CoronaVinyl Day 43 (Influential But Not Commercially Successful): Loaded by The Velvet Underground

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Today's CoronaVinyl category is "influential but not commercially successful."  Many bands and artists are both influential and commercially successful (Elvis, The Beatles, Stevie Wonder, etc.).  Some bands and artists are commercially successful, but not influential (think bubble gum pop).  The vast majority of bands and artists are neither.  But there is a small fraternity of bands and artists who are highly influential -- be it in a specific genre or more broadly in music -- who, for one reason or another, just never became commercially successful.  Maybe they were "ahead of their time."  Maybe they broke up too soon.  Maybe someone in the band died.

The Velvet Underground was one of the most influential bands in rock history, yet they never had a song sniff the Billboard Top 40 or the UK pop charts.  When they were together from 1967 to 1970, they made four studio albums (I don't count 1973's Squeeze, which was released in name by "The Velvet Underground," but there were no original members of the band, and Doug Yule was the only member of the Lou Reed-era band that appeared on the album).  Two of their four studio albums didn't make it into the Billboard 200 album charts, and their highest-charting album when they were together was their debut album, The Velvet Underground & Nico, which went to #171 on the Billboard 200 (it would later hit #129 in 2013, after Reed's death).  

There's a famous quote attributed to Brian Eno that only 30,000 people ever bought a Velvet Underground record, but every one of them started a band.  That's not the exact quote, but the point is made.  The Velvet Underground really were ahead of their time, experimenting with sounds, themes, and subjects that no one else was really trying to conquer in the late '60s.  They were punk rock, noise rock, and art rock primogenitors, influencing punk, glam, alternative, and rock music from 1967 to the present.

Like many (I assume), I discovered The Velvet Underground in college.  Before that, I knew who Lou Reed was, and I had heard The Cowboy Junkies' haunting cover of "Sweet Jane" from the Natural Born Killers soundtrack, but in college I actually started listening to them.  I found the band to be fascinating because, for the most part, they sounded nothing like anything else that was from that era.  Their songs ranged from what seemed like Gregorian chants (thanks, Nico) to garage rock to droning to extended jams to pop to country rock to folk to tongue-in-cheek to soul/R&B to straight up rock and roll.  But they were largely ignored by mainstream society, and like I said above, they had no songs that came anywhere close to charting.  To this day, they still don't have a single album (studio, live, compilation, or otherwise) that has been certified gold or platinum in the U.S. -- which means that no VU album has sold more than 500,000 copies in the U.S.

1970's Loaded is the only VU album I have on vinyl.  Like other albums I have reviewed during this CoronaVinyl experiment, the album cover itself is hanging on my office wall.  Loaded was the band's fourth studio album, and the final album with Lou Reed, Mo Tucker, and Sterling Morrison (though Tucker was on maternity leave for the songs that ended up on the actual album and appears only on a few of the extra songs recorded during the Loaded sessions that have since been released).  It didn't chart on the Billboard album charts.  The album title is kind of a VU FU to their record label, who asked them to make an album "loaded with hits."  It wasn't.  But it's a fitting coda for the band, as it is full of rock, pop, trippy ballads, and the like.  "Sweet Jane" and "Rock & Roll" are probably their two most recognizable songs from the album, and both are fantastic.  "Rock & Roll" is a story of someone who's "life was saved by rock and roll," and I think many of us can relate to that.  Rolling Stone ranked Loaded #110 on its list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All-Time.  The Spotify version of the album includes several extra tracks (including those Tucker played on), so you get a nice bonus.

Favorite song from Side 1:  "Sweet Jane"
Though the album version of the song is not the full version -- which includes the "heavenly wine and roses" bridge -- thankfully the version on the Spotify album is the full one.  It's catchy and it rocks at the same time.  I love how loose Reed is on the lead vocals.  It sounds like he's having fun, adding "oohs" and "just watch me now" to verses.  On top of that, there is great imagery and some great lines in the song, from wondering why Jack is wearing a corset to a stern warning on how not to be a parent ("And there's even some evil mothers / Who'll tell you that everything is just dirt.").  And, of course, I love the bridge (if you can call it that) that busts into "But anyone who ever had a heart, oh / They wouldn't turn around and break it / And anyone who ever played a part, oh / They wouldn't turn around and hate it."

Favorite song from Side 2:  "Oh! Sweet Nuthin'"
The seven-plus minute final track on the album is a soulful jam with Doug Yule on lead vocals.  It feels like it would fit in on a Grand Funk, CCR, or Allman Brothers album.