And now I have.
I've owned this album for quite a while, found it for cheap second-hand. No VU collection would be complete without it. Or is it?
You know the tale, Lou left a while back, the rest organised a tour of europe/japan/etc, at which point Sterling jumped tugboat. Meanwhile, Lou was having hits with "Walk on the wild side" and "Transformer".
So, they go round playing UK colleges and stuff, until all the rest of the band (Moe included) go home, and Doug Yule gets to make a record of those Doug songs that hadn't made it to "Loaded", ones they played live, and some other bobbins.
It's mildly pleasant. Which is damning with faint praise obviously. "Little Jack" is a polite version of "Sympathy for the devil" musically. "Caroline" proves that Doug has actually met Lou Reed, but and learned a little."Friends" is actually alright. "Jack and Jane" actually mentions junkies! "Louise" is an attempt at doing an anthemic album closer like "Oh sweet nothing".
So, if you went to a gig and liked a song, and it wasn't "What goes on" or "Sweet Jane" or owt on LP, you could now get it. As played by Doug Yule, Ian Paice of Deep Purple on drums, and various unnamed girl backing singers (sounds like P.P. Arnold, probably isn't).
I remember seeing this in 1974, when Lou Reed was now a name, and reading the cover, seeing "All songs by Doug Yule" on "Loaded Records" and decided that this was a different Velvet Underground. Guess I was right. (There actually was a different band based in Australia, got their name from the same book).
It's not terrible. (OK, it is, really.) Just kind of dull, nice, and nothing the Velvet Underground was.
Did anyone else ever hear it? (amongst you guys obviously. I'm fairly certain other people have heared it...)
― mark grout (mark grout), Friday, 27 January 2006 15:32 (twenty years ago)
Hey, YSI me the record, which I have never even bothered to even bat an eye toward finding, and I'll make a thread we can all be proud of.
Errr, no I won't.
― D.I.Y. C.R.E.E.P. (dave225.3), Friday, 27 January 2006 19:50 (twenty years ago)
Like you I have it on vinyl - bought 25 years ago for much the same completist reasons. I only ever got through it once and can't recall much about it. Next time I am near my turntable I'll play it again.
Certainly making this album fucked Doug Yule's credibility forever since. If he'd left it at his contributions to Loaded he might have been remembered for working out what to with Lou's songs melodically - Reed never sounded more pop than sung by or with Yule - and he certainly beats Nico as a VU chanteuse.
Though the only real question I ever had about Yule was whether Reed ever actually shagged him...
― Guy Beckett (guy), Wednesday, 1 February 2006 09:56 (twenty years ago)
i know im in the minority but i actually quite like "squeeze", it's not as cohesive as any of the proper velvet underground records, but it has some good tracks that i feel a lot of people don't even bother to appreciate because lou reed didn't play on the record...
― drystereo (drystereo), Wednesday, 1 February 2006 18:23 (twenty years ago)
one year passes...