White light / white heat

White light / white heat
Studio album by The Velvet Underground
Publication (s)	January 30, 1968
admission	September 1967
Label (s)	Verve Records
Format (s)	LP , CD , MC , BD
Genre (s)	Experimental , art rock , protopunk , noise rock , garage rock
Title (number)	6th
running time	40:13
occupation	Lou Reed - vocals , guitar John Cale - viola , piano , celesta , bass , vocals Sterling Morrison - guitar , bass , vocals Maureen Tucker - drums , tambourine , percussion
production	Tom Wilson
Studio (s)	Scepter Studios, New York City TTG Studios , Los Angeles Mayfair Studios, New York City
chronology The Velvet Underground & Nico (1967) White light / white heat The Velvet Underground (1969)

White Light / White Heat is the second studio album by experimental rock band The Velvet Underground from 1968 and was created without the influence of Andy Warhol . The new producer was Tom Wilson . It was also Nico after her debut as a singer of the Velvets after the release of The Velvet Underground & Nico resigned due to internal differences on the group.

White Light / White Heat was supposed to be more non-conformist and more radical than its predecessor. The album production was based neither on sales figures nor on chart positions. In fact, the album only appeared in the second to last place on the Billboard Top 200 for a short two weeks . Regardless of this, White Light / White Heat is now considered a classic and style-forming for the genre of noise rock .

The music

The entire album consisted of six pieces. Came the A-side or with radiotauglicheren and somewhat catchier songs like Here She Comes Now or the gloomy musical short story The Gift is the B-side of the 17-minute cacophonous Sister Ray dominated (in the 1970s, among others, Joy Division gecovert ), a piece that broke with existing conventions both in terms of its length and text as well as its sound, which was shaped by distortion and feedback . The piece consists of a monotonously shuffling guitar carpet, which is interrupted again and again at intervals by John Cale's distorted organ, and a driving drum kit by Maureen Tucker, which supports and drives the entire piece in a minimalist manner. On this album, Velvet Underground consciously adopted the calculated noise and elevated it to the status of anti-aesthetics. Also I Heard Her Call My Name , the first piece of the B-side, comes with two guitar solos by Reed as aggressive therefore. On White Light / White Heat , the Velvets experimented more with stereo technology by switching different sounds from one channel to another.

The texts

The title track White Light / White Heat is about speed and also opens musically with a fast, driving sound. In The Gift , John Cale recites a dark short story written by Lou Reed. The bulky song builds on Cale's eight-minute spoken vocals with a Welsh accent, which is accompanied by a booming bass and guitar line and a feedback solo guitar in the background. Lady Godiva's Operation , meanwhile, tells the tragic story of a drag queen who undergoes a lobotomy instead of a sex change. Here She Comes Now is the quietest and catchiest piece on the album and stands out discreetly from the other five titles: The song was originally written for Nico, largely dispensing with the experimental and was recorded and mixed in the traditional way, moreover he is one of the shortest Velvet underground songs ever with 2:04 minutes. The song formed the B-side of White Light / White Heat in the single release . The lyrics of the song were interpreted ambivalent like the whole short piece itself. The B-side begins just as enigmatically with I Heard Her Call My Name . This piece, accompanied by a brutally distorted guitar, is a unique document that shows what new acoustic means the Velvets played around with. The song is obviously about a heroine-laden night in which the protagonist (Reed) climbs into a psychosis by hearing the voice of his dead girlfriend, who is believed to have missed a golden shot . Reed interprets this through his singing and his voice, which threatens to tip off into madness with its screeching "eeeks" and "huhuhus". This is followed by the "carnival music of the screaming amplifiers", as Rolling Stone Magazine once called it:

Sister Ray

Sister Ray is one of the milestones in the progressive avant-garde rock history and showed the way to many musicians who followed. Numerous groups of the punk movement cited Velvet Underground as a source of inspiration and named Sister Ray as the initial spark to “do something completely different.” With Sister Ray , the cultivated, experimental Noise was born, Lou Reed's later experimental album Metal Machine Music (1975) anticipated and in the late 1970s with the group Throbbing Gristle should also be reflected in industrial .

The song was recorded in a single take in the studio . While Reed plays solo guitar and sings, Sterling Morrison lays the carpet of sound with his rhythm guitar.

