The Velvet Underground
The Velvet Underground & Nico (Verve)
White Light/White Heat (Verve)
Solo artist and Only Ones man Peter Perrett told us about his love for the Velvet Underground...
Peter Perrett: The first two Velvet Underground albums are conjoined twins in my memory. Delivered four months apart. The Velvet Underground & Nico was a gift in September 1967 - unwanted by its previous owner.
The opening track, 'Sunday Morning', felt like aural sunshine. The dawning of a new day, but with a warning..."Watch out! The world's behind you" - as you descend into the mean streets and dungeons, each step a diversion, permeated with ethereal drones of Germanic mystery and ominous viola - leading to the destination where Heaven and Hell collide...
A song called 'Heroin' - my 15 yr old self, with zero knowledge of any drug, became intoxicated with the sound. THE voice (only Dylan inhabited the same rarefied atmosphere) combined with each instrument to produce a dynamic which emanated from minimalist beauty and culminated in a cacophony of mayhem. Exemplified by the screeching atonal dissonance of the viola. The charmingly incompetent drumming was the secret weapon. Displaying a primitive innocence, it developed from a foetal heartbeat. eventually assuming a frantic urgency. It allowed the other instruments total freedom, unconstrained by the conventions of 'rhythm' and 'beat'. Listening to this in the Summer of '67, all other music paled into insignificance.
I bought White Light/White Heat the day it was released in January '68. Side one was inconsequential in the greater scheme of things, though 'Here She Comes Now' was an appropriately gentle prelude to the incoming onslaught of the other side.
Side two is divisive. It separated me from the rest of the world - Escapism/protective armour/defensive weapon. It was everything I needed.
Track one: 'I Heard Her Call My Name' contains my favourite lead guitar... EVER... A supreme demonstration of frenzy and feedback. When the bass stops momentarily, the other three continue, unfaltering in the relentless pursuit of their higher calling. A few seconds silence, then...
Track two: 'Sister Ray' - warm, relaxed and comforting, Extreme distortion. The perfect prism through which to view an oppressive world. Cale wields his distorted vox continental with the precision and delight of an axe murderer. The listener is left submerged in oceans of a glorious dirge. Seventeen and a half minutes was outrageous in itself.
After 'Sister Ray', there was no place left to go.
Peter Perrett's "Proud to be Self-Hating" is out now.
Photo credit: Steve Gullick
