Another View

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Another View
Compilation album by The Velvet Underground
Released	September, 1986
Recorded	1967–1969, New York City, United States
Genre	Rock and roll
Length	36:21
Label	Verve Records
Producer	The Velvet Underground
Professional reviews
All Music Guide link Robert Christgau (A-) link
The Velvet Underground chronology
VU (1985) Another View (1986) The Best of The Velvet Underground (1989)

Another View is an outtakes compilation album by The Velvet Underground. It was released in 1986 by Verve Records.

[edit] About the album

When The Velvet Underground moved from Verve Records (who had released their first two albums) to parent company MGM Records, they signed a two-album deal, releasing their third and eponymous album The Velvet Underground in March of 1969. Later that same year, however, there was a management change and MGM Records' new CEO, Mike Curb, wanted to purge the record company of all acts he considered offensive to his moral standards. The Velvet Underground quickly became one of the groups blacklisted and were released from their contract. The band had, however, in the meantime recorded fourteen tracks for possible release as their second MGM album. All of these were shelved and forgotten by their record company until the early Eighties.

As Verve (by then an imprint of Polygram) prepared to re-release the band's three Verve/MGM albums on vinyl and, for the first time, on CD, they found nineteen previously unreleased tracks: five Cale-era tracks and the fourteen "lost album" tracks, some of them in two-track mixdown format, some of them even on multitracks. The cream of the nineteen tracks was released in February of 1985 on VU; the rest remained for the time being in the vaults.

In 1986, Polydor decided to prepare a vinyl box set for European release. Simply titled The Velvet Underground, this box, which was released in June, consisted of the bands first three albums, VU, and an untitled bonus album containing the remaining nine tracks from Polygram's vaults. That untitled album was later separately released on vinyl and CD as Another View.

Since the best ten tracks had gone on VU, Another View suffers somewhat in both quality and coherence. Quality-wise, there are a number of leftovers, including three instrumental takes ("Guess I'm Falling in Love", "I'm Gonna Move Right In" and "Ride into the Sun") and two versions of the same song ("Hey Mr Rain"). Additionally, Another View suffers from the same lack of coherence as VU, in that the albums contain both Cale-era and Yule-era tracks. Nevertheless, lighter and simpler as Another View may be, it contains some fine songs that show the transition from the subdued less-is-more The Velvet Underground style to the more mainstream-oriented rock of 1970's Loaded.

An acetate-sourced alternate mix of this album's version of "Ride Into The Sun", featuring vocals by Lou Reed, has appeared on bootlegs and on the Australian boxed set What Goes On.

As The Velvet Underground moved from MGM to Atlantic, they re-recorded two of the songs on Another View, "Ride into the Sun" and "Rock and Roll", for possible inclusion on Loaded. Only "Rock and Roll" made the grade, but two of the Another View songs would be recycled by Lou Reed during his early solo career: "Ride into the Sun" (on Lou Reed, 1972) and "We're Gonna Have a Real Good Time Together" (on Street Hassle, 1978).

Drummer Maureen Tucker believes there is still one "lost" song recorded during these sessions that was not included on either VU or Another View, titled "Lonesome Cowboys", which was based on an Andy Warhol film. (not to be confused with "Lonesome Cowboy Bill", which was released on the Loaded album)

[edit] Track listing

All tracks written by Lou Reed, John Cale, Sterling Morrison and Maureen Tucker except as noted.

[edit] Side A

1. "We're Gonna Have a Real Good Time Together" – 2:56 (Reed)
   • Recorded September 30, 1969
2. "I'm Gonna Move Right In" – 6:30
   • Recorded September 27, 1969
3. "Hey Mr. Rain" (version 1) – 4:56
   • Recorded May 29, 1968
4. "Ride into the Sun" – 3:20
   • Recorded September 5, 1969
5. "Coney Island Steeplechase" – 2:20
   • Recorded May 6, 1969

[edit] Side B

1. "Guess I'm Falling in Love" (instrumental version) – 3:35
   • Recorded December 5, 1967
2. "Hey Mr. Rain" (version 2) – 5:16
   • Recorded May 29, 1968
3. "Ferryboat Bill" – 2:10 (Reed, Morrison, Yule, Tucker)
   • Recorded June 19, 1969
4. "Rock and Roll" (1969 version) – 5:18 (Reed)
   • Recorded June 19, 1969

[edit] Personnel

[edit] The band

• Lou Reed – vocals, guitar, piano
• Sterling Morrison – guitar, backing vocals, bass guitar on "Hey Mr. Rain"
• Maureen Tucker – percussion
• John Cale – viola, bass guitar (A3, B1-2)
• Doug Yule – bass guitar, keyboards, backing vocals (A1-2, A4-5, B3-4)

[edit] Technical staff

• The Velvet Underground – producers
• Bill Levenson – executive producer
• J.C. Convertino – engineer

[edit] Note

This album was re-released on 180 gram vinyl in 2007 on the "Four Men With Beards" label.