LAMONTE YOUNG

LAMONTE YOUNG

FEATURES

John Neilson

There are two sides to the Velvet Underground—only one of which is rock ’n’ roll in the romantic tradition of Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones. If someone in a guitar pop band claims to be "into the Velvets,” and they show it by doing the three-chords-and-poetry thing, this is the Velvet Underground they are talking about.

The other side of the band is the electric, wailing, piercing high-amplitude drone assault that characterized parts of their first two albums, and all but disappeared thereafter (1969 Live being a partial exception). This is the sound that led reviewers of the time to label their music a "three-ring psychosis” and a “savage series of atonal thrusts and electronic feedback.”

While legend has it that this sound sprang fully formed from the Velvets themselves, the truth is that much of the credit goes to avant-garde composer LaMonte Young. Not only was Young working (as early as 1960) with the same elements the Velvets would later use in a pop context, he was working with the same musicians as well.

“They had all come out of my group,” Young pointed out during a recent interview in his Church Street loft, where many of his groups have practiced.

“The group before them was even more my players. They were the Primitives, before the Velvets. Walter DeMaria, who played drums with me. Angus MacLise, who played drums with me, played in the group. Tony Conrad played in the Primitives. John Cale, of course, we all know. Even Henry Flynt, who had worked with me, played in the Velvets at one point. Lou Reed was the only new element who was outside my circle, and I hardly knew Lou Reed. I don’t take any credit for him.”

Cale, of course, was the strongest link between the two worlds. A classicallytrained musician, he had been exposed to Young’s controversial musical experiments by composer Cornelius Cardew, and upon moving to New York, sought out Young and began playing with him. His stint with Young’s Theatre Of Eternal Music Group lasted two to three years, and by the end of that period (1965), he was playing with both Young and the Velvets concurrently. (Keep an eye out for a copy of the Velvet Underground 1966 bootleg—a mostly-instrumental recording which is probably the closest thing to a missing link between Young and the Velvets.)

Young’s music at the time was largely blues-based drone pieces, on which Cale would play the same high-tension viola wails that would later characterize much of the first Velvet Underground album. Young and his wife, lighting artist and musician Marian Zazeela, were early proponents of multi-media works, and there is little doubt that some of the inspiration for the Exploding Plastic Inevitable came from his so-called Dream House soundand-light environments of the early ’60s.

It can hardly be coincidental that the Velvets leaned more and more towards Reed’s traditional rock after Cale’s departure. “Murder Mystery” notwithstanding, they certainly never recorded another song with the scalp-tingling pull of “Venus In Furs” or “The Gift.” As for a followup to “Sister Ray,” you’ll find one of its musical heirs on the album Cale recorded later with Terry Riley—another Young alumnus.

Unfortunately, until now, there have been only two available recordings of Young’s work (neither of which .featured the line-up that included Cale), and these were both limited pressings and are long out-of-print. Recently, however, the composer’s epic five-hour solo piano work The Well-Tuned Piano was released by Gramavision. Young has a contract to release more works with them in the near future. Some of these will be archival recordings, and while Young is not certain whether any Cale tapes will be among them, it is a “definite possibility.”