found out that Reed had previously been in a 1960s group called The Velvet Underground.

Over the next few years, as I delved more deeply into rock’s history -- especially its “alternative” history—I became increasingly fascinated with everything I read about this way-ahead-of-its time, quintessential NYC band in tandem with a growing obsession with Andy Warhol’s life, art, and milieu, especially his silver ‘60s Factory period that the Velvets initially sprung from.

Warhol, second from left, with The Velvet Underground

I was learning about all this while also reading up on the nascent, contemporary downtown New York punk rock scene that was unfolding in the then-mid-70s.

I was dying to hear what the VU sounded like, which was characterized as dark, abrasive, arty, confrontational music wedded to lyrics with highly transgressive themes. In other words, it was right up my alley.

But it was almost impossible to access their records at that time and I knew no one who owed any. I had an idea in my head of what they might sound like. But I could only guess.

The Velvet Underground (1968)

When I finally got to hear the Velvets in early 1979, I was baffled. It was their largely sparse, introspective, almost folk-ish self-titled third album that became my entry into their music. It was followed quickly by Loaded, their final LP from 1970: a snappy’ n’ catchy collection of pop-rockers. While I immediately adored both albums, they weren’t anything at all like what I was expecting.

Instead, 1968’s White Light/White Heat -- their most menacing, malevolent and uncompromising release -- was the album I had been expecting to hear.

I finally got to purchase and listen to their hugely influential 1967 debut—The Velvet Underground and Nico, my favourite album of all time—upon its Canadian reissue in the spring of 1982, with WL/WH being reissued early in ’83. It seems almost everyone in my music circle was picking up and listening to these reissues while reading Jean Stein and George Plimpton’s oral history of Warhol Superstar Edie Sedgwick, Edie: An American Biography.

The song styles on the debut can be broken down into three categories: discordant experimentation with taboo lyrics (The Black Angel’s Death Song, Heroin, etc.); gentler, reflective material (Sunday Morning, I’ll Be Your Mirror, etc.); and the straight-ahead rockers (I’m Waiting for the Man, There She Goes Again, etc.)

The band then went on to make a trio of albums, with each focusing on one of those three styles.

WL/WH is the dark, paranoid, speed-freak noisefest and boundary pusher. It also takes a lot of cues from free jazz: it’s more improvisational and closer to their live performances of that time than their debut.

And no matter how much music changes, this is an album that will NEVER pass as Easy Listening. Particularly Side Two.

Multiple versions of White Light/White Heat purchased
by Various Artists throughout the years.

With Nico gone and Reed firing Warhol as their manager (although he was back again for the album’s black-on-black cover design), the Velvets hurtled headfirst into the extremes of the band’s sound and preoccupations.

Reed stated that he purposefully wanted to go "as high and as hard as we could”, while John Cale has said it was a “very rabid record” and “consciously anti-beauty." However, the resulting over-amped blur was not exactly what the group members had wanted either. While they were going for loud and aggressive, the high levels of distortion and compression were more the result of production naivete and error.

Lou Reed (left) and John Cale

Regardless, the corrosive-sounding results have influenced noiseniks, feedbackers, and avant-gardists for years, from No Wave bands through Sonic Youth and beyond.

The focus on extremes extends to the LP’s subject matter as well, which was pretty controversial for the late ‘60s. Subjects range from descriptions of euphoric, amphetamine-fuelled adrenaline (the title cut), a smacked-out orgy among drag queens and sailors (Sister Ray); a dead girlfriend (I Heard Her Call My Name); an operation gone horrifically wrong (Lady Godiva’s Operation); a macabre tale of manslaughter (The Gift), and the anticipation of a female orgasm (Here She Comes Now), the album’s only pensive moment).

1968 magazine ad promoting the record

When the band released this album in early 1968, it was so out-there that it fared even worse than its predecessor, barely scraping into the bottom of the US Top 200. This was the antithesis of the peace-and-love hippy vibes of the time (although I love the late 1960s music from both coasts).

While it sold little in its time, it has since gone on to sell half-a-million copies and win critical acclaim over the decades while laying the groundwork for punk and more discordant rock that followed.

Once unavailable, there are now box set and deluxe editions of the album. For a certain type of musician and person, WL/WH will continue to be an inspirational touchstone.

There is a famous quote from Brian Eno: "The first Velvet Underground album only sold 10,000 copies, but everyone who bought it formed a band." Actually, the first album sold a bit more than that, but his point is taken.

Lou Reed and John Cale both moved on to successful, idiosyncratic careers, with Reed dying in 2013. Meanwhile, Cale also went on to produce a number of classic LPs from Patti Smith, The Stooges, and others, and is about to turn 80. He’s soon releasing a new album and going on a celebratory tour. Congrats, John!

Highly Recommended Viewing: Todd Haynes superb 2021 documentary, The Velvet Underground.