"Pale Blue Eyes" is a song written by Lou Reed and performed by The Velvet Underground. It was included on the band's 1969 album The Velvet Underground.
"Pale Blue Eyes" was surprisingly written about someone whose eyes were hazel, as Reed notes in his book Between Thought and Expression.
The song is dedicated to Shelley Albin, Reed's first love, who at the time was married to another man.
The original song has five verses. First verse starts: "Sometimes I feel so happy; sometimes I feel so sad." The refrain goes: "Linger on your pale blue eyes".
When deciding on a song to play for the first reunion of The Velvet Underground at the Fondation Cartier in 1990, Lou Reed initially said he wanted to play "Pale Blue Eyes", but when someone reminded him that the song was from after John Cale's tenure with the band, Reed declared "then it will have to be Heroin".
Read more about Pale Blue Eyes: Notable Cover Versions
Famous quotes containing the words pale, blue and/or eyes:
“You there, I here,
With just the door ajar
That oceans are,
And prayer,
And that pale sustenance,
Despair!”
—Emily Dickinson (1830–1886)
“That air would disappear from the whole earth in time, perhaps; but long after his day. He did not know just when it had become so necessary to him, but he had come back to die in exile for the sake of it. Something soft and wild and free, something that whispered to the ear on the pillow, lightened the heart, softly, softly picked the lock, slid the bolts, and released the prisoned spirit of man into the wind, into the blue and gold, into the morning, into the morning!”
—Willa Cather (1873–1947)
“To make a final conquest of all me,
Love did compose so sweet an enemy,
In whom both beauties to my death agree,
Joining themselves in fatal harmony;
That while she with her eyes my heart does bind,
She with her voice might captivate my mind.”
—Andrew Marvell (1621–1678)