New Age

• Performances
• History
• Lyrics
• Artist
  • Phish
  • Fish
  • Mike
  • Page
  • Trey
  • All

Originally Performed By	The Velvet Underground
Original Album	Loaded (1970)
Appears On
Music/Lyrics	Lou Reed
Vocals	Trey (lead), Fish, Mike, Page (backing)
Historian	Mark Toscano

History

Lou Reed's eccentric gutter-ballad to a used-up piece of Hollywood offal is simultaneously beautiful and vulgar, representing the best of both worlds of The Velvet Underground. The song is often considered one of the diamonds in the rough terrain of Loaded. Though Doug Yule’s portion of the lyrics are blasted for being too blandly and flatly delivered (even, albeit politely, by Reed himself), the song is one of the Velvets’ last few masterpieces. Phish covered this on 10/31/98 during its Loaded set, playing it pretty straight and true to the original album version, despite an extended ending featuring an extremely fiery (if repetitive) Trey solo.

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