The Velvet Forum

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Nice piece

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2019/ ... th-nothing

Btw, I just found a ton of LR articles here:
https://www.theguardian.com/music/lou-reed

bradski wrote: ↑

24 Oct 2019 15:11

Btw, I just found a ton of LR articles here:
{removed the link, too many urls}

Thanks, but don't stop there.
Cale - https://www.theguardian.com/music/john-cale
Nico - https://www.theguardian.com/music/nico

....and
https://www.theguardian.com/music/velvetunderground

bradski wrote: ↑

25 Oct 2019 12:34

....and
https://www.theguardian.com/music/velvetunderground

This lead was too good to ignore, so I made my way to Sean Stanley's "Velvet Underground – 10 of the best" which included "What Goes On" because it exemplified "Reed’s obsession with ... anxiety" in the line “One minute born / One minute doomed”.

But where did this line come from?

It's not there in La Cave, October '68, it turns up a few weeks later in the studio recording, then by 13 March (BTP) the line is rendered as "One minute one, one minute two", and frequently stays that way.

That's not all. Sometimes the "Bells in the sky" couplet gets replaced by something that ends "I'm gonna make it if I try".

So it seems that Lou wasn't afraid of changing lyrics after setting them down in vinyl.

As for the chorus, the outside world steps in. "Let it be good" is shown as "Baby be good" in the Italian lyrics book and "Lady be good" in the Lou Reed sheet music book, so these misrepresentations litter the web.

I'd rather pin water to a wall than try to work out just, er, what goes on here.