![\"Lou](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/Lou-Reed-Musician-The-Velvet-Underground-1971-Far-Out-Magazine-1140x855.jpg\")
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Credit: Far Out \/ Album Cover<\/p>\n
\u201cThings are better with contrast. You don\u2019t know up without down,\u201d Lou Reed<\/a> once proclaimed, \u201cConflict is more interesting. When you take conflict out\u2026 then you have pop\u201d.<\/p>\n Speaking to The Sydney Morning Herald<\/a>, ahead of his 18th studio album, 2000\u2019s Ecstasy, Reed was answering a question of what ecstasy refers to, returning to the idea of a colour palette that he continually used, a spectrum of shades employed to dissect his emotions, relationships, addictions and more. Written with Reed\u2019s pen, nothing was black-and-white and, no matter what, the truth was confronted, even if that meant exposing the more unsavoury sides of life, when necessary.<\/p>\n When asked about when he felt that he\u2019d truly nailed his sound, as a musician, Reed travelled back in time to the highs and lows of the Velvet Underground<\/a>. \u201cYou could trace that all the way back to the Velvet Underground song, \u2018I Heard Her Call My Name\u2019,\u201d he offered, \u201cThen, it flowers on \u2018Blue Mask\u2019\u201d.<\/p>\n From the Velvets\u2019 second album, 1968\u2019s White Light\/White Heat, \u2018I Heard Her Call My Name\u2019 is a morbid ode to the dead, resulting in four minutes of chaos that finds a source of power hidden in its imperfections. Every discordant chord performed by Reed, Sterling Morrison and John Cale, the slight muffle of its overall sound, the slight yet obvious changes in rhythm give the song an overall feel of a jam session, rather than a finished track.\u00a0<\/p>\n As Morrison once confessed, quoted in 2003\u2019s Uptight: The Velvet Underground Story, \u201cI quit the group for a couple of days because I thought they chose the wrong mix for \u2018I Heard Her Call My Name\u2019, one of our best songs that was completely ruined in the studio.\u201d Drummer Moe Tucker<\/a> agreed that the sound of the song was tainted, once Reed remixed it to amplify his vocals.<\/p>\n \u201cThe album is fuzzy, there\u2019s all that white noise,\u201d Morrison further explained in 1997\u2019s The Complete Guide to the Music of the Velvet Underground, \u201cWe wanted to do something electronic and energetic. We had the energy and the electronics, but we didn\u2019t know it couldn\u2019t be recorded\u2026what we were trying to do was really fry the tracks.\u201d<\/p>\n Still, with Tucker\u2019s drumming as a trusted anchor, the track hears the Velvets at one of their most raucous moments, in the best of ways, a precursor to punk in its explosive charm. It is no wonder, then, that Reed sees it as a definitive moment in his own songbook. If not for his immortal declaration of, \u201cAnd then my mind split open\u201d, the sprawl of his guitar is unforgettable in its intensity, indebted to Jimi Hendrix and free jazz. In terms of the latter, Reed\u2019s adoration for the saxophonist Ornette Coleman shone through.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI wanted to play like that,\u201d Reed told Rolling Stone in 1989, of trying to invoke a similar musicianship to Coleman in his guitar solo on the Velvet song, adding, \u201cI used the distortion to connect the notes, so you didn\u2019t hear me hesitating and thinking\u2026I never thought of it as violent. I thought it was amazing fun.\u201d<\/p>\n White Light\/White Heat was to be the final gasp before the Velvets\u2019 first implosion: Nico and Andy Warhol had been fired by the time that the band entered the studio to record, and John Cale<\/a> would be fired by Reed later that year, to the chagrin of Morrison and Tucker, on account of the two musicians\u2019 growing creative differences. On moments like \u2018I Heard Her Call My Name,\u2019 then, Reed\u2019s power overshadows the rest, a preview of what he would become in his solo ventures extending into works like The Blue Mask, as he cited that his sound \u201cflowers\u201d on the title track of the 1982 album. Both works hold a similar resonance, unconcerned with wider appeal, capturing Reed\u2019s complex emotions, as they were, in a moment in time.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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