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Loaded
The Velvet Underground

Cotillion 2-27613
Released: 1970

Maureen TuckerDoug YuleSterling MorrisonLou ReedLou Reed has always steadfastly maintained that the Velvet Underground were just another Long Island rock 'n' roll band, but in the past, he really couldn't be blamed much if people didn't care to take him seriously. With a reputation based around such non-American Bandstand masterpieces as "Heroin" and "Sister Ray," not to mention a large avant-garde following which tended to downplay the Velvets' more Top-40 roots, the group certainly didn't come off as your usual rock'em-sock'em Action House combination.

Well, it turns out that Reed was right all along, and the most surprising thing about the change in the group is that there has been no real change at all. Loaded is merely a refinement of the Velvet Underground's music as it has grown through the course of their past three albums, and if by this time around they seem like a tight version of your local neighborhood rockers, you only have to go back to their first release and listen to things like "I'm Waiting For The Man" and the "Hitch-Hike"-influenced "There She Goes Again" for any answers.

And yet, though the Velvet Underground on Loaded are more loose and straightforward than we've yet seen them, there is an undercurrent to the album that makes it more than any mere collection of good-time cuts. Lou Reed's music has always concerned itself with the problem of salvation, whether it be through drugs and decadence (The Velvet Underground and Nico), or pseudo-religious symbolism ("Jesus, I'm Beginning To See The Light"). Now, however, it's as if he's decided to come on back where he belongs:

Standing on the corner
Suitcase in my hand
Jack is in his corset, Jane is in her vest
And me, I'm in a rock 'n' roll band...

And once stated, the Velvets return to their theme again and again, clearly delighted with the freedom such a declaration gives them. Each cut on the album, regardless of its other merits, first and foremost is a celebration of the spirit of rock 'n' roll, all pounded home as straight and true as an arrow. "Head Held High" is the kind of joyous shouter that just begs to be played at top volume, "Train Round The Bend" should satisfy all you hard blues fanatics out there, which "Lonesome Cowboy Bill" deserves a hallowed place on your favorite AM station. If Atlantic fails to get a Top 40 hit out of any of these, especially the last, they might think well of overhauling their entire corporate set-up.

Commercial potential notwithstanding, Loaded also shows off some of the incredible finesse that Lou Reed has developed over the years as a songwriter, especially in terms of lyrics. It's alway struck me as strange that no one has ever attempted to record any of the Velvets' material, though it must be admitted that its previously bizarre nature probably tended to frighten many people off, but there should be no excuse with the present album. Building from chord progressions that are simple innovations on old familiars, Reed constructs a series of little stories, filling them with a cast of characters that came from somewhere down everybody's block, each put together with a kind of inexorable logic that takes you from beginning to end with an ease that almost speaks of no movement at all.

In "New Age," for instance, he opens with what must be one of the strangest lines that have ever graced a rock 'n' roll song: "Can I have your autograph?/ He said to the fat blonde actress" -- and from there, mingles cliché ("Something's got a hold on me/ And I don't know what") with poignant little details about marble showers and Robert Mitchum, all combined into one of the most beautiful "love" songs to be heard in a while. Instead of taking the song through the standard verse-chorus-verse that might have been expected, the arrangement builds through three separate sections, each following perfectly on the heels of the last, culminating in a rush that takes you out beyond the boundaries of the song into the very grooves of the record itself.

And then there's "Rock and Roll," which tells the story of Ginny who was "just five years old," playing with the dials of her radio until she turned "on a New York station and she couldn't be-lieve what she heard at all." Or "Sweet Jane," possibly the Velvets' finest song since the cataclysmic "Sister Ray": "Ridin' in a Stuz-Bearcat, Jim," says Reed in the midst of a vocal performance which would put Mick Jagger to shame, "You know those were different times/ The poets they studied rules of verse/ And the ladies, they rolled their eyes." You can talk all you want about your rock poets, but I can't think of many who could come close to matching that.

