Back to the Velvet Underground!: "Sweet Jane" b/w "Rock n' Roll"

What can you say about the Velvet Underground that's not been said already? I figure you should always have a few VU tunes in your back pocket, with Nico or without, however you take 'em. Both these songs, here played by me and my old Iona Prep buddy John Stackpole in summer '11, come off the VU's 1970 swansong, "Loaded".  Yet another Rock Pantheon record, "Loaded" was a fun, transitional one, with Lou starting to step away from the Velvets, John Cale already gone, Mo Tucker away on maternity leave, and Doug Yule beginning to take the reins.  Anyway, that disc continues to supply great cover fodder such as these tunes and more obscure numbers like (watch this site!)"Oh! Sweet Nuthin'".

As to these, I've managed to wheedle almost every band I've been in to play a version of "Sweet Jane", goddarn national anthem that it is to many of us. I do love including the melancholy "heavenly wine and roses" bridge section that proverbial "studio execs" clipped from the "Loaded" version but which was played on the Velvets' "Live, 1969" record and resuscitated by the Cowboy Junkies.  Here, though, we hew to the bones of the rockier versions.  This one is patterned off that done through the early '70s by then-huge, and now-unsung Mott the Hoople (featuring the even more unsung but still-going-strong Ian Hunter).

I have less of a history with "Rock n' Roll" but recall taking a stab at it with the post high-school band (Dillo, Maff and maybe Andy O') back in the day. This particular version is in the vein of Lou Reed's early 80s band of Robert Quine, Fernando Saunders and Fred Maher (check out "Live in Italy"!).  Certainly, the world probably doesn't need another cover of either of these tunes but you can't keep me from playing the first one and on this one it sure was fun to double track those funny slide parts on the lap steel, to approximate Lou's sing/ speak, and all that.  Stag's lead guitar makes its big entrance after the last chorus. Rock n' roll indeed!

Sweet Jane:      https://www.box.com/s/165i4et38c2aeyy0sq6n

Rock n' Roll:     https://www.box.com/s/si4ccmso9082lcq698lb