The Velvet Underground movie shows why 'The VU & Nico' album is such a classic

I love a good music documentary and the latest film by Todd Haynes on the Velvet Underground definitely hits the spot. 

On the basis that a band's early evolution is usually more interesting than their later career (Zappa is a case in point), Haynes focuses at least half the movie on the formation of the band in the mid 1960s and the making of their classic first album - The Velvet Underground and Nico, produced by Andy Warhol.

The interviews with John Cale are the most revealing, on all manner of things to do with how the band evolved and the contribution of each member. Cale's story is also rivetting in the depiction of a poor Welsh unbringing that led to a most-unlikely development as a conservatory-trained avant garde musician.

Lou said his college band was so bad they had to change their name a lot, because no one would hire them twice. Cale, the musical prodigy from the valleys, pushed Reed to throw off his straight R&B chops and embrace the avant garde. The unconventional drumming of Maureen Tucker and the addition of Nico as chanteuse resulted in a unique and groundbreaking sound; at once jarring and beautiful. 

Original footage of the band's first shows and early versions of songs like Heroin and Venus In Furs give real insight into how the band evolved from those rudimentary demos to produce such a startling debut.

Through Andy Warhol’s connections with ‘straight’ society, the VU’s early appearances were at bizarre  functions such as the American Society of Clinical Psychiatrists’ annual ball.  

Lou admits that although Andy Warhol wasn't a hands-on producer, the band wouldn't have got the freedom to make the music they wanted if he hadn't got behind them.

An original UK pressing of The VU and Nico.
The banana cover came later

What's also remarkable is that two of the most artistically out-there bands of the mid-sixties, The Velvets and The Mothers of Invention, were on the same MGM/Verve label. However there was no love lost between the two; east coast clashed with west. 

Lou complained that when they went to play some shows in Los Angeles, the record company added The Mothers to the Velvet's bill, which Lou saw as an attempt to undermine them. "We hated the Mothers." said dancer Mary Woronov: "They were hippies" 

This was the only bit where I felt the movie was off-key. I know comments can be used out of context, but there was no ambiguity about this. Zappa had no time for mush-brained hippiedom and took great pleasure in poking fun at it. Watch the 'Zappa' movie to understand more about what made The Mothers as outrageous and anti-hippie as The Velvets.

After 'The Velvet Underground and Nico' was released and was largely ignored by the wider public (Lou claimed to have made more money out of his earlier bands than he ever did out of the VU), the band continued to tour and evolve their sound. By the second album, White Light/White Heat, the pressure of touring and Lou's surly behaviour had already soured the relationship with Cale, who said there was nothing he could do: "If you tried to please him, he hated you more." 

Their influence over bands in later years is undeniable, but at the time the Velvet Underground met with a lot of hostility. The engineer on White Light/White Heat would set up the mixing desk and leave the room while they were recording, saying "I don't have to listen to this shit". 

Sterling Morrison, Lou Reed, Nico, Moe Tucker and John Cale

Of Nico, Cale said she was always writing her own songs and was apt to move from one idea to the next, so she was never going to be around with the VU for very long. 

Cale himself was forced out by Lou after the second album and the band moved more towards mainstream rock on their subsequent albums.  

The movie reminds you just what a great album that first one was. A collection of songs so strong and engaging it's surprising they didn't reach a wider audience at the time. With The Velvet Underground and Nico they created a unique sound: a burst of creativity that sounds as vital today as it did back in the 60s. 

The Velvet Underground - A Todd Haynes Documentary, is available on Apple TV.

Also on this blog:

There's value in those old RCA David Bowie CDs

Marc Bolan and the Electric Warrior album, 1971 

Roxy Music - Ferry and Eno still competing with one another

There's a lot to like in the 'Zappa' movie

 

 

Miles Davis and the track name mix-up on Kind Of Blue

Kind Of Blue - the best selling jazz record of all time - had one major flaw. The names of the tracks on side two of the vinyl record were wrongly named. 

Despite plenty of evidence to resolve the mystery, recent commentary on the album track names continues to muddy the waters. 

Side two of Kind Of Blue had two tracks - All Blues and Flamenco Sketches. Bill Evans, who played piano on the sessions - and was composer and arranger on some tracks - wrote the original sleeve notes to the album. In summary he gave a short description of each track by turn, referring to Flamenco Sketches ahead of All Blues. Original versions of the album had the names of the tracks thus, with Flamenco Sketches as the first track on side two.

Early version, track names in the wrong order

Evans' original handwritten sleeve notes describe Flamenco Sketches as "a six-eight, twelve measure blues"  and All Blues as "a series of five scales, each played as long as the soloist wishes."

Somewhere along the line, soon after the album came out in the US in 1959, the track names were transposed, but the tracks on the actual record stayed the same. It's not clear why the change was made or by whom, but the most likely explanation is that it became clear to those closest to the sessions (including Miles and Bill Evans) that the sleeve notes were wrong.

Evans said in an interview that "Flamenco Sketches was something that Miles and I did together that morning before the date. I went by his apartment and he had liked Peace Piece that I did, and he said he’d like to do that." 

So we know that Flamenco Sketches is the last track on the record, because it's the one that starts like Peace Piece. What is less clear is why Evans described Flamenco Sketches as a blues in 6/8, which it isn't. All Blues, however, is in 6/8 time.

Successive generations have misidentified the two songs. This is surprising, because even if they were not trained musicians, it should be apparent that the tracks, as described by Bill Evans in the record's liner notes, are not as they appear on the record. 

Coltrane, Adderley, Miles and Bill Evans

The magazine Jazzwise published an interesting appraisal of the Kind of Blue sessions earlier this year, but their comment that "the blues in 6/8, called either ‘All Blues’ or ‘Flamenco Sketches,’ depending on who you believe" tells you a lot about the ongoing confusion, 60 years after the fact. The magazine's piece doesn't provide a clear answer either way.

In his acclaimed biography on the making of Kind of Blue, Ashley Khan quotes the revised notes as coming from Evans' original sleeve, which is wrong, but at least Khan stuck with the corrected track names - All Blues first, Flamenco Sketches second.

Amy Herot's sleevenotes to the 1990s Mastersound Edition of Kind Of Blue got it right, stating that in 1959, the label copy was corrected to All Blues followed by Flamenco Sketches. More recent releases have also corrected Evans' original notes. 

The Mastersound version in 1992 was also the first to correct a pitch error on the master tape. Columbia's recording policy at the time was to run two tape machines simultaneously, a master and a safety. Apparently, the master tape was running slow. As a result, the tracks on side one were about a quarter tone sharp. According to producer Teo Macero, this was not intentional. 

The session tapes indicate that every take used for the album was the first complete take of that composition. I have recently bought an anniversary edition of the vinyl record, which comes as a double album with an alternate take of 'Flamenco Sketches' and a great version of On Green Dolphin Street, recorded prior to the Kind of Blue sessions (and previously available on the CD of Some Day My Prince Will Come) with the legendary line-up of Bill Evans, John Coltrane, Paul Chambers and Jimmy Cobb. They sound amazing.

Original video of So What, from the Kind Of Blue sessions:

See also on this blog:

Miles Davis at the Isle of Wight festival, 1970

A tribute to jazz giant Chick Corea