1. The Velvet UndergroundLoaded
I was a Bowie fan, and I think I discovered Lou via Transformer because Bowie had produced it, and also heard the song ‘Walk On The Wild Side’ and loved it. And I had friends, they lent me Live At Max’s…, which I loved, and Loaded, and my relationship with Loaded has been very peculiar, because the deeper I got into The Velvet Underground, the more I discovered that Loaded was this thing that Lou had disowned, and it was sweet, and it was Doug Yule’s voice, and there was a very long time, when I went, well, y’know, the first three Velvet Undergrounds, each of them pretty much creates a genre… and Loaded was just like, the pop one. So I dismissed it. And then… I bought the ‘Fully Loaded’ edition, and loved the remixes, but also realised how much I loved the originals, and started going well, actually, an album that has ‘Rock &’ Roll’ and ‘Sweet Jane’ on it is not bad at all. But a lot of the other songs, ‘Who Loves The Sun’, ‘Oh! Sweet Nuthin’’, they’re great songs. And it congealed for me in my head a little while ago when I was sitting round a campfire and somebody was playing ‘Who Loves The Sun’, and I started just quietly singing along, and Amanda said, “What are you singing? What is that?” And I said, “It’s from Loaded.” And she said, “I have no idea what that is.” And I said, “But you like Lou Reed and The Velvet Underground.” And she said, “Yeah, but I never heard of that album.” So I went onto iTunes and bought it for her, and then started listening to it myself, and just going, “This actually is as great an album as I thought it was when I was 13."
