The Velvet Underground - Archetypes (1968)

The Velvet Underground released their second album in January 1968 through Verve Records. Titled White Light/White Heat, it was their first release not to feature singer Nico, and their first after leaving the management of Andy Warhol, who produced their debut LP. Recorded in two weeks in September 1967, it took inspiration from the band's lengthy live improvisations and heavy distorted sound, with "Sister Ray" clocking in at 17 minutes long. As with its predecessor, commercial success still eluded the group, with the album barely scraping the Billboard Hot 100. The changes in personnel that preceded its making were also accompanied by changes in management, with Andy Warhol giving way to the controversial and slimy Steve Sesnick. Right out of the gate, this choice angered bass guitarist and viola player John Cale, who not only didn't trust Sesnick, he believed he wanted to push Lou Reed as their sole frontman to the detriment of band cohesion. Despite the growing tension within the band, the Velvet Underground carried on touring, spending much of late 1967 and early 1968 on the road, playing the White Light/White Heat material and road-testing other new songs live, mostly to clubs and smaller venues. A brand-new endorsement deal with Vox allowed the band to acquire Vox amps, guitars, and other equipment for free, making it so that they were able to bring an organ out on tour for the first time, something which the band would embrace, adding the organ to many of their new songs.

The band also lost no time at all in returning to the studio after the album's release, recording two songs meant for a single at New York's A&R Studios: "Stephanie Says" and "Temptation Inside Your Heart". Why that single was left unreleased is unknown, but that didn't seem to deter the band, recording yet another two songs that May, "Beginning to See the Light" and two versions of "Hey Mr. Rain". With neither of them seeming suited for a single release, and the fact that "Stephanie Says" wasn't released tells me that they weren't recording yet another single and were actually starting to record a new album. Amid all of this touring and recording, however, it seems like intra-band tensions were coming to their highest. To blame were the creative tensions between the experimentalist and avant-garde Cale and the more conventionalist Reed, with a notable anecdote being that Cale wanted to record the following VU album with the band's amps underwater, but it's not known how much of that is factual rather than myth. Adding fuel to the fire, the band was also frustrated that chart success still was nowhere to be seen, and with Sesnick purposefully pitting one against the other, thinking the band with only Reed would be much easier to control, it was only a matter of time before tensions came to a head. In a meeting with guitarist Sterling Morrison and drummer Maureen Tucker, Lou gave them the option of firing Cale or folding the group, with the two begrudgingly choosing the first option.

With that, you might be wondering: what if Cale hadn't been fired from the Velvet Underground? What would their next album look like? It certainly is possible to put together an album, but we will need a lot of lateral logic to complete a full record. No setlists exist from Cale's final few months with the band, which could give us great insight into what material the band was working on immediately before the split. Since that doesn't exist, we will be focusing on songs known to have been written before the events of September 1968, even if they weren't part of the band's repertoire, and songs that John Cale is known to have been involved in, songwriting-wise. Also, due to the dearth of material available, we will be working under the assumption that the four songs they recorded in February and May 1968 were meant for a new studio album, and not simply one-offs. As for the rest of the six songs, they would have been recorded sometime in June/July 1968 in New York City with Cale, as opposed to November 1968 in Los Angeles with Doug Yule, as ended up happening. The album would most likely still be ten songs long, as the side-long jams and experimental tracks of the second album are nowhere to be found, and we will try to limit the inclusion of songs later found in the 1969 self-titled album as much as possible, as the overlap would make two albums that are way too similar, which would be a disservice to this reconstruction. With all that out of the way, here's what our third Velvet Underground album looks like:

Beginning to See the Light (White Light/White Heat)

Stephanie Says (White Light/White Heat)

Temptation Inside Your Heart (White Light/White Heat)

Hey Mr. Rain (White Light/White Heat)
Ocean (Loaded)

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Walk and Talk (Loaded)

Pale Blue Eyes (The Velvet Underground)

I'm Gonna Move Right In (The Velvet Underground)

Countess from Hong Kong (Peel Slowly and See)
Ride into the Sun (Searchin' for My Mainline)

Download link:
The Velvet Underground - Archetypes (1968)

Cale, Morrison, Reed, and Tucker playing live in late 1967.