After an opening sequence, which begins with a chord progression played a semitone down GFC, the main part of the song is almost entirely determined by Lou Reed and John Cale; comparable to avant-garde jazz , the two play the acoustic ball to each other and thus create a modulating tone structure.

It is said that the sound engineer in charge fled the studio during the recording. Reed later recalled in an interview:

"The engineer said," I don't have to listen to this. I'll put it in Record, and then I'm leaving. When you're done, come get me. "
(The technician said: "I don't have to listen to something like that. I put the recording in and then I disappear. When you're done, let me know.") "

Driven by Maureen Tucker's pounding drums, John Cale begins to play his organ, which has been distorted by a Vox amplifier, first melodically and finally more and more atonal. The lyrics are about Reed's favorite subjects: drugs, violence, homosexuality and transsexuality.
Reed said about the song:

"" Sister Ray "was done as a joke - no, not as a joke, but it has eight characters in it and this guy gets killed and nobody does anything. It was built around this story that I wrote about this scene of total debauchery and decay. I like to think of "Sister Ray" as a transvestite smack dealer. The situation is a bunch of drag queens taking some sailors home with them, shooting up on smack and having this orgy when the police appear.
"Sister Ray" was meant to be a joke - no, not a joke, now there are these eight people and one of the guys gets killed and nobody does anything. I wrote a story about this scene of debauchery and disintegration. I like to put myself in the role of the transvestite "Sister Ray". Well, there is such a group of drag queens and they drag a couple of sailors home, inject heroin and have an orgy when the police show up. "

In their jam sessions, the Velvets sometimes extended the song to up to 40 minutes. Played live, the piece varied from a quarter to half an hour. Reed played it many times later in his solo career.

Conclusion

White Light / White Heat outlined the experimental character of The Velvet Underground and was heavily influenced by the adventurous John Cale. A quote from the 80s lifestyle magazine Tempo on this: "White Light / White Heat: An album that can even melt plutonium .." Velvet Underground thus went far beyond comparable experiments by Jimi Hendrix (for example The Star Spangled Banner ), the Beatles (for example with Tomorrow Never Knows on the album Revolver ), the Rolling Stones (on the album Their Satanic Majesties Request ) and the psychedelic group The United States of America . After a stay in the USA, Václav Havel brought the LP, which is considered to be the birth of Charter 77 , to Czechoslovakia "and then copied the music for all Eastern Bloc countries."

reception

source	rating
Allmusic
Rolling Stone

White Light / White Heat received very positive reviews and is considered a pioneering rock album. The music magazine Rolling Stone ranks it 293 out of the 500 best albums of all time . In the selection of the 500 best albums by the New Musical Express, it ranks 352nd. Pitchfork Media picked it 26th of the 200 best albums of the 1960s and Sister Ray ranked 148th of the 200 best songs of the decade. White Light / White Heat is one of the 1001 albums You Must Hear Before You Die .

The cover design

The album cover, a kind of alternative to the so-called White Album of the Beatles , is almost entirely black and shows the tattoo of a skull on an upper arm, faintly recognizable. The photo was taken by Factory photographer Billy Name . Name made a black print on dark gray, almost black, paper. The motif comes from a tattoo on actor Joe Spencer, who starred in Warhol's 1967 film Bike Boy .

Track list

page 1

1. White Light / White Heat (Reed) - 2:47
2. The Gift (Reed, Morrison, Cale, Tucker) - 8:18
3. Lady Godiva's Operation (Reed) - 4:56
4. Here She Comes Now (Reed, Morrison, Cale) - 2:04

Page 2

6. I Heard Her Call My Name (Reed) - 4:38
7. Sister Ray (Reed, Morrison, Cale, Tucker) - 17:27

45th Anniversary Super Deluxe Edition

White Light / White Heat: 45th Anniversary Super Deluxe Edition
Box set from The Velvet Underground
Publication (s)	3rd December 2013
admission	April 1967 - September 1967
Label (s)	Polydor , Universal Music Group , Verve Records
Format (s)	CD , LP
Title (number)	30 (CD) / 13 (LP)
running time	188: 49 (CD) / 67:26 (LP)
production	Tom Wilson , Bill Levenson, Jaime Feldman

source	rating
Rolling Stone
The Guardian
Pitchfork Media
Laut.de
Uncut
Music Express

