Even though the record only briefly appeared on the Billboard 200, peaking at Number 199 in March 1968, and was largely ignored by the music press, White Light/White Heat would prove profoundly influential upon such artists as the Stooges, David Bowie, Jonathan Richman, Suicide, the Buzzcocks and a little band called Nirvana, to name a few – and in 2003, Rolling Stone ranked White Light/White Heat at Number 293 on its list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. The second one was consciously anti-beauty.”īut contrary to Reed’s assertion, some people certainly have listened to it. “The first one had some gentility, some beauty. “It’s a very rabid record,” Cale opined in the liner notes to the 1995 box set Peel Slowly and See. Even 50 years after its initial release, it remains a bracing and challenging listen. With its needle-pinning assault of overdriven instruments, and lyrics about methamphetamine abuse (the title track), botched medical procedures (“Lady Godiva’s Operation”), grisly violence (“The Gift”), cries from beyond the grave (“I Heard Her Call My Name”) and heroin-dealing drag queens (“Sister Ray”), White Light/White Heat was all about pushing the boundaries of sound and taste. Recorded in a short flurry of studio sessions in September 1967, and released on January 30th, 1968, White Light/White Heat – the band’s final studio album with co-founder and multi-instrumentalist John Cale – boasted none of the louche charm of the Velvets’ 1967 debut, The Velvet Underground & Nico nor, for that matter, did it contain any of the hushed melodicism heard on the band’s self-titled 1969 LP, and it was utterly devoid of any instant classic-rock anthems like “Sweet Jane” and “Rock and Roll” from 1970’s Loaded. “But there it is forever – the quintessence of articulated punk. “No one listened to it,” said Lou Reed of the LP in 2013, just a few months before his death. Dangerous and unpredictable, White Light/White Heat is a raw and often improvisational album that contains some of the Velvet Underground’s most powerful music.Of all of the Velvet Underground‘s officially released studio and live albums, White Light/White Heat is by far the noisiest and most difficult. As strong and weird as these songs are, nothing prepares the listener for the searing 17-minute closer, “Sister Ray.” The song’s punishing and elemental guitar riff, blown-out organ, and tribal drumming collide on a noise-jam for the ages, as Reed paints an appropriately seedy portrait of grungy debauchery with his minimal lyrics. “I Heard Her Call My Name” features a blistering and overdriven guitar solo that tests the sonic limitations of magnetic tape. “Here She Comes Now” is, on the one hand, a catchy rock song, but Lou Reed’s stuttering delivery and Maureen Tucker’s bashing percussion give it an otherworldly atmosphere. So while the album’s opening title track has a memorable call-and-response refrain that a group in another universe might fashion into a Top 40 hit, the Velvets drive the tune home with grinding repetition and clanging, in-the-red sonics from producer Tom Wilson. But here they delivered the songs with a half-turn of additional intensity, and the recording’s ragged edges amplify the artful chaos. The Velvets assembled White Light/White Heat from some of the same elements as the rest of the group’s catalog, mixing pop genres like garage rock and R&B with streetwise poetry and folding in abstraction on loan from classical avant-garde. The band’s second album, 1968’s White Light/White Heat, was their noisiest and harshest record, and much of the underground rock of the '70s and '80s can be traced back to it. Each of the Velvet Underground’s first four studio LPs was unique in terms of sound and style, and each left its own mark on music history.
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