In fact, there's so much variety on the album that you could go through any number of the cuts and pick out much of the same things, those extra little touches that make each one special and able to stand up in its own right. "Who Loves The Sun," a bouncy little number which opens up the record, closes with a few "Bah-bah-bah's" that are reminiscent of the "doo-doo-wah's" which graced "Candy Says" on The Velvet Underground. "Cool It Down" quotes admirably from Lee Dorsey's "Workin' In a Coal Mine," while "I Found A Reason" contains a recitation straight out of any classic Fifties slow song. There's even a Velvets' hymn to close things out in the properly devotional way: "When you ain't got nothing," they sing in letter-perfect four part harmony, "You ain't got nuthin' at all..."

Yet as good as Loaded is (and as far as I'm concerned, it's easily one of the best albums to show up this or any year), there are some minor problems which tend to take away from the overall achievement. Namely, and whether it's the fault of the mix or the production is hard to say, it feels as if many of the harder songs on the album lack punch. The group as a whole performs well -- Sterling Morrison's lead guitar is unerringly good (especially on the rave-up within "Oh, Sweet Nuthin'"), which Doug Yule's bass work frames each song nicely -- but it seems that something has been lost in the transfer of their material to tape.

Perhaps the explanation lies in the fact that Loaded was recorded before the Velvets undertook a summer-long engagement in the upstairs room at Max's Kansas City. There, playing five nights a on what can only be called their home field, it was inevitable that their approach to the tunes on the album would change, become more refined and pointed as the group settled into what they were doing, giving them time to stretch out and expand upon each of the separate pieces.

Brigid Polk, a New York artist whose mediums are the Polaroid camera and the Sony cassette machine, has a series of tapes from those performances, and I would say without exaggeration that the music contained on them is some of the finest rock 'n' roll that has been played in many a year. On a small stage, surrounded by a mass of dancing bodies (and when was the last time you saw that), the Velvets fulfilled all of their early promise, taking even those classics which they had put aside for so long (such as "Heroin" and "Sunday Morning") and turning them out in newer, somehow brighter clothes. It was a homecoming, in more ways than one, and there are few who were there that will soon forget.

At this point, unfortunately, it remains to be seen whether such a thing will ever happen again. Due to a near-textbook case of management hassles, Lou Reed left the group toward the end of Max's engagement, and though there is the possibility of a reconciliation at some future date, the present situation doesn't look promising. In the meantime, the Velvets have added ex-Lost bass player Walter Powers to their number and are currently rehearsing for a tour. Reed, however, has always been the focal point of the group, the one who wrote their songs and provided their magic, and it is doubtful whether they can overcome his loss.

None of which can detract from any of the power and beauty contained in Loaded. In the midst of Reed's tale of five-year-old Ginny, he notes that, "Despite all the amputations, you know you could just go out and dance to a rock and roll station." And that, I guess, is what it's always been about.

- Lenny Kaye, Rolling Stone, 12/24/70.

Bonus Reviews!

There are some rock followers who rate the Velvet Underground right behind the Stones in importance, and especially on the East Coast, the return of the Underground will ignite a revival in rock'n'roll that will bring new fame to Lou Reed, Sterling Morrison, Doug Yule and Moe Tucker. The revitalized Underground unleash a Stones-like rhythm machine and spirit that's sure to bring "Cool It Down," "I Found a Reason" and "Oh! Sweet Nuthin'," to the pop charts. And why not?

- Billboard, 1970.

The Velvets are to Manhattan what the Rascals are to New York -- that is, they really make "Rock & Roll" (a title), but they're also really intellectual and ironic. Lou Reed's singing embodies the paradox even on beat-goes-on throwaways about cowboys and trains. Other subjects include drag, poverty, not loving nature, and the new age, mysteriously connected to an over-the-hill actress who would like her old age back. A

- Robert Christgau, Christgau's Record Guide, 1981.

