White Light/White Heat

Made after Reed fired Warhol, with Tom Wilson as producer and Gary Kellgren as engineer, the album was recorded in about two weeks across around seven sessions, by Tucker’s estimate. The band had new equipment from an endorsement deal with Vox, including effects pedals and an organ, Kellgren reportedly warned them that all the needles were on red. Morrison later said they wanted to fry the tracks. Cale described the first album as having some gentility and beauty and this one as consciously anti-beauty.

Several recording stories are on record. To get the sound of a blade through a skull in The Gift, Reed smashed a cantaloupe at the request of Frank Zappa, who was recording in the same studio. Sister Ray was cut in one take, Tucker was disappointed because some of her drum microphones had not been switched on, and Kellgren left the room while it was played. Morrison considered the album a technical failure because of its distortion, and Wilson left MGM before it came out. The Gift sets a short story by Reed, read by Cale, in one stereo channel and the band in the other. Here She Comes Now was first written for Nico to sing and is the only song credited jointly to Reed, Cale and Morrison. The single, White Light/White Heat, appeared in November 1967 and failed commercially.

The cover is a faint black-on-black image of a skull tattoo, an idea that was Warhol’s, though he is uncredited. The album spent two weeks on the Billboard Top LPs chart and peaked at 199, below the debut. Rolling Stone declined to review it, Melody Maker called it utterly pretentious and unbelievably monotonous, and Record Mirror called it a hippy must. In later years Mark Deming of AllMusic judged it the least accessible of the band’s albums, and Greg Kot of the Chicago Tribune called it the perfect antidote for the Age of Aquarius. By the time of Reed’s death in 2013 it had sold over half a million copies internationally. Buzzcocks were formed by Pete Shelley and Howard Devoto out of a shared interest in Sister Ray, and Joy Division played it live in 1980. The album appears in the 2018 edition of the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die.