Happy 50th Anniversary to The Velvet Underground’s fourth studio album Loaded, originally released November 15, 1970.
In the summer of 1970, a version of The Velvet Underground played five nights a week for a nine-week residency at New York City’s infamous nightclub Max’s Kansas City. At the same time, the band was recording their fourth studio album, and their first for Atlantic Records. When Atlantic signed the band, they told them they wanted an album “loaded with hits.” To spite the suits, The Velvets delivered Loaded, a nod to their well-known drug use and the state it put them in. But now as Loaded turns 50 this week, it plays like a greatest hits record.
I call them a version of The Velvet Underground because their lineup changed with each studio album. Some purists would call The Velvet Underground over when John Cale left after 1968’s White Light/White Heat and Doug Yule replaced him. Loaded has by far the most diverse personnel. Lou Reed and Sterling Morrison stand as the original two members; Doug Yule joined the band for their 1969 self-titled LP. Maureen “Mo” Tucker is listed as the drummer despite being on maternity leave. Drum duties on Loaded were shared among producer, instrumentalist Adrian Barber; drummer Tommy Castagnaro; and Doug Yule and his younger brother, Billy, who drummed for the band’s Max’s shows that summer.
Each of the four Velvets’ LPs is home to a very different sonic landscape, all unique to the band and the outer, and inner, regions of sound they explored from fuzzy grunge (“Sister Ray” on White Light/White Heat) to the soft spoken acoustic lullabies on their self-titled LP, to experimental drone (“Heroin”) to understated love songs (“I’ll Be Your Mirror”) both on The Velvet Underground & Nico (1967). It’s impossible to pick a favorite because there are only four. Each one fits a different mood. But if I had to choose a favorite Velvets record, I’d call it Loaded. But that’s just these last few years; they rotate.
Loaded is only 40 minutes long. It conquers ballads (“I Found A Reason” and “New Age”) and delivers a chugging drug anthem in “Train Round The Bend.” But it’s the three opening tracks that hit the hardest. These ten minutes—“Who Loves The Sun,” “Sweet Jane,” and “Rock & Roll”—are considered a backbone of proto-punk, The Velvets themselves the progenitors of Punk Rock and The Alternative. The melodies are sweet, the riffs are bright.
“Rock & Roll” is one of the greatest songs about rock and roll. “Her life was saved by rock and roll,” Lou sings. “Despite all the amputations / you know you could go out / and dance to a rock and roll station.” A nod to an earlier Velvet Underground story, “amputations” could be referring to someone who had their sex changed (perhaps on “Lady Godiva’s Operation”) and can forget life’s troubles one song at a time.
The four records create their own universe full of characters—Sister Ray, Candy, the European Son, the Femme Fatal, Jenny in “Rock & Roll,” and Loaded’s “Sweet Jane.” This microcosm reflects the group of artists The Velvets played and worked with, some of whom were even based on real people, like Candy Darling. Candy was an actress who started out as one of Andy Warhol’s muses in his films and later went on to have a career working on stage and the silver screen. Their songs and records are like novellas, or at least that’s how I like to listen.
These stories have conceptual, rotating themes about sex and gender and their fluidity long before that was a concept known, let alone acknowledged, by the majority of people. Lou Reed’s solo act and records would go on to elongate these stories and give them more definition. But The Velvet Underground was the first vessel while no one else, or, really, the mainstream, was really looking to explore alternative lifestyles. I like to keep in mind while The Velvets were writing and recording “Heroin,” The Beatles were making Sgt. Pepper’s. It reminds me that the 1960s were never just one way or another: if you look further than the front page you’ll always find an alternative.
But by far, Loaded is the band’s most approachable album and perhaps its most commercially successful. When I find myself introducing The Velvets to someone, I recommend Loaded. It’s those songs, like “Rock & Roll,” that grow catchy and familiar, and now pop up on classic rock radio.
