Jeffrey Lewis insight on Out of Our Heads/Velvet Underground

[RoundTheBend]

Hello All,

I follow/like Jeffrey Lewis as I love his philosophy (I see him more as a philosopher of sorts... maybe a poet, and not so much a musician) and he made some interesting insight into comparing Out of Our Heads with The Velvet Underground And Nico.

Thought you might want to read it too.

Out Of Our Heads by The Rolling Stones

Thumbnail. Click to enlarge.

The Velvet Underground And Nico by The ...nderground

His commentary:
I was listening to Out of Our Heads, which I've listened to a million times since being a teenager, endlessly great 1965 Stones album, but for the first time I started thinking that this album must have been an influence on the first Velvet Underground record. (I guess I was thinking about Velvets vs. Stones because of a Richard Hell article I recently read where he tries to compare the two bands.)
Of course everybody knows that the Velvets' There She Goes is musically based on Hitch Hike, and the Stones do a version of Hitch Hike on Out of Our Heads (tho the song was by Marvin Gaye, originally released in 1962, so we can't be sure which version the Velvets were inspired by).
But then listen to Play With Fire - the way the droning, plodding, simple, threatening bass-line reaches its turn-around at the end of the lines, the way the song holds a slow-burning intensity because the song's narrator holds a cruel power over the song's victim, the slow/implacable/creeping/threatening atmosphere of the music matching the utter patience of the dominating narrator: the music serves to reinforce the vibe that there's no need to hurry when you're the one who wields the power over the other person. Your confident declaration of dominance can be chillingly calm and measured. Same for the sparse tambourine percussion, single hits with the occasional double-hit, a slow-burn of calmly-spoken cruelty. The overall effect is basically a complete template for the Venus in Furs arrangement. It's not the same tempo or the same progression, but its a situation of calm dominance, conveyed via strikingly similar dramatic tools, especially in the bass and percussion.

Then listen to Satisfaction - over a brutally, insistently repetitive 1-4 chord change, the narrator unrolls his story slowwww at the top of each verse: "I can't get no... satisfaction... I can't get no... satisfaction..." and the song gets its intensity build-up from the way the lyrics starts to speed up and multiply images, running through a speeding list of the swirling madness of the world around him, stacked faster and faster on top of the same 2 chords: "when I'm driving in my car/ and a man comes on and tells me / how white my shirts can be/ but he can't be a man 'cuz he does not smoke / the same cigarettes as me..." All of this is the exact same effect happening in Heroin! You take a 1-4 progression, and you start slow: "I... don't know... just where I'm going..." then you start to speed up the lyrics, to stack and multiply the swirling frustrations of the world around you: "A man cannot be free / of all the evils in this town / and of himself and those around / and all the politicians making crazy sounds / and all the dead bodies piled up in mounds..." etc etc. The Stones' Satisfaction came out in June 1965, and the Velvet's demo recording of Heron is from July 1965. However, Lou Reed's original Pickwick demo recording of Heroin was supposedly recorded May 11, 1965, which would place it earlier than Lou Reed could possibly have heard Satisfaction, if the Satisfaction single wasn't released till June. Or maybe not... because according to Wikipedia:
"The Rolling Stones first recorded the track on 10 May 1965 at Chess Studios in Chicago[5] – a version featuring Brian Jones on harmonica. The Stones lip-synched to a dub of this version the first time they debuted the song on ABC's Shindig.[6] The group re-recorded it two days later at RCA Studios inHollywood, with a different beat and the Gibson Maestro fuzzbox adding sustain to the sound of the guitar riff.[7][8] [...] "
BUT then Wikipedia goes on to say:
"Author Gary West cites a different source for the release of, "Satisfaction" in interviewing WTRY radio (Troy, NY) DJ Joe Condon.[11] In the interview, Condon clearly states that his radio station began playing "Satisfaction" on April 29, 1965, making the above recording date impossible. It can be assumed that "Satisfaction" was probably recorded earlier in April, and that WTRY was playing a test pressing."

SO it's possible that an upstate NY radio station (and maybe other stations) were playing Satisfaction as early as late-April 1965. PERFECT timing to influence Lou, if the May 11, 1965 date is accurate for the first-ever demo recording of Lou's song. OR maybe both Satisfaction AND Heroin were influenced by some other song that came out in early 1965, influencing the structure of both songs - who knows. (Is there a Dylan song that could possibly have been the influence there? I can't think of one off-hand.)

Another slight similarity between the Out of Our Heads LP and The Velvet Underground & Nico LP: the Stones' The Last Time, which features one big full guitar-chord sound contrasted against a slithering, loopy, bluesy, single-note guitar line, winding its way alongside the big chopping chords on the other guitar - very similar to the arrangement effect of the album recording of Waiting For the Man, big crunching guitar chords simultaneously playing along with a winding, whiny, repeating little snakey blues-guitar lead line, a weird stylistic mash-up. Listen to either song and sing a couple lines of verse of the other on top, both ways around. The song structure is different overall, but that particular effect of big bully chords + little slippery lead-loop is quite similar. It's like a buddy-cop movie, an effective pairing of the big strong brutal guy and the little smart weasel-y guy.

Of course this could all be a stretch.
But I was surprised, listening to Out of Our Heads, that I had never noticed any similarity before - especially the obvious similarity between Satisfaction and Heron, since they are two of the most famous rock songs of all time, I never thought about the ways in which they are similar. I don't mean that there was any "rip off" going on, it just seems like the Velvets were probably fans of this great Stones record... which happened to come out at the right time to maybe be an influence, conscious or unconscious... in some possible ways that I never thought about before.