The Velvet Underground closing Loaded in 1970 with the cooled down, chilled out sounds of Oh! Sweet Nuthin’, a seven minute tale of Jimmy Brown, Ginger Brown, Pearly May and the girl who ain’t got nothing at all, Doug Yule taking lead vocals. Maybe that’s why Lou was so pissed off at Christmas.
More Velvet Underground following yesterday’s Sunray/ Sonic Boom/ Ocean post. Today’s post has The Velvets via Liverpool and Barking. The photo above is of Eric’s in Liverpool, not the original Eric’s- that closed a long time ago, 1980- but a live venue on Mathew Street under the same name and logo. Since The Vinyl Villain’s guest post here a few weeks ago I’ve been vaguely obsessed with one of the performances in his post- Echo And The Bunnymen, a group firmly connected to Eric’s, playing live with Billy Bragg, covering The Velvets’ Run, Run, Run on OGWT in 1985.
Will and Billy have the Velvet twin guitar drone/ wired lead line nailed with Pete’s thumping backbeat covering the Mo Tucker thump. Ian McCulloch gives it the full big hair, big coat, alternative rock star frontman, kicking off with ‘show me the way to go home’ and squealing/ crooning/ grunting as required.
In 1985 The Bunnymen set out for a tour of Scandinavia, a tour Ian has referred to as ‘the last great Bunnymen tour’. They played support act to themselves, playing a set of covers every night, then going off for a break before returning to play their own songs. Many of the covers were chosen by Will Sergeant- Action Woman and She Cracked- along with Bunnymen favourites by Dylan, Television, The Doors and The Velvets. This take of Run, Run, Run was recorded onstage in Gothenburg by Swedish radio.
Will has also spoken of his enjoyment of the Scandinavian tour, playing the support set of covers through practice amps in small halls with no stage, staying at the promotor’s house and having breakfast with them. ‘I think’, Will said, ‘it was the last time we were a band really. The next tour we played was stadiums. I hated that. Playing places like Wembley… was everything the Bunnymen wasn’t about’.
Run, Run, Run was on The Velvet Underground’s debut, the banana album/ The Velvet Underground And Nico. Lou Reed wrote in on the back of an envelope while on the way to a gig at Cafe Bizarre. It’s a belter of a song, with those speed freak guitars, rumbling rhythms and lo- fi, reverb production. Lou”s cast of characters- Teenage Mary, Margarita Passion, Seasick Sarah, Beardless Harry- are all on the streets of New York looking for a fix and/ or to be saved, drugs and religion mixed up. Lou’s guitar solo is unlike other guitar solos from 1967, a trebly, wired, atonal freak out.
Edit: this should have published eight hours ago but gremlins prevented it. Apologies to anyone eager for today’s post- better late than never.
Back in 2006 Sunray recorded a single with Sonic Boom, a cover of Ocean by The Velvet Underground. Sunray’s cover is a thirteen minute voyage of blissed out drones, led by organ and wobbly guitars, Sonic Boom on board all the way for the slo- mo, frazzled psychedelia. Epic in every sense.
Lou Reed wrote Ocean around the time of the sessions for Loaded but it didn’t make the album. It turned up on his self titled debut in 1970, then on the 1974 Velvets live album 1969: The Velvet Underground Live and then the studio version finally seeing the light of day on VU in 1985. The tripped out lyrics- waves crashing down by the shore, the sea as a drug- are thrown into disarray by the second verse with its lines about insects, selfish men, Lou being driven nearly crazy and being a lazy son. The playing is superb, splashy cymbals and spindly guitars with a backwash of organ. The Velvets studio version, recorded in 1969, is much shorter than Sunray’s cover, a mere five minutes- but what a way to spend five minutes.
