Release and Reception
| Professional ratings | |
|---|---|
| Review scores | |
| Source | Rating |
| Allmusic | |
| Rolling Stone | |
Squeeze was recorded in the autumn of 1972 and released in the United Kingdom, France, Germany (all 1973) and Spain (1974). No singles were taken off it and the album did not chart. Yule assembled a backing band consisting of Rob Norris (guitar), George Kay (bass guitar) and Mark Nauseef (drums) to tour the United Kingdom in November and December 1972 to promote the upcoming album; a live recording from this tour is included on the 2001 live box set Final V.U. 1971-1973. After the tour, during which they were deserted by Sesnick, Yule also called it quits, bringing the Velvet Underground to an end.
Squeeze saw a number of re-issues in France during the 1970s and early 1980s. It has been out of print since, and was released on compact disc in 2012 by Kismet Records. The status of Squeeze in the Velvet Underground's recorded canon is generally regarded as dubious. In the early 1970s, the NME Book of Rock counted it as "a Velvet Underground album in name only". The 1995 CD boxed set Peel Slowly and See includes the four studio albums from the Lou Reed era of the band, but excludes Squeeze; in the liner notes, David Fricke dismisses it as "an embarrassment to the VU discography." Allmusic's Stephen Thomas Erlewine says "it doesn’t just ride the coattails of VU’s legacy but deliberately co-opts their achievement -- but it’s listenable, something its reputation never suggests." In March 2012, Classic Rock included the album at 28 in their list of The 50 Worst Albums of All Time.
In 1995, Yule described the recording of Squeeze being "like the blind leading the blind, me leading myself. That's what came out of it, I don't even have a copy of it. But it's kind of a nice memory for me and kind of an embarrassment at the same time. I wish I had my eyes wider open, but it was nice to get my name and my songs out there."
Read more about this topic: Squeeze (The Velvet Underground Album)
Famous quotes containing the words release and, release and/or reception:
“We read poetry because the poets, like ourselves, have been haunted by the inescapable tyranny of time and death; have suffered the pain of loss, and the more wearing, continuous pain of frustration and failure; and have had moods of unlooked-for release and peace. They have known and watched in themselves and others.”
—Elizabeth Drew (1887–1965)
“The shallow consider liberty a release from all law, from every constraint. The wise man sees in it, on the contrary, the potent Law of Laws.”
—Walt Whitman (1819–1892)
“He’s leaving Germany by special request of the Nazi government. First he sends a dispatch about Danzig and how 10,000 German tourists are pouring into the city every day with butterfly nets in their hands and submachine guns in their knapsacks. They warn him right then. What does he do next? Goes to a reception at von Ribbentropf’s and keeps yelling for gefilte fish!”
—Billy Wilder (b. 1906)