White Light/White Heat: Encyclopedia - White Light/White Heat

White Light/White Heat

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White Light/White Heat is The Velvet Underground's second album.

Recorded relatively rapidly in a period of 2 days in late 1967, the record eschewed the more pop sensibilities of their first record, as well as that record's guest vocalist Nico, and producer Andy Warhol. Distorted, driven by feedback and roughly recorded, the album became one of the prototypes for the early punk of The Stooges, as well as one of the first albums to be truly punk as we now know it.

It contains unorthodox tracks such as "White Light/White Heat", "Lady Godiva's Operation" and "The Gift", the latter featuring a heavy rock rhythm mixed into one stereo speaker and a Lou Reed short story — laconically narrated by John Cale — in the other. The story tells a tale of love and the perils of human mail, and was written by Lou Reed for a project in his college days. Clips of the track were used in radio ads for the album. The centrepiece, however, is the lengthy, improvised murder tale "Sister Ray", based on some of Reed's near-perennial concerns — drug abuse, violence, homosexuality and transvestism. "Sister Ray" is legendary for being recorded in one-take, careening off in every direction for 17 minutes as John Cale's deafening organ (which was routed through a distorted guitar amplifier) and Lou Reed's piercing guitar take turns drowning out the rest of the band. There is a rumor that the producer, Tom Wilson walked out halfway through the song and just said "Let me know when you're done". The album is so distorted and noisy becuase the band had a sponsorship from Vox amplifiers. Top of the line amps were used as well as distortion pedals. At the time it was definitely not customary to use such high gain, Jimi Hendrix was really the only person around at the time to use such levels of distortion and feedback. The album was more of an experiment than anything else.

The song "I Heard Her Call My Name" features what is probably Lou Reed's finest guitar work to date and might be the most overlooked song on the album. The distortion is so heavily layered on here that not much else is audible in the track. It is truly a feat and the first of it's kind, nobody else was as noisy in 1967 and 1968. Even compared to the music of today, the solo still stands up.

White Light White Heat is also an early performance art act done by Chris Burden in 1975. [1]

White Light/White Heat - Track listing

1. "White Light/White Heat" (Lou Reed) - 2:47
2. "The Gift" (Reed, Sterling Morrison, John Cale, Maureen Tucker) - 8:19
3. "Lady Godiva's Operation" (Reed) - 4:56
4. "Here She Comes Now" (Reed, Morrison, Cale, Tucker) - 2:04
5. "I Heard Her Call My Name" (Reed) - 4:38
6. "Sister Ray" (Reed, Morrison, Cale, Tucker) - 17:27

White Light/White Heat - People involved

White Light/White Heat - The band

• Lou Reed - vocals, guitar, piano
• John Cale - vocals, electric viola, organ, bass guitar
• Sterling Morrison - vocals, guitar, bass guitar
• Maureen Tucker - percussion

White Light/White Heat - Technical staff

• Tom Wilson – producer
• Gary Kellgren – engineer

John Cale | Sterling Morrison | Lou Reed | Maureen Tucker | Doug Yule

Willie Alexander | Angus MacLise | Walter Powers

Studio albums: The Velvet Underground and Nico | White Light/White Heat | The Velvet Underground | Loaded | Squeeze

Live albums: Live at Max's Kansas City | 1969 | Live MCMXCIII | Final V.U. | The Quine Tapes

Box sets and outtake compilations: VU | Another View | What Goes On | Peel Slowly and See

Selected best-of compilations: Rock and Roll | The Very Best of The Velvet Underground | Gold

Related topics: Exploding. Plastic. Inevitable. | Nico | Andy Warhol | Billy Yule

Categories: The Velvet Underground albums | 1968 albums | Proto-punk albums | Second albums

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "White Light/White Heat", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki