No other act in the history of rock and roll seems more appropriate for the “bootleg” treatment than Velvet Underground. As purveyors of the proto-punk movement, the Velvet’s brand of raw, sexually charged, drug-addled, avant-garde rock aptly lends itself to the medium. In the case of Bootleg Series, Vol. 1: The Quine Tapes, we get a collection of recordings of a much more personal nature — a hardcore VU fan’s labor of love encouraged and extolled by the band itself.
The story goes that Robert Quine, who would later play guitar on some of Lou Reed’s solo albums, ducked into a couple of different venues in San Francisco during the band’s month-long visit, flipped the switch on his Sony cassette recorder, and with a single microphone proceeded to catch each and every note. While the sound quality suffers from the usual maladies, Quine managed to capture some truly remarkable performances.
With John Cale out of the picture, singer/songwriter/guitarist Lou Reed, guitarist Sterling Morrison, and drummer Maureen Tucker recruited bassist Doug Yule. The artsy edge of Cale’s eclectic tendencies set aside, the band adopted a more straightforward approach.
They remained as scorned and unpopular as ever. Their San Francisco engagements of 1969 almost stripped away the city’s flower powered veneer as completely as Altamont — but only a handful of people were there to witness it. The first disc chronicles the November 7 – 9 run at the Family Dog. While the hippies were somewhat oblivious, the Velvets belted out some sweltering sets that included Reed’s sordid tale of scoring drugs, “Waiting For The Man,” the out-of the-closet “What Goes On” and the thrusting finale from the second VU album, “Sister Ray.” Of note are the vocal contributions from Tucker on “After Hours” and “I’m Sticking With You” — which just goes to show that the group never stopped experimenting even when the end results failed to measure up.
The second and third discs traverse the Velvet’s stand at the Matrix, a small San Francisco club with even smaller audiences. Here is where Quine apparently struck up a relationship with the band. They aimlessly swing through “White Light / White Heat.” They attack “Heroin” with a Doors-like assault. A 38-minute version of “Sister Ray” has Reed and Yule battling it out on the frontline with a wielding guitar and organ exchange, while Morrison and Trucker vigorously push the rhythm forward. The drive behind “Rock and Roll” and “New Age,” both predating their appearance on Loaded, find the Velvets in an usually melodic state.
Only months later, this direction would destroy the band. At this point, however, the surrealism of “Black Angel’s Death Song,” the only Cale/Reed song from the Velvet Underground catalogue, packs enough sonic fire to transcend the commercial detours or inferior reproduction. Another heady version of “I’m Waiting For The Man,” along with a slow and roving “Ride Into The Sun,” would have brought the set to a suitable conclusion, but there’s a rousing bonus: a third installment of “Sister Ray” merged with “Foggy Notion” from a show at Washington University, St. Louis on May 11,1969.
Altogether, this three-disc box may dissuade the audiophiles in the crowd, but for the purists, completists, and lovers of no-nonsense rock and roll, Bootleg Series, Vol. 1: The Quine Tapes is a vital piece to one of rock’s most puzzling entities.
~ Shawn Perry
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