Velvet Underground's The Velvet Underground and Nico by Joe Harvard
Authors: Joe Harvard
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the time the car reached its destination the song was finished. (This and a similar story about “Sister Ray” from
White Light, White Heat
reinforce Sterling Morrison’s recollections about Lou’s prodigious ability to compose lyrics.) Perhaps it was playing those great cover tunes every night that gives“Run, Run, Run” the feel of a classic rocker, or maybe it’s the tight harmonies. On this album, only “I’m Waiting for The Man” rocks as hard.
The gist of the song is a trip down to Union Square, one of lower Manhattan’s major drug supermarkets of the 1960s. The protagonists are four denizens of New York’s drug underworld. Each character gets one verse of just four lines, and each one is a brief vignette: Teenage Mary, Margarita Passion, Seasick Sarah (what goes up her “golden nose” isn’t specified, but my guess is heroin, as we’re told “she turned blue,” a reference to the dark pallor that falls quickly over the victim of a heroin overdose), and Beardless Harry. Harry’s in the worst shape of the bunch in “Run, Run, Run,” as he “couldn’t even get a small town taste”—street terminology for a tiny amount of dope (such as might be passed off as a standard bag in a small town).
It should be added that “run” has a few connotations in dope-speak. As a noun, “on a run” indicates someone engaged in an unbroken run of heroin use, enjoying the enviable position of having the cash and supply source needed to get high continually—with no down time, as it were. As a verb, it alludes more to the frantic chase to find money and/or dope to buy. Fiends who talk about “ripping and running” mean being out stealing, conniving and endeavoring in whatever nefarious activity is necessary to get yourself well.
The job of a guitarist is to support the song. Here, Sterling Morrison’s musical importance to the group is evident, something that’s hard to detect at times because he did that job so frighteningly well. As I researched this book I began to get a sense of how cool Sterling was, as a player and a person. My impression is that of a floating center, in the songs and in the politics of the group, wherein he was able to influence decisions without participating in the arguments; standing apart, yet a part of the process, guiding musical and political energies using guitar riffs and words as aikido, affecting every aspect of the music. His personality, it seems to me, must have been a lot like his playing—at least as I hear it—an indispensable glue for everything going on. Dolph called him “the flywheel of the band.” In this song you can really hear that.
ALL TOMORROW’S PARTIES
“All Tomorrow’s Parties” was released by MGM in two versions: a single, b/w “I’ll Be Your Mirror,” with more prominent double-tracked vocals and a hyped-up, made-for-radio mix, and the more sedate, album version. It was an appropriate choice for the ‘A’ side of their first single, as it was and would remain Andy Warhol’s favorite Velvets’ song. This isn’t surprising considering that Lou Reed drew 100% of the song’s substance fromstudying the regulars in Warhol’s clique. Reed calls the tune “a very apt description of certain people at the Factory at the time.” 91 He got maximum mileage from his role as an objective observer at the Factory, where he would take longhand notes on overheard conversations, behavioral quirks and the interaction of the habitués of Warhol’s world. He may have been the only person to turn the tables on Andy, whose own role was similar: “I watched Andy. I watched Andy watching everybody. I would hear people say the most astonishing things, the craziest things, the funniest things, the saddest things.” 92
David Fricke cites “the immortal opening vision of the go-go Cinderella,” 93 and there is greatness in Reed’s conjuring of images in this song. Somehow he manages to mock the triviality of the task the “poor girl” faces—choosing
White Light, White Heat
reinforce Sterling Morrison’s recollections about Lou’s prodigious ability to compose lyrics.) Perhaps it was playing those great cover tunes every night that gives“Run, Run, Run” the feel of a classic rocker, or maybe it’s the tight harmonies. On this album, only “I’m Waiting for The Man” rocks as hard.
The gist of the song is a trip down to Union Square, one of lower Manhattan’s major drug supermarkets of the 1960s. The protagonists are four denizens of New York’s drug underworld. Each character gets one verse of just four lines, and each one is a brief vignette: Teenage Mary, Margarita Passion, Seasick Sarah (what goes up her “golden nose” isn’t specified, but my guess is heroin, as we’re told “she turned blue,” a reference to the dark pallor that falls quickly over the victim of a heroin overdose), and Beardless Harry. Harry’s in the worst shape of the bunch in “Run, Run, Run,” as he “couldn’t even get a small town taste”—street terminology for a tiny amount of dope (such as might be passed off as a standard bag in a small town).
It should be added that “run” has a few connotations in dope-speak. As a noun, “on a run” indicates someone engaged in an unbroken run of heroin use, enjoying the enviable position of having the cash and supply source needed to get high continually—with no down time, as it were. As a verb, it alludes more to the frantic chase to find money and/or dope to buy. Fiends who talk about “ripping and running” mean being out stealing, conniving and endeavoring in whatever nefarious activity is necessary to get yourself well.
The job of a guitarist is to support the song. Here, Sterling Morrison’s musical importance to the group is evident, something that’s hard to detect at times because he did that job so frighteningly well. As I researched this book I began to get a sense of how cool Sterling was, as a player and a person. My impression is that of a floating center, in the songs and in the politics of the group, wherein he was able to influence decisions without participating in the arguments; standing apart, yet a part of the process, guiding musical and political energies using guitar riffs and words as aikido, affecting every aspect of the music. His personality, it seems to me, must have been a lot like his playing—at least as I hear it—an indispensable glue for everything going on. Dolph called him “the flywheel of the band.” In this song you can really hear that.
ALL TOMORROW’S PARTIES
“All Tomorrow’s Parties” was released by MGM in two versions: a single, b/w “I’ll Be Your Mirror,” with more prominent double-tracked vocals and a hyped-up, made-for-radio mix, and the more sedate, album version. It was an appropriate choice for the ‘A’ side of their first single, as it was and would remain Andy Warhol’s favorite Velvets’ song. This isn’t surprising considering that Lou Reed drew 100% of the song’s substance fromstudying the regulars in Warhol’s clique. Reed calls the tune “a very apt description of certain people at the Factory at the time.” 91 He got maximum mileage from his role as an objective observer at the Factory, where he would take longhand notes on overheard conversations, behavioral quirks and the interaction of the habitués of Warhol’s world. He may have been the only person to turn the tables on Andy, whose own role was similar: “I watched Andy. I watched Andy watching everybody. I would hear people say the most astonishing things, the craziest things, the funniest things, the saddest things.” 92
David Fricke cites “the immortal opening vision of the go-go Cinderella,” 93 and there is greatness in Reed’s conjuring of images in this song. Somehow he manages to mock the triviality of the task the “poor girl” faces—choosing
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