Easily the band's most accessible and "musical" record; it, of course, wasn't released until after Lou Reed, the center of it all, had abandoned the group. This is not the abrasive, seamy sound with which the band first lashed its miniscule but devoted audience; hell, this is almost gentle, yet made special by Reed's lyrical character studies of some fascinating fictional creations. Perhaps if Loaded had been the Velvet's first, instead of final, release, their audience would have achieved its deserved dimension; but, by the time this album hit the racks (with the band itself in final disarray), the abrasive power and sonic experimentation of their earlier work had pretty much alienated most of their not-too-numerous original following. That's a shame. As it is, Loaded has become an enduring final testament to the work of one of the most influential and important bands in the history of rock & roll. The CD sound, while not revelatory, is both a dynamic and spatial improvement over the LP, but is afflicted with occasional distortion and frequently heavy hiss. A

- Bill Shapiro, Rock & Roll Review: A Guide to Good Rock on CD, 1991.

Recorded in the summer of 1970 while the band was playing a summer-long residency at Max's Kansas City in New York. Feeling increasingly disaffected, Reed walked out after the last gig at Max's, never to return. The album was remixed and edited without him, much to his later chagrin. Whatever imperfections may have consequently occurred, Loaded remains an absolute must. The Velvets were now playing stripped-down rock & roll and Reed was writing such enduring classics as "Sweet Jane" and "Rock & Roll," as well as the underrated "New Age," "Train Round the Bend," and "Oh! Sweet Nuthin'." * * * * *

- Rob Bowman, The All-Music Guide to Rock, 1995.

Loaded is the band's most determinedly pop-oriented effort, featuring the Reed masterpieces "Rock and Roll" and "Sweet Jane." * * * * 1/2

- Greg Kot, Musichound Rock: The Essential Album Guide, 1996.

The Velvet Underground made their most commercially accessible album in 1970, during a summer of triumph and stress. They were playing their first New York shows in three years (at Max's Kansas City) while slowly falling apart. Drummer Maureen Tucker was on maternity leave; singer-guitarist-songwriter Lou Reed quit in August before the record was done. But Reed left behind a pair of FM-airplay hits ("Sweet Jane," "Rock 'n' Roll"), two of his finest ballads ("New Age," "Oh! Sweet Nuthin'") and a record that highlights the R&B/doo-wop roots and Sun Records crackle deep inside the Velvets' noir-guitar maelstrom.

Loaded was chosen as the 109th greatest album of all time by the editors of Rolling Stone magazine in Dec. 2003.

- Rolling Stone, 12/11/03.

(2015 Loaded: Re-Loaded 45th Anniversary Edition) Most of the material on this reissue of 1970's Loaded has seen the light of day already, and a new live set from Philadelphia sounds like a bootleg of a bootleg. But even that has its treasures: two Loaded tunes at the end -- "Train Round the Bend" and "Oh! Sweet Nuthin'" -- that exchange the pop niceties of the studio versions for minimalist guitar pulse that becomes towering. "I think that was fantastic," says Reed at the end of a raw early studio take of Loaded's "Lonesome Cowboy Bill." It's not. But it sure is interesting.

- Joe Levy, Rolling Stone, 11/19/15.

Reed disbanded the Velvets before this release, but the swan-song fourth LP featured some of his most refined songwriting, especially the classics "Sweet Jane" and "Rock & Roll." "New Age" is a slept-on highlight of Reed's ballad catalog. And "Oh! Sweet Nuthin'" blueprints the spirit of Seventies rock from the wreckage of the Sixties.

- Will Hermes, Rolling Stone, 11/3/16.

Lou Reed quit the Velvets during the recording of their final album in 1970. But he left behind a pair of alternative-world hits ("Sweet Jane," "Rock 'n' Roll") and two of his finest ballads ("New Age," "Oh! Sweet Nuthin'"). VU's last LP is their most accessible.

Loaded was chosen as the 242nd greatest album of all time in a Rolling Stone magazine poll of artists, producers, critics and music industry figures in Oct. 2020.

- Rolling Stone, 10/20.

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