Side one opens with the Cale version of "Beginning to See the Light", recorded in June 1968. It sounds like a midway point between the heavily distorted and compressed sound of WL/WH and the softer sound of the self-titled album, making the transition from one style to another considerably less jarring. Following it is a song that was originally meant to be released as a single, but was inexplicably left unreleased until the 80s, "Stephanie Says", recorded in February 1968. The aforementioned single's b-side, "Temptation Inside Your Heart", comes next, another poppy song with commercial potential. The song on which Cale plays the most central role to by far, "Hey Mr. Rain" comes next. Recorded during the same session as "Beginning to See the Light", this droning song driven by Cale's viola is the closest the group will get to the experimentalism of their first two records here, featured in the superior version I of the track. For a slightly more controversial inclusion, we have the 1970 Loaded version of "Ocean". We know for a fact that "Ocean" dates back to the Cale lineup of VU, as there exists a tape of Lou and John working on the song in July 1968. But the legend goes that manager Steve Sesnick invited Cale to play on the song in 1970, something which some band members confirmed and some band members (especially Doug Yule) denied. Did he or did he not? We cannot be sure, but if give it the benefit of the doubt, we've just managed to cobble together an entire side of songs featuring Cale! Not bad at all.

Having used up all of the early 1968 sessions, we will have to move on to some sketchier choices for side two, where we'll be having to use our imaginations much more. Starting with "Walk and Talk", a song written in 1967 and often performed live while Cale was still in the band. The demo version from the Loaded sessions can be used, as to me it sounds a lot like it could have sounded in 1968, with a Cale version probably just being slightly faster and more distorted, ala "Beginning to See the Light". Another song written early on and performed with Cale is "Pale Blue Eyes", written in 1965. Arrangement-wise it'd stick pretty closely to the studio version, with a viola part added to the song, as can be heard on the Live MCMXCIII album. Following is a trio of songs that Cale either co-wrote or was credited along with the other band members: "I'm Gonna Move Right In", "Countess from Hong Kong" and "Ride Into the Sun". The first of those would probably stick close to the arrangement VU played live in 1968, a long guitar-driven song with much room for improvisation, only with vocals. "Countess from Hong Kong" exists only on a demo, complete with annoying harmonica, and one can only hope a version with the original four would be much better than that. Finally, we have the great "Ride into the Sun", again from a 1969 studio version. I can't see the arrangement changing that much, with Cale maybe adding some organ to it, but nothing that would cause much impact to it, easily one of the best VU songs ever.

Archetypes is by nature a transitional album, sounding like the midway point between the aggressive White Light/White Heat and the pastoral self-titled album in terms of sound. Personally, I find that what we ended up getting with Doug Yule is still a superior record, but this would have made for a fine VU album nevertheless. Speaking of which, there's thankfully not much overlap between this reconstruction and the Velvet Underground album, making for two nearly distinct albums, with the band's mythical lost fourth LP only giving us two songs as well. The album is titled Archetypes after one of the working titles for the White Light/White Heat album, as also seen on an MGM re-press of WL/WH in the mid-70s. Its album cover is pretty anachronistic with 1968, though, so we'll make our own album cover using a late 1967 photo of the band, as pictures of them in this era are pretty hard to come by. A forty-minute album with a slightly longer side two, the lead single off this album would be the one chosen by the band themselves, which is "Stephanie Says"/"Temptation Inside Your Heart". It certainly wouldn't set the charts on fire, but would do better than their previous singles did, with maybe "Pale Blue Eyes" or "Ride into the Sun" released as a follow-up. It's hard to find fault in Cale and Reed going separate ways when both of them produced such great music for the following decades, but we can't help wondering what if those two had seen the light that their music partnership brought and insisted on it.

Sources:
The Velvet Underground - White Light/White Heat [45th Anniversary Edition]

The Velvet Underground - The Velvet Underground [45th Anniversary Edition]

The Velvet Underground - Loaded [Fully Loaded Edition]

The Velvet Underground - Peel Slowly and See [Box set]

The Velvet Underground - Searchin' for My Mainline [Bootleg]