Up-Tight: The Velvet Underground Story (19 page)

JONATHAN RICHMAN:
“Sterling helped Lou work on The Country Gentleman by giving him a pickup off his own
Stratocaster to put on it. That’s brotherhood. I saw Lou play with: a Fender solid body 12 string guitar, a Gibson semi-hollow body, a Gibson stereo semi-hollow body, an Epiphone semi-hollow body (towards the end at Max’s Kansas City) – pretty much stock I’d say. The Gretsch Country Gentleman had four pickups (they usually have two), built in pre-amp, built in tremolo unit, added Gretsch pickup, added Stratocaster Fender pickup for more treble. Those guys used Vox amps and Vox fuzz boxes for the first two albums. On stuff like ‘Sister Ray’ and ‘The Gift’, the fuzz is important. Vox fuzz boxes are distinct from other fuzz sounds. Lou used to use the built-in mid-range boost peculiar to Vox amplifiers a lot. Their sound changed when the group switched to Acoustic brand amps in ’69 then again when they switched to Sunn brand in ’70. The Voxes had a darker sound with more mid-range tone. Much more. And it was easier to get feedback out of ’em. Like on ‘Heroin’, ‘European Son’ etc. Some of that feedback was John Cale on his electric viola playing through the Vox amps. One thing more. That Gretsch was converted to stereo, enabling him to get low bass and hi-treble at the same time.”

BOCKRIS:
“Was it true that
White Light/White Heat
was recorded in one day?”

MORRISON:
“No, but almost. Gary Kellgren was the engineer. He was completely competent. The technical deficiencies on the album are attributable to us. We would not accommodate what we were trying to do to the limitations of the studio. We kept on saying we don’t want to hear any problems.”

BOCKRIS:
“It says on the record Tom Wilson was Executive Producer. Was he actually in the studio working with you?”

MORRISON:
“He was in there, but no producer could over-ride our taste. We’d do a whole lot of takes.”

BOCKRIS:
“How were the working conditions in the studio when they recorded
White Light/White Heat?”

SESNICK:
“That’s a long complicated question. They were quick. To sum it all up, it did go very fast. I think it was done in three days of recording. They were very rapid. They were well prepared when they went in. And their method of recording was such that it could be done very quickly and they believed in that particular manner at that time and it just went real fast.”

BOCKRIS:
“Would it be accurate to say that Lou was particularly proficient in working fast in the studio or is that putting too much emphasis on his contribution?”

SESNICK:
“I would say that Lou was beyond proficient. He was a master at understanding the time and reasons for things.”

BOCKRIS:
“At the time of recording that album were he and John Cale working well together or was the tension that caused the split between them already obvious?”

SESNICK:
“It was not obvious at that time. They worked together fairly well because of the speed with which things were done. Had they had more time who knows what would have happened? But no, there was no problem at all. They were rehearsing quite a bit too. We arranged for various rehearsals and particular dates were set up to do certain things to augment our recording.”

MORRISON:
“There would be a big brawl over which take to use. Of course everybody would opt for the takes where they sounded best. It was a tremendous hassle, so on ‘Sister Ray’ which we knew was going to be a major effort we stared at each other and said, ‘This is going to be one take. So whatever you want to do, you better do it now.’

“And that explains what is going on in the mix. There is a musical struggle – everyone’s trying to do what he wants to do every second, and nobody’s backing off. I think it’s great the way the organ comes in. Cale starts to try and play a solo. He’s totally buried and there’s a sort of surge and then he’s pulling out all the stops until he just rises out of the pack. He was able to get louder than Lou and I were. The drums are almost totally drowned out.”

CALE:
“The second album was like hanging by your fingernails. The songs were hypes. We always played loud in order to get the symphonic sound, but the loudness was supposed to bring clarity, and that wasn’t true of the second album.”

BOCKRIS:
“How long did it take to record?”

TUCKER:
“Approximately seven sessions over a period of two weeks.”

BOCKRIS:
“How were the group to work with in the studio at that point?”

TUCKER:
“From my end it wasn’t uptight. A few arguments about ‘let’s do this and let’s not’, but nothing major – relaxed and straight ahead.”

MORRISON:
“If you were a producer trying to tell us what to do, that wasn’t too good. What we needed in a producer was really an educator. Everyone in The Velvet Underground was strong-willed, but Mo took a quiet role in our conflicts. She always said there was no reasoning with any of us, that we were all crazy, and there was no sense in arguing. I think basically the band had three uncontrollable personalities, and if you throw drugs into the confusion then you really have problems.”

REED:
“Maureen Tucker’s so beautiful. She has to be one of the most fantastic people I’ve ever met in my life. She’s so impossibly great, but I can never believe it, you know, when we’re walking round the studio and I run into Mo, I just can’t believe it.”

MORRISON:
“I love Lou, but he has what must be a fragmented personality, so you’re never too sure under any conditions what you’re going to have to deal with.”

REED:
“I think everybody has a number of personalities, just in themselves. It’s not just people having different personalities. I mean you wake up in the morning and say, ‘Wonder which one of them is around today?’ You find out which one and send him out. Fifteen minutes later someone else shows up. That’s why if there’s no one left to talk to you
can listen to a couple of them talking in your head.”

BOCKRIS:
“What are the effects of a steady dose of meth-amphetamine?”

CALE:
“It changes the muscle structure in your face, so you can’t smile anymore. Your face gets limp and sags. You smile and it looks like a weird, Frankenstein grimace. So people can’t tell if Lou’s joking or not. He’s got a great sense of humour.”

