‘Sister Ray’: The Velvet Underground classic that’s completely improvised
It was an experimental time for The Velvet Underground. After having divorced themselves from both manager Andy Warhol and singer Nico, the Velvets entered the studio to craft their most aggressive and transgressive album in their entire career. High-octane proto-punk, bizarre spoken word interludes, heapings of black humour, and a wall of distorted noise helped make their sophomore album one of the most memorable and initially reviled records in all of rock.
White Light/White Heat was not critically acclaimed or commercially successful upon its initial release in 1968. Largely dismissed or ignored by the mainstream rock media, the Velvets managed to alienate some of their only contacts in the entertainment industry once they fired Warhol. Their turn away from the softer tones of their debut certainly didn’t help matters, and after the album’s release, Lou Reed took full control of the band, firing bassist John Cale in order to assert creative dominance.
That dissent wasn’t just saved for after the album was released. During the recording of the album, the band decided that they were going to completely improvise a new composition of Reed’s called ‘Sister Ray’. With surrealistic lyrics and an endless three-chord progression that eventually morphs into pure chaos, it was the perfect way to end an album full of wild experimentation.
“‘Sister Ray’ was done as a joke—no, not as a joke, but it has eight characters in it, and this guy gets killed, and nobody does anything,” Reed later observed. “It was built around this story that I wrote about this scene of total debauchery and decay. I like to think of ‘Sister Ray’ as a transvestite smack dealer. The situation is a bunch of drag queens taking some sailors home with them, shooting up on smack and having this orgy when the police appear.”
While the band were accepting of any faults or flaws that might have appeared in the song, recording engineer Gary Kellgren was not. As an engineer on the band’s debut LP, The Velvet Underground, Kellgren at least had an idea of the wild dynamics that the Velvets were capable of. But ‘Sister Ray’ proved to be one step too far.
“The engineer said, ‘I don’t have to listen to this,'” Reed recalled in the documentary Lou Reed: Rock & Roll Heart. “‘I’ll put it in record, and then I’m leaving. When you’re done, come get me.'” After nearly 18 minutes of anarchy, Kellgren was eventually called back to the control room. ‘Sister Ray’ was finished in one take of complete musical improvisation.
