Free Velvet Underground's The Velvet Underground and Nico by Joe Harvard

irreparable break with a collaborating guitarist when he pulled the same re-mix trip on RobertQuine, mixing his parts to obliteration on
Legendary Hearts
. Quine saw it as a transparent ploy, a negative reaction to the attention he’d been getting since the previous record,
The Blue Mask
. Reed just hates to share the credit.
    Joe Harvard: But that doesn’t mean he isn’t committed to the central importance of the lyric! Look, if you accept the songwriter’s theory that a good song can stand with just an acoustic guitar and a vocal, you could argue that Reed was just trying to emphasize the core of the songs.
    Me: Right. But the whole singer-songwriter thing, isn’t that cozying up dangerously close to the folk singer stance that the Velvets were always against, right from the start? And why bother having a terrific band play great parts if you’re just gonna nuke ’em in the mix?
    Joe Harvard: You may have a point.
    Whether I’m right or I’m right, and whatever Reed or Sterling’s motives, songs like “Sunday Morning,” “All Tomorrow’s Parties,” “Femme Fatale,” and “I’ll Be Your Mirror” are lush, beautiful, and calming to post-millenium ears, even taking into account the lyrical darkness lurking behind their jangle. Now that some of the more scandalous aspects of their subject matter have seeped up into mainstream consciousness, “Heroin,” “There She Goes Again,” and “Waiting for the Man” rock more than shock. The same process also makes “Venus in Furs” easier to hear for the majesticallypowerful song it always was. The fact that these songs have lost much of their ability to shock is a tribute to the influence the Velvets have exerted on mainstream music, and in no way means they have lost their power to surprise. To the uninitiated, the Velvets’ songwriting is always a surprise, and for those rediscovering the songs it’s a particular treat that material over three decades old sounds utterly contemporary. “Run, Run, Run” rocks like a classic Chuck Berry road tune, but it could have been written this morning. Of the entire set, as we listen today, only “The Black Angel’s Death Song” and “European Son” provide a clue as to how hard the Velvets stunned the music world during their ‘65–’70 performances.
THE LUDLOW DEMOS
    In 1965 the Velvets recorded a demo at John Cale’s Ludlow Street apartment, to give John some ammunition for the trips he was making to England to promote the band. Angus MacLise was still in the group, but was absent on the day of recording. Cale supervised the recording process on a Wollensack recorder. Totaling 80 minutes, these Ludlow Demos show some of the debut album’s songs in early stages of their development, while the band was seeking the most powerfulinterpretation and best arrangement for each. Included as the first disc in the
Peel Slowly and See
box set, the six songs represented include four from
The Velvet Underground and Nico
and provide a compelling insight into the band’s intentions and methodology.
    The tape illustrates a process of crafted evolution. That process was simple: work the songs, then re-work the songs until the arrangements and textures were the most powerful ones possible for that lyrical story. If, as Cale came to believe in the first weeks of their friendship, Reed’s writing was akin to Method acting in song, 67 then the Ludlow Street demos are the narrative back-story integral to creating a believable character. The differences between the demo and release versions of these songs underscore the degree to which the arrangements were a team effort. Calling the demos their “most mystifying recording ever,” Velvets authority Sal Mercuri comments:
    They offer a stupefying glimpse into the VU before their exposure to Andy Warhol and his world, before Moe’s thunderous beat, before electricity. The performances are unpolished, a bit tentative though not at all self-conscious, and quiet. It’s as if