On the occasion of the 45th anniversary of the second album, Verve Records and the universal label Polydor released a collector's edition of White Light / White Heat in December 2013 . In addition to a mono and stereo version of the album, the 3 CDs in the box set also contain alternative takes , unreleased tracks and live recordings of a performance by the band in April 1967. A book with photos and accompanying texts is also included. The 45th Anniversary Super Deluxe Edition was also released as a limited double album on vinyl . The LP version only contains the songs from disc 1, the remaining tracks and live recordings are missing. Bill Levenson and Jaime Feldman were responsible for producing the new release. John Cale and Lou Reed, who died in September 2013, participated in the curation .

Track list

Disc 1: White Light / White Heat (Stereo Version) / Additional Material

1. White Light / White Heat - 2:48
2. The Gift - 8:20
3. Lady Godiva's Operation - 4:56
4. Here She Comes Now - 2:04
5. I Heard Her Call My Name - 4:38
6. Sister Ray - 17:27
7. I Heard Her Call My Name (Alternate Take) - 4:38
8. Guess I'm Falling In Love (Instrumental Version) - 3:32
9. Temptation Inside Your Heart (Original Mix) - 2:31
10. Stephanie Says (Original Mix) - 2:50
11. Hey Mr. Rain (Version One) - 4:40
12. Hey Mr. Rain (Version Two) - 5:23
13. Beginning To See The Light (Previously Unreleased Early Version) - 3:39

Disc 2: White Light / White Heat (Mono Version) / Additional Material

1. White Light / White Heat - 2:48
2. The Gift - 8:20
3. Lady Godiva's Operation - 4:56
4. Here She Comes Now - 2:04
5. I Heard Her Call My Name - 4:38
6. Sister Ray - 17:27
7. White Light / White Heat (Mono Single Mix) - 2:48
8. Here She Comes Now (Mono Single Mix) - 2:04
9. The Gift (Vocal Version) - 8:06
10. The Gift (instrumental version) - 8:18

Disc 3: Live At The High School, New York City, April 30th, 1967

1. Booker T. - 6:41
2. I'm Not A Young Man Anymore - 7:17 am
3. Guess I'm Falling In Love - 4:18
4. I'm Waiting For The Man - 5:24
5. Run Run Run - 6:55
6. Sister Ray - 18:55
7. The Gift - 10:24

Trivia

The American punk 'n' roll band Social Distortion released the album White Light, White Heat, White Trash in 1996 , the title of which refers to the LP by The Velvet Underground.

See also

• Metal Machine Music

swell

1. ↑ American Masters: Lou Reed: Rock & Roll Heart documentary
2. ^ The Stranger interview with Lou Reed
3. ↑ Hildegard Wiewelhove (ed.): Art in the square, record cover 1960–2005 , Museum Huelsmann Bielefeld / Applied Art & Design, 2007, unpag.
4. ↑ Review by Mark Deming on allmusic.com (accessed December 15, 2017)
5. ↑ Review by David Fricke on rollingstone.com (accessed December 15, 2017)
6. ↑ 500 Greatest Albums of All Time on rollingstone.com, accessed November 29, 2019
7. ↑ The 500 Greatest Albums Of All Time: 400-301 on nme.com, accessed December 15, 2017
8. ↑ The 200 Best Albums of the 1960s on pitchfork.com, accessed December 15, 2017
9. ↑ The 200 Best Songs of the 1960s on pitchfork.com, accessed November 29, 2019
10. ↑ Review by Rob Sheffield (2013) on rollingstone.com (accessed December 15, 2017)
11. ↑ Review by Tim Jonze on theguardian.com (accessed December 15, 2017)
12. ↑ Review by Douglas Wolk on pitchfork.com (accessed December 15, 2017)
13. ↑ Review by Ulf Kubanke on laut.de (accessed December 15, 2017)
14. ↑ Review by Andy Gill on uncut.co.uk (accessed December 15, 2017)
15. ↑ Review by Mike Köhler on musikexpress.de (accessed December 15, 2017)
16. ↑ The Velvet Underground to Reissue 'White Light / White Heat' on rollingstone.com, accessed December 15, 2017