Cowboy Junkies’ 1988 album The Trinity Session was one that almost everyone seemed to be listening to when it came out, rave reviews in the NME, Sounds and Melody Maker enough to cut through to the different crowds of the late 80s. Recorded in the Church Of The Holy Trinity in Toronto with the musicians all round a single microphone and with Margo Timmins’ vocal coming through the PA system left behind by the previous band to play in the church, the presence and natural reverb of the building is as important as the instruments and Margo’s voice. The album was almost recorded in one session with no overdubs (except for Margo adding her a capella chanting for Mining For Gold a week later. As they ran out of time they had to pay the security guard on site an extra $25 to let them stay a little longer and record Misguided Angel).
The album is one of those perfect moments, a record they were never going to match again no matter what, where and when they recorded. The follow up, 1990’s The Caution Horses, had some good songs but was more polished and didn’t have the unique, one off beauty of that day/ night in that church in Toronto. This song, 200 More Miles, was inspired by the group’s never-ending life on the road. Michael Timmins’ scratchy lead guitar and accompanying pedal steel guitar are a joy.
The album gained a lot of interest because of the cover of Sweet Jane, but the version from 1974’s 1969: Velvet Underground Live rather than the more familiar one from Loaded. Lou Reed is said to have preferred the Cowboy Junkies one to the Velvets’ ones and who can fault him? I’ve posted it before fairly recently so instead offer this, a completely unofficial Mojo Filter re- edit of Cowboy Junkies cover. Your tolerance of it may depend on whether you think the achingly beautiful, spectral 1988 cover version needed an AOR sheen and mid tempo club/ disco drums- I can imagine situations where it could work.
‘Sometimes I feel so happy/ Sometimes I feel so sad’, Lou Reed croons softly at the start of Pale Blue Eyes, the most brokenly beautiful song on the most brokenly beautiful Velvet Underground album. Written and demoed with John Cale in May 1965 it wasn’t released until 1969 by which point Cale had left the band. ‘Thought of you as everything/ I had but couldn’t keep’, Lou goes on and in the final verse it becomes clear this isn’t just about lost love but infidelity too- ‘It was good what we did yesterday/ And I’d do it again/ The fact that you are married/ Only proves that you’re my best friend/ But it’s truly, truly a sin’. In his memoir, Lou Reed said he wrote it for his first love, Shelley Albin, a married woman (who had hazel eyes but poetic license and making lines scan saw her eyes change to blue).
It’s one of those songs that is so right, so perfect- the singing, the playing, the production, the tone of the guitar and the repeating riff, the tambourine rattle, the solo- that you wouldn’t want to change a note or a second of it. But it also cries out to be covered. This cover came back to me recently while I was looking through my 10″ singles (looking for something else but it caught my eye). I put it on and it jumped out of the speakers, simplicity of the song hurtled forwards from the late 60s to 2012 by The Kills, a raw version of the song. Alison Mosshart’s husky, small hours vocal is spot on, the drums thump and shake and Jamie Hince’s guitar snarls as the amp distorts. You can smell the practice room. The guitar break and the juddering effect between the second and third verses is electrifying and the way they cut back in for the ‘skip a light completely/ Stuff it in a cup’ verse is thrilling.
In 1984 Edwyn Collins and Paul Quinn released a version as a single, taken from the soundtrack to the film Punk Rock Hotel. Edwyn croons, really croons, and the country and western guitar takes The Velvets to Nashville. The guitar solo is a joy and the song swells to the end, filled out and lush.
In the same year R.E.M. recorded a version that first saw the light of day as the B-side on the So. Central Rain 12″ single and then later when it was compiled onto the Dead Letter Office album, a record that pulled together odds, ends, B-sides and drunken rehearsal room takes. Michael Stipe’s voice was made for Pale Blue Eyes and Peter Buck’s guitar is drenched in reverb. In the sleeve notes to Dead Letter Office Peter Buck says it was recorded live to two track and notes he added ‘an exceedingly sloppy guitar solo’. Sloppy sounding just fine on this occasion.
Bagging Area 