The album cover for White Light/White Heat has a simple beginning, as Billy Name recalls the conversation with Lou Reed “I said why don’t you look through my negatives, see if you find something you like, and he found this one and pointed to it. It turned out it was a tattoo Joe Spencer’s arm, his bicep. So I had to blow it up from a 35 millimeter negative, so it came out pretty grainy. So we decided to do a black on black.” (Kings Courier) Billy Name worked at Andy Warhol’s Factory designing the album covers for the Velvet Underground (among other things) and although this was a quick and easy process the image has accidentally developed a deeper meaning. The negative image can be seen as metaphor of the polarity of music being created on the East and West coast at the time, as well as the contrast between the Velvet Underground and mainstream music.
Don't listen to the whole thing
Beginning with “Sister Ray” (one of my favorites) a song about “a bunch of drag queens taking some sailors home with them, shooting up on smack and having this orgy when the police appear. (The Stranger) According to Lou Reed himself Sister Ray was an actual person “This black queen, Reed says. John and I were uptown, out on the street, and up comes this person – very nice, but flaming.” (Overloaded) While methamphetamine use is represented through the lyrics:
“I'm searching for my mainline
I said I couldn't hit it sideways”
“I’m searching for my mainline” is representative of someone attempting to tap the main vein that runs down the center of your arm, known as the Basilic vein. While “I couldn’t hit it sideways” portrays a struggling attempt to tap into that vein and inject heroin, remedied by moving the needle side to side`.
Sexual deviance is represented through the lyrics:
“Who're staring at Miss Rayon
Who's busy licking up her big man”
Miss Rayon is one of the drag queens in the song and I bet you can figure out what the second line implies.
So we have a song about heroin, drag queens and orgies, but what about how the song itself sounds? Sister Ray is loud, aggressive with a bit of jazz as Wayne Mcguire wrote “Sister Ray is much like [Coltrane’s] Impressions” (Overloaded) Sister Ray is so loud and aggressive that Lou Reed recalls an interaction with the sound engineer “At one point, he turns to us and says, ‘You do this. When you’re done, call me.” (Overloaded) Sister Ray gave the Velvets yet another chance to really produce something unique, done in one take "That idea of us coming out one after the other, doing whatever we wanted, that individualism – it’s there on Sister Ray, in spades.” (Overloaded) This individualism would ultimately kill their popularity.
White Light/White Heat was released in 1968, the same year “Hey Jude” took #1 on the Top 100 list and "People Got to be Free" by The Young Rascals took #2. Neither of these songs portray the taboo subject matter or aggressive and loud sound of “Sister Ray” or the other songs on White Light/White Heat. The Velvet Underground never had a song in the Top 100, and while Top 100s do not denote quality they do imply popularity. The Velvet Underground was simply not popular, especially on the West coast. 1968 is the proclaimed summer of love with themes of love, happiness and peace which clashed with what the Velvet Underground was producing at the time, and as a result White Light/White Heat reached #199 on the top 200 album list in 1968.
Gibson, Brit-El. "A Simple Story behind a Classic Album Cover: “White Light/White Heat”." King's Courier. N.p., 18 Jan. 2013. Web. 19 Nov. 2015. <http://www.ecrjournalism.com/ae/2013/01/18/a-simple-story-behind-a-classic-album-cover-white-lightwhite-heat/>.
Fricke, David. "Overloaded: The Story Of White Light/White Heat | MOJO." MOJO. N.p., n.d. Web. 19 Nov. 2015. <http://bigread.mojo4music.com/2013/11/velvet-underground/>.
Levin, Hannah. "Journalists Are Foul Vermin." The Stranger. N.p., 29 Aug. 2002. Web. <http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/Content?oid=11801>.
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