"Here She Comes Now" is a song released by the American
rock
Rock most often refers to:
* Rock (geology), a naturally occurring solid aggregate of minerals or mineraloids
* Rock music, a genre of popular music
Rock or Rocks may also refer to:
Places United Kingdom
* Rock, Caerphilly, a location in Wales ...
band
the Velvet Underground
The Velvet Underground was an American rock band formed in New York City in 1964. The original line-up consisted of singer/guitarist Lou Reed, multi-instrumentalist John Cale, guitarist Sterling Morrison, and drummer Angus MacLise. MacLise ...
in January 1968, from their second studio album ''
White Light/White Heat
''White Light/White Heat'' is the second studio album by American rock band the Velvet Underground. Released on January 30, 1968, on Verve Records, it was the band's last studio recording with multi-instrumentalist and founding member John Cal ...
''. As the shortest song on the album, the performance and mix of the song are both considered simple and traditional, making it somewhat distinct from the other five songs on the album, all of which contain some degree of
experimental
An experiment is a procedure carried out to support or refute a hypothesis, or determine the efficacy or likelihood of something previously untried. Experiments provide insight into cause-and-effect by demonstrating what outcome occurs when a ...
or
avant-garde
The avant-garde (; In 'advance guard' or ' vanguard', literally 'fore-guard') is a person or work that is experimental, radical, or unorthodox with respect to art, culture, or society.John Picchione, The New Avant-garde in Italy: Theoretical ...
elements in terms of sound.
Background
"Here She Comes Now" was recorded during the recording sessions for ''
White Light/White Heat
''White Light/White Heat'' is the second studio album by American rock band the Velvet Underground. Released on January 30, 1968, on Verve Records, it was the band's last studio recording with multi-instrumentalist and founding member John Cal ...
'' in September 1967 at
Scepter Studios in
Manhattan
Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...
.
Lou Reed originally intended the song to be sung by
Nico
Naftiran Intertrade Company limited (NICO) is a Swiss-based subsidiary of the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC). NICO is a general contractor for the oil and gas industry. NIOC buys the vast majority of Iran's gasoline imports. NICO is a key pl ...
, who had sung it on a few occasions during the
Exploding Plastic Inevitable
The ''Exploding Plastic Inevitable'', sometimes simply called ''Plastic Inevitable'' or ''EPI'', was a series of multimedia events organized by Andy Warhol in 1966 and 1967, featuring musical performances by The Velvet Underground & Nico, screenin ...
events, however her collaboration with the group had ended before recording for ''White Light/White Heat'' had begun. Subsequently, Reed had decided to take over vocals for the song. The song was first demoed in two takes during the winter of 1967 by Reed,
Sterling Morrison
Holmes Sterling Morrison Jr. (August 29, 1942 – August 30, 1995) was an American guitarist, best known as one of the founding members of the rock group the Velvet Underground, usually playing electric guitar, occasionally bass guitar, a ...
and
John Cale at their
Ludlow Street
Ludlow Street runs between Houston and Division Streets on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in New York City. Vehicular traffic runs south on this one-way street.
Name
Ludlow Street was named after Lieutenant Augustus Ludlow, the naval of ...
apartment. In 1995, the demo was released on the
box set ''
Peel Slowly and See
''Peel Slowly and See'' is a five-disc box set of material by the Velvet Underground. It was released in September 1995 by Polydor.
Compilation
The name of this box set comes from the instruction presented on vinyl copies of the band's debut alb ...
''.
Lyrical interpretations
The
double entendre
A double entendre (plural double entendres) is a figure of speech or a particular way of wording that is devised to have a double meaning, of which one is typically obvious, whereas the other often conveys a message that would be too socially ...
of the title has been interpreted by writers to mean that the song is about sex and female orgasm. Due to the group's fondness of writing songs related to drug use, the word "she" has also been regarded as a metaphor for drugs and "awaiting an intoxication that fails to occur". This is further suggested by the feminine code names for drugs such as "Lucy" for
LSD
Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), also known colloquially as acid, is a potent psychedelic drug. Effects typically include intensified thoughts, emotions, and sensory perception. At sufficiently high dosages LSD manifests primarily mental, vi ...