During their time in the studio and on stage, The Velvet Underground was not a popular, mainstream band. They were reviewed, but by locals to the scene. In 1970, Lenny Kaye wrote it’s “more loose and straightforward” and self-proclaimed Dean of American Rock Critics Robert Christgau called it “[rock and roll but] intellectual and ironic.”
Thanks to later champions of the band, time eventually caught up with listeners and The Velvets’ rock and roll lore is unmatched. Their drooping sound and overall ennui are renowned, a sonic inspiration to indie, emo, and rock and rollers the world over who wanted to bend wire strings and maybe even wrap them around a few limbs. Even jam masters Phish covered Loaded in its entirety as their 1998 “Halloween musical costume.” But there is a parallel history that matches up to theirs that goes completely overlooked. I turn to it often because what else is there to say about The Velvet Underground?
Before they were The Velvet Underground, they were The Warlocks. This is also the case for The Grateful Dead (when The Dead found out about The Warlocks, they promptly changed their name). Both bands started as a house band for a scene reliant on the collective drug experience. The Dead dosed out in the open with the crowd at Ken Kesey’s Acid Tests in San Francisco while The Velvets were shooting heroin and gobbling amphetamines discreetly at Warhol’s art space The Factory in New York City. Both The Dead and The Velvets have a unique sound and style that remain intact decades later, celebrated by devoted fans. Both bands are famous for their live shows reliant on improvisation accompanied by spinning and convulsing dance moves, and light shows of Technicolor water blobs and flashing lights.
Both bands found themselves tied up in a new scene of sexuality: The Dead subscribed to free love and The Velvets took their name from a 1963 pulp paperback about the underground world of BDSM, a sexual world of, at the time, hidden constraints and taboo practices. (In fact, The Dead got their name from a book too. The dictionary is less glamorous, but it counts.)
The Velvets aren’t synonymous with psychedelia, but Loaded’s landing on “Oh Sweet Nuthin’” is a seven-minute slow build to a high crest, highlighting Sterling Morrison’s underappreciated lead guitar work. It’s a flawless slow dance, whether or not you have a partner to lean on, or a soundtrack for walking down empty city streets, curbs sagging under your shiny boots of leather. The Velvet Underground’s music has a hazy, bedroom feel of lounging on the carpet while staring into space and Loaded elongates that. Life relaxes into slow motion on “New Age.” “Lonesome Cowboy Bill” (another Velvets’ character) delivers a blast of reverb guitar. “Head Held High” is a three-minute rock and roll wail.
By the time they finished recording, the band was dissolving. Lou Reed hated everything about the record. He claimed it was remixed without his input; he hated how the entire band was credited as songwriters, instead of just him; and he publicly complained that his name was listed third in the personnel, instead of first. A notorious narcissist and troublemaker in the press and in the New York City scene, he left the band when recording wrapped and would go on to rework Velvet Underground songs and unused material on his own as a solo act—particularly “Sister Ray” which morphed in length and style as the years went on.
If you, like me, have played Loaded and The Velvets’ catalog on constant repeat and need a break from their studio LPs, turn to the Loaded: Re-Loaded 45th Anniversary Edition. It’s a six disc collection including a remaster of the original LP, a disc of session outtakes, a disc of mono versions, early versions, and two discs of live shows: a remaster of Live at Max’s Kansas City and a set from Philadelphia’s Second Fret Club in 1970. The recording quality of these live shows isn’t the greatest, but the improvisations, rearrangements, Lou’s in-between babble, and the sludgy, grimy sounds aren’t to be missed.
The pink clouds on Loaded’s cover are a figurative manifestation of being Loaded. But I think they highlight just how different Loaded’s sonic landscape is compared to the band’s previous color palette of blacks, greys, and shadows. It’s exactly why I had the clouds tattooed on my shoulder for my 30th birthday: not only to commemorate a record that means a lot to me but to make sure these particular clouds remain permanent.
LISTEN: