My Life in the Cutout Bins: 1969: The Velvet Underground Live/The Velvet Underground

The Velvet Underground were two bands. The first was the original lineup, with John Cale (and, on the first record, Nico), in which the violinist and avant-garde student of Terry Riley made the edict, along with Lou Reed, that there would be no blues riffs whatsoever in the band. On their second album, White Light/White Heat, he pushed the group still further into the avant-garde on tracks such as "Lady Godiva's Operation" and "The Gift".

When Reed convinced the rest of the band that they needed to oust the frenetic Welshman, it began the life of the second Velvet Underground. Doug Yule joined the group as Cale's 'replacement', playing bass, guitar, organ, and some lead vocals. They released their eponymous, much more relaxed third album and followed that with the classic rock jam of Loaded. The Velvet Underground of these records is song based and sonically less experimental than that of the first two. That didn't make them a less subversive influence.

They were an impressive band live. Maureen Tucker noted that she wished that they had recorded more of their shows, and the tapes that have emerged show a vital and engaged group, intent on delivering what they knew was an amazing set of songs in the best way possible. Following the release of the third album the group spent a great deal of time on the road in both the U.S. and Canada, playing reworked earlier songs, songs from the third album, and songs which were being rehearsed for the recording of the next album, Loaded. Reed's songwriting was transforming into the style he would use in his solo career. It was during this period that what would become the two LP set 1969: The Velvet Underground Live was recorded. Like so many live albums it doesn't represent one complete performance, but is put together from performances at two venues: one from the club End of Cole Avenue in Dallas, and the other from The Matrix in San Francisco.

The End of Cole Avenue sets were recorded by audience member Jeff Leegood, who set up in the back of the club.

"In 1969 when I recorded the VU at the End Of Cole I was sitting in the back of the place. When they took a break Hans the roadie asked me to come to the back room, the band wanted to hear the tape. The recorder I was using { a Wollensak by 3M } had speakers { It was a stereo no less } built in so I could play the tape. I played some of what I had. So then Lou said to me I could move up front and record them if I was willing to send a tape copy of their performance to their manager, of course, that was fine with me. I kept my word and off they went.

Fast forward a few years and Live 1969 was released, some of the recordings on that came from what I had done, and I think some were from The Matrix tapes. In answer to why they were not released on the band's label, you'll love this part, I called and spoke with a person that worked for that record company when I heard the god-awful Max's Kansas City Tapes, They were not interested in releasing the recordings I had because Ms. Polk was a somebody famous and I was not."

Ms. Polk, of course, is Brigid Polk, part of the Warhol scene, who recorded (badly) the Velvets at Max's Kansas City near the end of their summer residency there. Legend has it that the male voice on her recording asking about the availability of Touinal is Jim Carroll, and for once the legend is true. The single LP Max's Live became a popular recording because it was one of very few official releases that captured the band live, but it is far from a wonderful document. The performances are OK, but Lou seems distracted and the band was under a lot of stress. They frequently went from working on recording Loaded during the day to playing Max's at night. Mo Tucker, who was pregnant at the time, was at the recording sessions, but she skipped the shows and was replaced during the run by Doug Yule's brother, Billy. Finally, this turned out to be the band's last stand with Reed at the helm. There is no confirmation that this recording was his last performance with the band, though you'll hear people say that it is, but suffice to say Lou was fully prepared for a future without the Velvet Underground.

But the 1969 Live sets come from a happier time. The band was working with a common purpose as they played the songs onstage as well as rehearsing new songs that would be recorded for the Loaded album. Audiences were hearing songs like "Rock and Roll," "Sweet Jane," and "Lonesome Cowboy Bill" for the first time, sometimes in very different versions than turned up on Loaded--the languid version of "Sweet Jane" here was adopted by The Cowboy Junkies with great success. They were on a national tour as they tried to build an audience outside of New York City. It's important to remember that though today the Velvet Underground is venerated as a wildly influential band, they were largely ignored during their existence. They were frequently playing tiny clubs (such as End of Cole Avenue) where they earned their reputation as the original indie band.

