The Velvet Underground vinyl LP (RARE 1971 issue with Lou Reed's 'Closet Mix')
£
19
$
25
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Description
Third album by the Velvet Underground, originally released in 1969. This 1971 UK re-issue features Lou Reed's 'Closet Mix' of the 1969 recordings. Catalogue number 2353 022 SELECT. Sleeve very good - a few small bumps and creases, but otherwise very sound; disc excellent.
I love vinyl and treat it with respect. Your record will be carefully cleaned and packaged in a rigid cardboard mailer, to ensure safe arrival. Free P&P and rapid dispatch.
Sample sound https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L2VjZGd8sDQ&ab_channel=ToryEklund
Review
TOWARDS LATE SEPTEMBER 1968, Lou Reed called a meeting of The Velvet Underground at the Riviera Café in Greenwich Village. John Cale, the group’s electric viola player, bass monster and mischief-maker, wasn’t invited, because Reed had an ultimatum to deliver: either Cale goes or The Velvet Underground folds. Neither drummer Maureen Tucker or guitarist Sterling Morrison were happy about it, but on September 28, Cale left the band he’d formed with Reed three and a half years earlier.
His departure marked the most significant break with the Velvets’ Pop Art past, one final act of defenestration after Nico’s departure in late May 1967 and the loosening of ties with group mentor Andy Warhol soon afterwards. Locked horns weren’t entirely to blame. Reed, whose early songwriting (notably Velvets demo Prominent Men) and mid-’60s style owed a considerable debt to Bob Dylan, had grown tired of the band being little more than an Abstract Expressionist backdrop at somebody else’s Pop Art happening. The third Velvet Underground album proves Lou Reed’s desire to rouse his inner Old Master.
The Velvet Underground: (from left) Lou Reed, Moe Tucker, Sterling Morrison, Doug Yule. Photos Doug Yule / courtesy of Sal Mercuri CollectionThe record was as measured as White Light/White Heat had been unhinged, as themed and integrated as the ‘Banana’ debut had been eclectic. It was also the first Velvet Underground LP that failed to make the Billboard 200. Perhaps their original audience sensed treachery. Or did Warhol’s lingering spectre plant a seed of distrust in a record that had been critically well-received and crafted with storyteller precision?
It can’t have been the quality of the writing, not with songs as sweetly subversive as Candy Says, as wistful and lovely as Pale Blue Eyes, as joyfully hyper as Beginning To See The Light, or as near to the nub of Reed’s wearying highs and lows as I’m Set Free. When Moe’s cymbal crash rudely punctuates the chorus or when Reed picks out the saddest guitar break in the world, we are transported to the perfect centre of his imperfect universe.
The Velvet Underground is that kind of record: spirituality grounded. Raw, intimate and with moments of epiphany every bit as powerful as a Cale-injected Sister Ray, it brings us as close to Lou Reed as we’d ever get during his five decade career. No silkscreen depersonalisation, no blue mask, this was Lou eager, wise and largely unguarded. That’s probably why he rejected engineer Val Valentin’s conventional first mix for his own so-called ‘Closet Mix’, with vocals pushed up front.
“It brings us as close to Lou Reed as we’d ever get.”
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