Loaded. The Velvet Underground (1970)

Loaded. The Velvet Underground (1970)- March

Here is another Album that was hugely influential. Loaded by the Velvet Underground. The Velvet Underground, along with Andy Warhol's factory and the Pop art movement epitomised much about NYC in the late 60's. I didn't really know of this band growing up other than from movie soundtracks and Lou Reed's (the lead singer-main song writer's) solo album which was called 'New York'. An album that was very popular when it was released and represented a resurgence of Lou Reed's career. An album full of lyrics that sounded more like the chapters of a novel about NYC rather than a collection of pop vagaries.  

This album, Loaded, is a mixture of sweet am radio pop, psychedelia, folk and rock 'n' roll. The lyrical themes are high and low, glamourise tales from the gutter. The album starts out innocently enough with 'Who loves the sun?' Everyone during this period was saying 'leave behind the stuffy conservatism of the east coast and go to California'. California was supposedly where all the progressive ideas and movements were happening. Go out West! But according to this song, it seems like people in New York were content to do their own thing. 'Who Loves the Sun' sounds similar to a famous Mama and Papa's song called 'California Dreaming' which also had harmonised vocals and was definitely a proponent of the idea that everything would be better in California. The message of 'Who Loves the Sun' was maybe not everyone needed to run off to the west coast to join the hippies in San Francisco. 

There then follows three ecstatic pop songs starting with 'Sweet Jane' followed by 'Rock & Roll'. For me, 'Rock & Roll' is about a private moment of transformation brought about by music. Little Janie, who was just about five years old, is dancing to a radio station. Maybe on a side street during a sweltering Manhattan summer? Maybe in the shadows of some tenement buildings with Cadillacs cars parked at the kerb? A very simple but also a very visceral song. A song that starts out with a nice galloping pace but then builds towards heightened hysteria by its climax. The mundane turned into high drama. Then we change gears for the sleazy ghetto prowl of 'Cool it down'. Like he would in his album 'New York' Lou Reed captures some of the sweaty slang running through one of his observed characters' heads.  

In all the songs there are hints of the counter culture but mainly it's about Lou Reed crafting really great pop-rock songs to accompany his edgy and sometimes scuzzy tales of New York in the late 60s-early 70's. Songs which dip and then lift in emotional pitch and tone, becoming redemptive, regenerative, especially when Lou Reed's electric guitar is complicated by instruments such as the electric organ and by backing singers during the choruses. 

After this, things take a decisively melancholy turn with 'New Age'. If you can extract a narrative from this song it's got something to go with a Hollywood star fading into obscurity. The first line of the song could be the beginning of a short story. 'Can I have your autograph he said to the fat blonde actress'. Combined with the ponderous music, we flash on an instant scene with these two characters. Who is the man? Who is the fat blonde actress? The song goes on from there touch on the actress's golden screen days which are by now a thing of the past. But then, towards the end, the song starts to build into something else. We climb out of the melancholy and arrive at a new soaring plateau. Is this some kind of redemption or rebirth? The singer repeats the line, this is the beginning of the new age. In the 60s and 70s, people were very much into transformation through everything the new age had to offer. New spiritual beliefs, new attitudes about sex, new technologies, new ideas about society and politics. The song seems balanced between the old world and the new world. A turning point. 

There are five additional songs which I won't describe. I just say they borrowed from the same music styles mentioned above. The last one 'Oh Sweet Nothing' having gospel elements. 

So the album has all these intimate confessional narrative moments over-laid onto the shifting tonal patterns of the music. And it's just such a complete and rounded off collection of songs. There is enough material to give you a snap shot of the time and place. Not so much as to become repetitive. 40 minutes of music which you can easily flip over once finished and start again. 

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/albumreviews/loaded-19701214

Enjoy.