The Velvet Underground announce nine-LP reissue of ‘Loaded’
For most fans and critics, Loaded is the final canonical album by the band commonly recognised as The Velvet Underground. Although replacement bassist Doug Yule took over the singing and songwriting reigns to produce one final album under the Velvet Underground name with 1973’s Squeeze, without the presence of Lou Reed or any other Velvets, that album was largely ignored and forgotten to history. If you want to know how the real Velvet Underground ended, Loaded will be your reference point.
Largely recorded while longtime drummer Moe Tucker was on maternity leave, Loaded actually shares quite a bit in common with Squeeze – mostly that it’s a “Velvet Underground” album only in name. The reality was that Reed and Yule collaborated on the album, producing all of the vocals. Reed wrote all of the songs, while Yule played all of the bass and keyboard parts. While founding member Sterling Morrison contributed some guitar to the album, he was also rarely in the studio due to his commitments at City College of New York. Tucker’s parts were played by Yule, session musicians Adrian Barber and Tommy Castagnaro, and Yule’s brother, Billy Yule.
Featuring the last collection of great songs that Reed wrote for the Velvets, Loaded became a central part of the band’s recorded legacy. It failed to chart during its initial release, but critical praise has highlighted the album’s shift to more conventional pop and rock music, along with Yule’s heightened contributions and Reed’s vocals.
Loaded has been re-issued with additional material on three separate occasions. Once was for the 1995 box set Peel Slowly and See, once was for the 1997 double LP re-issue Fully Loaded, and once was for the 2015 six-CD deluxe re-issue of the album entitled Loaded: Re-Loaded 45th Anniversary Reissue. Now, we’re getting yet another deluxe reissue of the album, this time in a massive nine-LP format.
Loaded (Fully Re-loaded Edition) contains nearly all of the music from the 2015 version of the album while also including full stereo, mono and “full-length” mixes of the original album. Demo recordings, outtakes and live recordings also feature in the deluxe reissue release, as a number of tracks will be available on vinyl for the first time.
In addition to the nine LPs, the new release will also feature four 7-inch singles that reproduce the official singles and B-sides released from the original promotional push for Loaded. The singles ‘Rock & Roll’ and ‘Who Loves The Sun’ both come in the generic record sleeves used at the time by Cotillion, the band’s label. The original design for the ‘Rock & Roll’ single is being reissued for the first time ever because the original release was cancelled in 1970 (it was eventually released as a single in 1973, after Reed had left the band). The album’s two other singles, ‘Head Held High’ and ‘Sweet Jane’, come in picture sleeves originally released in Europe.
The new vinyl edition of the album will also feature early takes of ‘Oh! Sweet Nuthin” and ‘Lonesome Cowboy Bill’, as well as alternate mixes for ‘Rock & Roll’ and ‘Train ’Round The Bend’. Early versions of songs that would eventually appear on Reed’s 1972 self-titled solo debut, ‘Ocean’, ‘I Love You’ and ‘Ride Into The Sun’, are also included on the new release.
The re-issue is rounded out by two different live performances by the band: one is a concert at the Second Fret in Philadelphia from May 1970, recorded before the album was released in November. The recording comes from a fan, Bob Kachnycz, who hitchhiked to the show and recorded it on reel-to-reel as the band played as a trio with just Reed, Morrison and Yule. The three band members alternated between bass and drums to fill in for Moe Tucker, who was pregnant at the time.
The second performance was the infamous show that the band played at Max’s Kansas City in New York City on August 23rd, 1970. Almost immediately after the concert ended, Reed left The Velvet Underground. The show had previously been released on the 1972 album Live at Max’s Kansas City.
Loaded: Fully Re-Loaded will be available on March 24th. To honour the year of its release, physical editions will be restricted to just 1,970 copies.
