The Velvet Underground

White Light/White Heat

About this album

Released in 1968. The 2013 45th anniversary box set contains three discs.

Tracks:

Cale debuts as a lead singer on record, reciting The Gift and Lady Godiva's Operation. This is the second and final original Velvets album with Cale.

Musicians:
John Cale: vocals, electric viola, Vox Continental organ, bass, medical sound effects
Sterling Morrison: bass, guitar, vocals
Lou Reed: guitar, vocals
Maureen Tucker: drums

Other credits:
Gary Kellgren: recording engineer
Acy R. Lehman: cover design
Bob Ludwig: mastering
Billy Name: cover photo
Val Valentin: director of engineering
Tom Wilson: production
Andy Warhol: cover design concept

Cale in UP-TIGHT: The Velvet Underground Story, the book by Victor Bockris & Gerard Malanga:

"Most of the recording was done straight through; Sister Ray was one piece. I Heard Her Call My Name and Here She Comes Now evolved in the studio. We never performed them live. The Gift was a story Lou had written a long time ago when he was at Syracuse University. It was my idea to do it as a spoken-word thing. We had this piece called 'Booker T' that was just an instrumental, so instead of wasting it, we decided to combine them."

The album was unrelenting, but it was also a last hurrah:

"[It] shows a different moral struggle between the creative ideas of a "no Nico" and the soon to be "no more experimentation". Raw unfettered nihilistic exploration on full display. There was so much more to be done."

The sessions were loud, which caused all kinds of problems. Sterling Morrison remembers:

"There was fantastic leakage 'cause everyone was playing so loud and we had so much electronic junk with us in the studio-all these fuzzers and compressors. Gary Kellgren, who is ultra-competent, told us repeatedly: "You can't do it - all the needles are on red." and we reacted as we always reacted: "Look, we don't know what goes on in there and we don't want to hear about it. Just do the best you can." And so the album is fuzzy, there's all that white noise... we wanted to do something electronic and energetic. We had the energy and the electronics, but we didn't know it couldn't be recorded... what we were trying to do was really fry the tracks."

Maureen Tucker:

"We blew the studio away, recording at one volume - live. We didn't think to work the mix because, see, we didn't know what we were doing."

Lou Reed::

"Maureen was perfect on Sister Ray... All we wanted was someone who could play the telephone book."

Cale had high praise for producer Tom Wilson, who somehow made it work.

"The band never again had as good a producer as Tom Wilson."

White Light/White Heat / Here She Comes Now single

White Light/White Heat, is released in November 1967, with Here She Comes Now on the B-side. Same faith as the previous attempts to get into the charts.