Pop performers Underground sounds ring out again

Press, 1 March 1989, Page 26

Pop performers Underground sounds ring out again

Andy Warhol is dead. Nico is dead. Lou Reed, for all intents and purposes, died a few years back and went to commercial hell — if his plugs for everything from credit cards to motor scooters are any indications. Because the producer, chanteuse and bandleader were; the highest-profile driving forces behind the original Velvet Underground, it would seem that the band generally acknowledged as the most influential in alternative rock ’n’ roll has long since found its final resting place. Or has it?

All of a sudden, the VU meter has been picking up vibrations — serious vibrations — for the first time since 1970, when the band’s final studio LP was released. Lou Reed’s latest album, “New York,” hit record stores last month. Only only does the LP show Reed taking a decidedly non-commercial approach — in the finest tradition of the Velvets — but it features drumming on two cuts by ex-VU stickwoman Mo Tucker. Hot on the heels of “New York” comes Tucker's new album, featuring guitar work by none other than Lou Reed on two tracks and backup vocals by Reed on one. There are more VU rumblings where those came from. In January, Reed and former Velvet multinstrumentalist John Cale played a tribute to Warhol at St Anne’s Church in Brooklyn. These three projects represent the first time former members of the Velvet Underground have worked together formally since the band split. What’s more, guitarist Sterling Morrison (though not involved with any of the reunion-type get-to-gethers) has plans to publish a quasi-history of the band this year, tentatively titled “The Velvet Underground Diet.” Why this sudden burst of Velvet Undergroundinspired activity?

Kate Messer sees the Velvets finally coming full circle, both personally and with respect to today’s underground rock scene. Messer, with her husband M. C. Kostek, runs the 50 Skidillion Watts record label on which Tucker’s record will appear, and also administers What Goes On, the group’s primary fan club. In addition, Messer plays guitar on Tucker’s upcoming album.

She says the former members of VU have all established themselves in their post-Velvet Underground pursuits. “I think everyone’s careers are kind of evolving in real odd ways,” Messer says from her home in Florida. “John Cale is doing more experimental-type things, not necessarily in marketing music. The Lou I saw in the studio was ultraconfident and real happy to work with Mo. I don’t think Louis is selfconscious about his VU roots as he was 10 years ago.”

Ever since Reed stormed out on the band just before the release of the Velvets’ last LP, “Loaded,” he has struggled to match his best work with the group. After almost two decades and 22 up-and-down solo albums, Reed has yet to produce anything as powerful or revolutionary as the Velvets’ debut. Reed, who shies away from interiews about his VU days, couldn’t be reached for comment.

But in spite of a reluctance to be known only for his work with the seminal avant-garde band, Reed apparently is growing more aware of the wide-ranging impact the band has on many postpunk, alternative rock bands. That has brought the Velvet Underground’s members back together in at least some fashion, perhaps because Reed and his bandmates are eager to rediscover what’s turning so many bands on to the VU.

In "Rolling Stone” magazine’s "The 100 Best Albums of the Last Twenty Years" issue in 1987, the magazine wrote that “the Velvets were so far ahead of their time that pop music has yet to catch up.” But pop music, at least alternative pop music, seems to be within

inches of closing the gap, if it hasn’t already. R.E.M., the Dream Syndicate, Echo and the Bunnymen and Sonic Youth — some of the many bands who’ve covered the Velvet Underground either on record, in concert or in spirit — are no longer considered musical upstarts. They’re recognised as some of the most important groups on the underground scene and, at least in the case of R.E.M. and Echo and the Bunnymen, have enjoyed some crossover success in the pop mainstream. R.E.M., the Velvets’ highest-profile disciple, slapped down no less than three VU remakes on the band’s "Dead Letter Office” LP two years ago. “I think so many bands have talked them up,” Messer reflects. "You read 12 R. E.M. interviews, and the Velvet Underground is listed in the second sentence in every one. Kids pick up on that. The VU is reaching out to audiences it never had any idea it wanted to reach out to. It has to do with visibility of bands that claim the VU as an influence. A lot of people are understanding that it was a great band and had a great impact.” In 1967, three groups released albums that served as a widely accepted soundtrack to the flower-power generation. The Beatles came out with "Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” the Jimi Hendrix Experience debuted with “Are You Experienced?” and the Doors broke out on the scene with their self-titled first LP. These records went heavy on the hippie, taking their listeners on psychedelic journeys, but references to the drugs that fuelled these trips were usually veiled.

Amid this atmosphere, the Velvet Underground fired its opening salvo, “The Velvet Underground and Nico.” Here was a record that neither bought into the hippie consciousness nor buckled under to the demands or recommendations of censors. There was nothing soothing about the music, either. Reed effectively blurred the line between singing and speaking, choosing instead a unique style of manic chanting. Many songs featured guitars rumbling out muffled riffs over the most basic of rock drumming. Some tracks turned into uneasy, spiralling vamps, and others just lost control in a sea of dark-grey-to-black noise with multiple guitars duking it out against John Cale’s electric viola scraping.

