Mojo has published David Fricke's liner notes for the 45th anniversary edition of White Light/White Heat. The essay has quotes from all four members of The Velvet Underground. The Morrison and Tucker quotes are form 1994, when Fricke wrote the notes for the Peel Slowly and See box set.
John Cale:
By this time, we were a touring band. And the sound we could get on stage – we wanted to get that on the record. In some performances, Moe would go up first, start a backbeat, then I would come out and put a drone on the keyboard. Sterling would start playing, then Lou would come out, maybe turn into a Southern preacher at the mike. That idea of us coming out one after the other, doing whatever we wanted, that individualism – it’s there on Sister Ray, in spades.
Lou Reed:
They say rock is life-affirming music. You feel bad, you put on two minutes of this – boom. There’s something implicit in it. And we were the best, the real thing. You listen to the Gymnasium tape [the live set included with December’s Deluxe reissue], this album – there is the real stuff. It’s aggressive, yes. But it’s not aggressive-bad. This is aggressive, going to God.
Sterling Morrison:
Our lives were chaos. Things were insane, day in and day out: the people we knew, the excesses of all sorts. For a long time, we were living in various places, afraid of the police. At the height of my musical career, I had no permanent address.
Moe Tucker:
The songs were the songs, and the way we played them was the way we each wanted to play them.
The set will be released on December 3rd. The 3CD set contains the original album, studio outtakes and, at long last, a live show recorded at the Gymnasium in New York on April 30th, 1967. Also available on vinyl and 2CD.
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