![]() The album was widely influential – Graham Coxon claims it to be a huge influence on Blur and Phish covered the entire thing in concert on Halloween, 1998. Critically, it’s recieved the same acclaim that their other three records have – universal praise. Loaded is likely The Velvet Underground’s most popular album – “Sweet Jane” and “Rock & Roll” have gone on to be rock radio staples. And, insult to insult, Yule was credited first – before Reed. It didn’t help matters that, when the album came out, the back cover featured a photo of Doug Yule alone in the recording studio – despite the fact that Reed wrote all the songs. In its aftermath, Lou Reed almost completely disowned Loaded, criticizing the editing done to its songs to make them more commercially-appealing (especially the deleted bridge in “Sweet Jane”) – though Doug Yule claims that Reed edited the songs himself. So, by the final month of sessions – during the last week of a month-long residency the band played at Max’s Kansas City – Reed quit the band. Lou Reed grew more and more disillusioned with the band throughout the sessions – the group that had such promising, provocative beginnings with Andy Warhol and the New York underground was reduced to him and Doug Yule writing upbeat pop songs for months on end in the studio. THE VELVET UNDERGROUND: Sweet Jane La flaca Pili y el negro Tomás de Guasones recuerda a Sweet Jane, una canción de The Velvet Underground que formaba parte del álbum de estudio Loaded (1970), y que luego Lou Reed incluyó también en sus discos en solitario, como en Rock ‘n’Roll Animal o Live: Take No Prisoners. The sessions lasted five months in 1970 – longer than the sessions for the first three albums combined. The title refers to the band’s new Atlantic-supplied manager demanding that Lou Reed lighten up his lyrics and produce an album “loaded with hits”. In an attempt to rectify their poor sales, Loaded was a concerted effort to make the band sound more commercial and create music that would fit more comfortably on pop radio. The band were picked up by Cotillion Records, a subsidiary of Atlantic. Only “Rock and Roll” made the cut to the album. The band threw out a majority of those songs, retaining only “Rock and Roll”, “Ocean” and “I’m Sticking with You” for the Loaded sessions. The band had already recorded a complete album, but in the wake of their firing, the band lost the rights to those tapes and the album was scrapped. The band had been dropped by MGM Records after releasing only one album of a proposed two-record deal, due to controversy surrounding the band mixed with poor sales. Sterling Morrison was studying for his eventual PhD in medieval literature at City College of New York, so he filled in on occasion but was most likely creatively absent. Maureen Tucker was pregnant, so she was credited on the sleeve, but she never actually played on the album – her parts were covered by Doug Yule, his brother, the recording engineer, and a session musician. There are two particular moments when the magic kicks in: “Hey Mr Rain,” an old outtake stretched to 16 minutes, and “Coyote,” the one new song of the reunion – a mysterious mini-epic and a rare John Cale and Lou Reed co-write.Loaded is the fourth and, as considered by many, the final Velvet Underground album, as it’s the final album to include any of the founding members.īy this time, John Cale had long since left and been replaced by friend of the band Doug Yule. In 1993 the original quartet staged a reunion tour that imploded before it ever got to the US, but their double-live album Live MCMXCIII gave a fascinating glimpse of what might have been. Listen to the best of The Velvet Underground on Apple Music and Spotify. Since the main VU line-up was only together for less than five years (The Velvet Underground was christened in late 1965 Lou Reed left in August 1970), the 20 best Velvet Underground songs on our list include more than half their core catalogue – which didn’t make it any harder to narrow it down. ![]() To that end, there are some truly transgressive songs in their catalogue, but there are also some of rock’s most beautiful love ballads and celebratory rockers. Eno was referring to the countless up-and-coming groups who were, at that time, either covering the Velvets’ songs or copping their sound, but there’s a deeper meaning to his observation as well: The Velvet Underground’s music dared you to start thinking differently to approach your life in a more creative way. Our hats are forever off to Brian Eno, who observed in a 1982 interview that The Velvet Underground’s debut album only sold 30,000 records, but everybody who bought one started a band.
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