Speaking from her south-east Georgia home. Tucker says she attributes the Velvets’ revolutionary diverse sound to the background of the group’s members: “I think what made our sound so different is that I had no training whatsoever, Sterling trained on trumpet, John was classically trained, and Lou was this Long Island bar rock ’n’ roller. It was putting those different ways of thinking about a song together. My idea about how to make a song sound is a lot different than John’s, with his classical approach. Also it was not being afraid to try something.” As dusk approached on an early spring day late last March, Lou Reed pulled up to a tiny studio on Broadway below Canal Street and proceeded to add the last chapter in the Velvet Underground legend. He’d decided after all to accept Tucker’s invitation to play on the solo album she was recording. But Reed hadn’t let the people waiting inside — Tucker, Noise New York studio head Kramer (who goes by his last name only), Sonic Youth bassist Kim Gordon, Half Japanese bandleader Jad Fair, Half Jap guitarist Hank Beckmeyer, and Messer — know definitely whether he would show up. Now, however, Reed climbed the stairs to the tiny studio on the third floor of the elevator-less building. Kramer met him at the top of the stairs, and, not recognising Reed, asked him, “Are you looking for Noise?”

Lou Reed, who wanted to get down to business as quickly as possible, didn't answer. Instead, he brushed by Kramer and found Tucker inside with the rest of the musicians. Messer’s husband, Kostek, also in the studio at the remembers worry-

ing that Reed would react poorly to the prospect of recording in this barebones studio, the likes of which he probably hadn’t seen since, well, recording with the Velvets. “He’s known for his exactness in the studio,” Kostek says of the VU chief. “Technically, if something’s not done right, Lou will be able to have bad words for everyone involved. We were really apprehensive about it going well. As it turned out, Kramer was able to get a good guitar sound quickly. When Lou found out things would work out in this little, low-budget studio, the whole thing changed. Lou was sitting there having a good time, saying, “Gee, this is what I should do on my records.” He said, “ ‘Mo, you could be the most avant-garde of us all’.” Reed put on a pair of $7 headphones, listened to one run-through of “Hey, Mersh!” and, on the second take, came up with the torrid guitar track that will appear on the album. The plan originally was for Reed to add just a short solo, but he continued playing through the entire song, and Tucker decided to leave every note in when she completed the mix. “He just kind of wailed through the whole thing,” she recalls.

On “Pale Blue Eyes,” Tucker laid down the lead-guitar part that will appear on the album on the first take. And almost before the last note of the solo had finished ringing — about an hour after he’d climbed the three flights of stairs — Reed was out the door. Hard-core VU fans hoping for a reunion seem to be frustrated that the band won’t be re-forming for a full-fledged album or for a concert tour featuring Velvets chestnuts. Why is it likely there won’t be a full-fledged reunion? Tucker suggests there is a feeling that the Velvet Underground was so special that with recreating it there is a risk of tainting that perfection. And as for Reed? Reed has played Velvet Underground songs like “Run Run Run,” “What Goes On” and “European Son” lately in guest appearances in New York with the likes of the Tom Tom Club and the Feelies. But the VU head still is not fond of pulling up a chair and gabbing aboui the good old days. "I think he perceives that his fans come to him for the VU rather than for his own music,” Messer believes. “Perhaps that bothers him. I could be wrong about that, but that’s the impression I get. He just has hesitations in being associated with past successes. I think he’s afraid of just having people remember him for the VU, not his new stuff.” In fact, Reed has instructed a publicist at Warner Bros Records, which controls Reed’s Sire label, to inform interviewers that he will not be fielding questions about his past. By refusing to answer historical queries, Reed is no doubt hoping to deflect attention from rumours that have the Velvet Underground re-forming. Cale, too, has demonstrated that he’s not sitting around waiting for a Velvet Underground reunion to happen. Tucker invited Cale to produce her album, but it turned out he was too busy working on his own orchestral pieces. Morrison also has made it clear that the VU no longer runs his life. The guitarist had a brief postVelvets musical fling several years ago in Austin, Texas with a band called the Bizarros. But it wasn’t Austin’s hopping music scene that brougth him there. It was the University of Texas, where he recently earned a PhD in medieval literature. Don’t think the ex-Vel-vets aren’t aware of how crass a VU reformation might look. “Crosby, Stills and Nash, Mountain, War, the Monkees — every time you turn around, there’s another horrible group starting over to see if they can make another 10 Gs,” Tucker complains. “Why bother? The first time around was horrible enough.”

jLos Angeles Times"

New careers

established

Hard-core fans frustrated