It's become a cliche that hardly anyone bought the Velvet Underground's albums, but that every person who ever did buy them started a band. The same might be true of hearing them play live. Imagine being the type of person who is looking for something like the Velvet Underground and here they come, playing in your town. Some of the people they reached as they played clubs across America likely became influential in the rock world later.

"Good evening. We're the Velvet Underground, glad you could all make it. This is our last night here, glad you showed up. Do you people have a curfew or anything like that? Cause we can play one long set or two shorter ones..." is how the first record starts off. Hardly what you'd expect from Reed based on his reputation. The audience votes for one long set, and Lou invites the crowd to get comfortable. "Pull up your cushions" (the front of the club had cushions for audience members to sit on) "or whatever else you have with you...that makes life bearable in Texas." He proceeds to talk about a football game he watched earlier in the day (it was a Sunday) wherein the Cowboys decimated the Philadelphia Eagles. "You should give other people just a little chance" he says. "At least in football. This song's called 'I'm Waiting For My Man'."

The band's version of this is a bit more of a slinky groove than the version on Velvet Underground and Nico. Its bluesiness would have irked Cale no end. We get our first taste of Reed and Yule singing together, and for the last minute the group goes into a Velvets frenzy, speeding up the tempo and scurrying around some blues guitar runs.

"Lisa Says" was recorded in November at The Matrix and it's a very solid version of a song that the group was still working on. It didn't make it onto Loaded, but may have been slated for a planned fifth album, and a version of it was released on VU, a rough collection of unreleased material. it showed up definitively on Reed's debut solo album. A pretty strong vocal from Lou on this live performance, and when he sings 'you know that good times/just seem to pass me by' I always add  the line 'just like pie in the sky' like he sang it on the solo debut, in my head (ok, a few times out loud as well).

Lou Reed talked in interviews about being influenced largely in his rhythm guitar style by mostly black R&B recording artists. Fueled by amphetamine, Reed's rhythm guitar is more frenetic, jumpier, than the average blues rock shuffle. You can hear his influence in the rhythm guitar approach of bands like the Feelies and early Talking Heads. On "What Goes On" he cuts loose, along with Sterling Morrison, committing fully to nothing but rhythm guitar, no lead at all. A few minutes in and Doug Yule begins playing droney organ, making one think 'Wait. Has Cale returned to the band?' but of course, no, he has not. Yule does all the good stuff here--blocky chords, swirls, dissonant chords and he has your full attention. But your mind can only concentrate so much, because that rhythm is going, chugging along like a locomotive.

At around six minutes, you think that they can't keep this going much longer, surely they are nearing exhaustion from the stress of driving this thing ever forward, subtly gaining velocity, and then suddenly they ease off just a bit, and you understand that they are cruising on sheer momentum now, the wind at their backs. It takes a special band, a special character, to grind it out, bar by bar, until the momentum turns and the beat begins to propel them towards oblivion. It stops suddenly, all at once, the only way it could end.

"Sweet Jane", not yet even released on Loaded--imagine that! Taken here at a glacial pace, very demure, and with an added bridge that doesn't show up on the faster album version. This version is more of a whispered prayer, more invocation than celebration. "We're Gonna Have a Real Good Time Together" is a rave-up that Patti Smith used to cover live in the 'Horses' days, and it was frequently part of Lou's live repertoire as well, showing up again on the album Street Hassle.

Lou would sometimes lean on Doug Yule to sing certain songs when he was tired, but here we're treated to Lou singing 'New Age" (Yule does it on Loaded) and "Femme Fatale." The version of "Femme Fatale" comes from End of Cole Avenue, while "New Age" is from the Matrix tapes. The first record ends with a dazzling sequence: "New Age," a stunning "Rock & Roll" with Tucker driving it home, and a rollicking "Beginning to See the Light."