MORRISON:
“Will he be boyishly charming, naive – Lou is very charming when he wants to be. Or will he be vicious – and if he is, then you have to figure out what’s stoking the fire. What drug is he on, or what mad diet? He had all sorts of strange dietary theories. He’d eat nothing, like live on wheat husks. He was always trying to move mentally and spiritually to some place where no one had ever gotten before.”

BOCKRIS:
“How did you rehearse?”

MORRISON:
“We never changed our method from back on Ludlow Street. We would practise the beginning and the end of a song. As we never played it the same way twice – it didn’t matter if we practised the middle. If there was anything weird about it then we went over that. But the songs we practised most – the truly polished pieces – we never recorded. We knew we could do them, so there was no more interest. We wanted to see if we could make something else work. Our best stuff, about 80 per cent of it, was either radically reworked in the studio or written there.”

CALE:
“There’s a lot of improvisation on
White Light/ White Heat
. Most of the recording was done straight through; ‘Sister Ray’ was one piece. ‘I Heard Her Call My Name’ and ‘Here She Comes Now’ evolved in the studio. We never performed them live. ‘The Gift’ was a story Lou had written a long time ago when he was at Syracuse University. It was my idea to do it as a spoken-word thing. We had this piece called ‘Booker T’ that was just an instrumental, so instead of wasting it we decided to combine them. The cover is a very
dark picture of a biker’s arm with a tattoo on it – a skull and cross-bones.”

BOCKRIS:
“Did the four of you have a strong connection about the sound you wanted?”

MORRISON:
“Yeah, but we also put each other on the spot. Like you can come up and say, ‘I’d like to try this.’ And then someone would say, ‘Okay, fine, try it,’ but you only got about two tries. And then after that that’s the end of it. We had had a problem with ‘Heroin’ between the one we did initially and the one that we did out in LA. There had been a lot of quick shuffling. So, when we got to ‘Sister Ray’ we solved the problem by deciding there was only going to be one take. Naturally everyone prefers the take where they sound the best. That put an end to that bullshit. So, if you have anything to do you better do it right this second, otherwise we don’t want to hear about it. I do believe that was an accurate representation. One take that would eliminate all arguments. I quit the group for a couple of days because I thought they chose the wrong mix for ‘I Hear Her Call My Name’, one of our best songs that was completely ruined in the studio. Overall I think the album is a technical failure. We didn’t want to lay down separate tracks, we wanted to do it studio live with a simultaneous voice, but the problem was that the current state of studio art wouldn’t let us do it. There was fantastic leakage because everyone was playing so loud and we had so much electronic junk with us in the studio – all these fuzzers and compressors. Gary Kellgran, the engineer, 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 all fuzzy; there’s all that white noise.

“In the Fall of 1967 I moved in with Martha Dargan and her brother Tom on East 2nd Street. John moved in with Betsey at the Chelsea somewhere around this time, and Lou was here and there, mostly on Perry Street, and later at the
loft on Seventh Avenue and 31st Street. Maureen was living on Fifth Avenue and 9th Street.”

Andy Warhol contributed the cover concept, a photograph of a tattoo on Billy Linich’s upper arm, but otherwise had nothing to do with the record. The group consisted of the original Velvets without Nico, who was already working on her first solo album (for MGM/Verve)
Chelsea Girls
, and to which, to indicate the continuing spirit of collaboration and support that existed between all these people, both Lou and John contributed songs and played on some of the tracks. Cale received his first solo song writing credit on
Chelsea Girls
which also contains a song credited to Lou Reed and Sterling Morrison, another first.

In October Brian Epstein made his third approach, offering to set up an international tour of Europe, and The Velvets said that would be fine. However, just as they were about to sign the contracts, he died, effectively closing down that channel. This was particularly unfortunate because going to Europe was one thing that might have had a very positive effect upon the group. It’s likely they would have been more appreciated there than they were in the States, as is evident from Gerard Malanga’s experiences in Italy at the time. According to this letter Lou wrote to Gerard in Italy at the end of 1967 groups were asking for permission to record Velvets’ songs.

MORRISON:
“I don’t see 1968 as a black year at all, except that we ended it without Cale (an event that blackened it as much as possible, to be sure). I considered it our best year – our touring was successful, and our playing was excellent. Perhaps the possibility of real success suddenly became so tangible that we pursued it into megalomania and ruin. Our struggles to succeed on our own terms, once directed outwards at audiences, record execs, radio stations and what not, perhaps turned inward towards the group, with unfortunate consequences. We decided that the major market was here. Success was succeeding here, not in England, Germany, or Scandinavia. It had to happen here first. We were frequently exhorted to go over to Europe for a bit. Perhaps we should have.”

How did The Velvets feel on January 30, 1968 when their second album
White Light/White Heat
was released? Cocky and confident say some; paranoid, vulnerable and fragile say others. John Cale was the sort of guy who was afraid to go out on the street. Lou could be bitter, cynical, sarcastic at times. They were the perfect match and the perfect
mismatch. They held an adverse attitude toward everything. John and Sterling are both on record as saying the second album was a hype, a technical failure.

The Velvet Underground were highly appreciated by a very small coterie of alert, intelligent people. For this group, who hung around the Chelsea Hotel and Max’s, they were “our band”. They knew what they were doing was really good but they were dismayed by the lack of support from the record label. They were frustrated by their inability to reach larger audiences, and even had some trouble getting jobs in the aftermath of their emergence from The EPI as a four piece unit. The majority of The EPI shows had been booked after all on the strength of Warhol’s name. Tom Wilson interviewed Lou and John on Boston radio in February of ’68 and asked Lou what his plans were.