The Velvet Underground almost 60 years later

A few sentences written or spoken about rock ’n’ roll have become as famous as the music itself. One is Jon Landau’s “I saw rock and roll’s future and its name is Bruce Springsteen.”

Brian Eno’s “I think everyone who bought one of those 30,000 copies started a band” is another.

Eno was referring to The Velvet Underground & Nico, the debut LP by the Velvet Underground, and responding to a comment made by Lou Reed, the most famous VU member, about how poorly the record had sold during its first five years.

In the group’s original incarnation, the Velvet Underground was co-fronted by Reed and John Cale. The former (who died in 2013) is the subject of the new tribute disc, The Power of the Heart: A Tribute to Lou Reed (Light in the Attic). The latter (who turned 82 in March) has just released his 22nd studio album, Poptical Illusion (Double Six). Both discs go a long way toward explaining the fascination that Reed and Cale still hold for fans of disarmingly genre-resistant music.

The Power of the Heart combines muscular rock, eerie reveries, sinuous soul, and futuristic shimmer. Some of the performances (Keith Richards’ “I’m Waiting for the Man,” Maxim Ludwig & Angel Olsen’s “I Can’t Stand It”) enhance the originals. Others (the Afghan Whigs’ “I Love You, Suzanne,” Bobby Rush’s “Sally Can’t Dance,” Rickie Lee Jones’ bowdlerized “Walk on the Wild Side”) exemplify creative reconstruction. Running throughout is the jaded poignancy and poignant jadedness that characterize Reed at his Reediest, nipping the hit-or-miss feel common to various-artists projects in the bud.

Another reason for the consistency is that Bill Bentley, Reed’s longtime publicist, invited participants whose interpretations he thought Reed himself would’ve enjoyed. And whether famous, obscure, or in between, they hit (or at least graze) their targets.

Reed would’ve probably enjoyed Cale’s Poptical Illusion too, if not for its rippling synthetics (musically, only the serrated pounding of “Shark-Shark” takes no prisoners) then for its willingness to do musical battle with the internal conflicts expressed in lines such as “If you’ve done things you wished you’d never done, / think of the things you’re going to do tonight.”

Those lyrics occur in the song “Davies and Wales,” probably the catchiest number ever recorded by an octogenarian. But the line that really leaps out is “Fear is a man’s best friend” (“Edge of Reason”), partly because it’s too often true, and partly because Cale has used it before—exactly 50 years ago, in fact, on an album called Fear. It’s not every rocker who lives long enough to come full circle while breaking fresh ground.