The second disc opens with "Ocean," an amazing performance that slowly builds as the full band recreates the energy of proceeding and receding waves to Lou's existential chant. Ironically, this track demonstrates the influence of Terry Riley and Lamont Young as fully as anything on the first two Velvets records. In fact, this slow build of gentle to mighty, crashing repetitive vibe is a large part of what defines The Velvet Underground in this second half of their brief streak across the rock and roll firmament.

These two sides feature two intimate performances from End of Cole Ave, "Pale Blue Eyes" and "Some Kinda Love." The rest are higher energy, but not always illuminating performances of a mix of familiar tunes ("Heroin," "White Light White Heat") to spins on songs that no one had heard yet on a studio album ("Over You," "Sweet Bonnie Brown/It's Just Too Much").

One of the things that a listener to this record needs to be aware of is the long and tortured history of the material that is included on the record. The performances on 1969 were recorded in that year, but they were not officially released until 1974, by which time Lou Reed had released four solo studio albums plus the live Rock and Roll Animal. He'd scored a top ten hit with the single "Walk on the Wild Side" from 1972's Transformer. So it was safe to say that Reed's career had so far managed to outdo that of The Velvets in terms of sales and airplay.

VU manager Steve Sesnick was in possession of both the copy of Leegood's tape from End of Cole Avenue and the mix down that the group had received from The Matrix, where two nights of shows were recorded on the four track that was hooked to the club's soundboard. He tried to sell the tapes to record labels, claiming ownership of the tapes and of the Velvet Underground band name, none of which was true. According to Doug Yule, Reed's management interceded and negotiated a deal with Mercury Records to release a live VU album culled from the tapes.

Mercury hired Paul Nelson, A&R man and writer for Rolling Stone and The Village Voice to assemble the album from the various live performances. While most of the tracks chosen come from The Matrix performances, the ones from End of Cole Avenue-- "I'm Waiting For the Man," "Femme Fatale," "Pale Blue Eyes," "Some Kinda Love," and "I'll Be Your Mirror"--have an intimacy that leaps off the turntable and pulls you right into that performance space. Of course, the tapes from The Matrix sounded better than any previously recorded live Velvets tapes because of the four track soundboard recording, but Velvets fans were used to ignoring inferior sound and tape hiss as the price of hearing music that so few heard at the time of its creation.

Not only was 1969 Velvet Underground Live the best sounding live recording of the band available, it was released at a time when the band's original Verve albums were out of print and difficult to come by in used record shops. And so it became well regarded and representative to many of what the band sounded like.

As time went by, there were releases of the complete source material for 1969 VU Live, though they were unofficial (which is to say bootlegged). There have been releases of the complete End of Cole Avenue shows on vinyl, releases that did not compensate Jeff Leegood nor any member of the Velvet Underground. The master tapes for the Matrix shows were not rediscovered until the early 2010s, and the complete shows were released in 2015 in a four CD box set as The Complete Matrix Tapes.

While it's excellent to have access to these complete shows, there is still a strange affection for 1969 VU Live because, ultimately, Paul Nelson did a pretty nice job of assembling a 'master show' from the recordings made available to him. They don't seem like live shows, more like rumors whispered in the wind, because we rarely hear the audience. This is, first, because the audiences are small, the circumstances intimate. Second, it is because there is no mike on the audience and so we only get a little bit of bleed from the microphones set up to record the band. Sometimes it is easy to fall into a reverie that feels vaguely like the band is doing a rehearsal in a recording studio.

In 1988 when Polygram went to release the live album on CD, they decided to break it up into two separate volumes, adding an extra track to each, including a rendition of "I Can't Stand It". Though the two volumes (each corresponding to one of the original albums' vinyl discs) do break nicely into separate listening experiences, there is no question that anyone purchasing the recordings would likely want both albums in their collections. 1969 VU Live had been something of a deal on vinyl, offering two records for not much more than the price of a single album release. I bought it out of the cutout bins sometime between 1978-1980, making it a better deal still.

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