White Light/White Heat (song)
"White Light/White Heat" is a song by American avant-garde rock band The Velvet Underground, the title track on their second album, released in 1968. It is a fast, relentlessly aggressive start to the album, similar to the punk rock genre it would ultimately influence.
The song's vocals are performed primarily by Lou Reed, with John Cale and Sterling Morrison performing backing vocals. The song, much like "I'm Waiting for the Man", features a pounding rock-and-roll Barrelhouse-style piano vamp. The song is about the sensations produced by intravenous injection of methamphetamine and features a heavily distorted electric bass outro played by John Cale over a single chord. This bass solo purportedly mimics the throbbing, ear-ringing effects experienced during the methamphetamine "rush."
"White Light/White Heat" was released in 1968 as a single with the B-side "Here She Comes Now". "White Light/White Heat" was also a staple of the Velvet Underground's live performances from 1967 on. The tune appears on numerous live bootleg albums, and the nearly nine minute version included on the group's posthumous 1969 Live double LP is one of the album's centerpieces.
Reed also recorded a live version of the song in 1974, which is featured on his Rock 'n' Roll Animal and Greatest Hits albums.
Two traditional-music influenced versions of the song were included on the soundtrack to the 2012 film Lawless, one by The Bootleggers featuring Mark Lanegan and one by bluegrass legend Ralph Stanley.
Read more about White Light/White Heat (song): David Bowie Cover
Famous quotes containing the words white, light and/or heat:
“Teenage girls are extremists who see the world in black-and- white terms, missing shades of gray. Life is either marvelous or not worth living. School is either pure torment or is going fantastically. Other people are either great or horrible, and they themselves are wonderful or pathetic failures. One day a girl will refer to herself as “the goddess of social life” and the next day she’ll regret that she’s the “ultimate in nerdosity.””
—Mary Pipher (20th century)
“We must work earnestly in the best light He gives us.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“Red river, red river,
Slow flow heat is silence
No will is still as a river
Still.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)