.
Gerard Malanga
Gerard Joseph Malanga (born March 20, 1943) is an American poet, photographer, filmmaker, actor, curator and archivist.
Early life
Malanga was born in the Bronx in 1943, the only child of Italian immigrant parents. In 1959, at the beginning of ...
and
Victor Bockris
Victor Bockris (born 1949) is an English-born, U.S.-based author, primarily biographies of artists, writers, and musicians.
He has written about Lou Reed (and The Velvet Underground), Andy Warhol, Keith Richards, William S. Burroughs, Terry Sou ...
, authors of ''Uptight: The Velvet Underground Story'', described the song as a "rather pretty 4-line dissertation on the possibility that a girl might come". Another common interpretation is that the song is about Reed's
Ostrich guitar
The ostrich guitar or ostrich tuning is a type of trivial tuning. It assigns one note to all strings, e.g. E-E-e-e-e'-e' or D-D-D-D-d'-d'. The term "ostrich guitar" was coined by the Velvet Underground's Lou Reed after the pre-Velvet Underground ...
. The line "She's made out of wood" and Reed's habit of exclaiming "Here she comes now" before soloing on various live recordings and performances lend credence to this.
Critical reception
Eddie Gibson of ''Music Review Database'' praised the song as "one of the more beautiful tracks from ''White Light/White Heat''". He described the instrumentation as "delicate and in an acoustic manor" and said "it's something spectacular because the guitar is very delirious and the sparse drumming only adds to the beautiful atmosphere". He also commented that the delayed reverb gave the song a "sweet, melancholy edge over the rest of the album".
''
Uncut
Uncut may refer to:
* ''Uncut'' (film), a 1997 Canadian docudrama film by John Greyson about censorship
* ''Uncut'' (magazine), a monthly British magazine with a focus on music, which began publishing in May 1997
* '' BET: Uncut'', a Black Enter ...
'' described it as "a soothing mantra that served as a brief moment of balm amongst the blistering noise, a guttering light in the churning darkness".
Similarly, Mark Deming of
AllMusic
AllMusic (previously known as All Music Guide and AMG) is an American online music database. It catalogs more than three million album entries and 30 million tracks, as well as information on musicians and bands. Initiated in 1991, the databa ...
considered it "the album's sole 'pretty' song" and "mildly disquieting". Authors Scott Schinder and Andy Schwartz deemed the song "the album's lone melodic ballad" that "carried an uneasy undercurrent". Author Doyle Greene considered the track "a brief and relatively sedate song closest to the
psychedelic folk
Psychedelic folk (sometimes acid folk or freak folk) is a loosely defined form of psychedelic music, psychedelia that originated in the 1960s. It retains the largely acoustic instrumentation of contemporary folk music, folk, but adds musical el ...
leanings of the
first album".
Recordings and personnel
Although known to have been played live, no other recorded versions than the demo and the ''White Light/White Heat'' studio version are known to exist.
1967 demo personnel
*
Lou Reed –
lead vocals,
rhythm guitar
*
Sterling Morrison
Holmes Sterling Morrison Jr. (August 29, 1942 – August 30, 1995) was an American guitarist, best known as one of the founding members of the rock group the Velvet Underground, usually playing electric guitar, occasionally bass guitar, a ...
–
lead guitar
Lead guitar (also known as solo guitar) is a musical part for a guitar in which the guitarist plays melody lines, instrumental fill passages, guitar solos, and occasionally, some riffs and chords within a song structure. The lead is the featu ...
*
John Cale –
viola
; german: Bratsche
, alt=Viola shown from the front and the side
, image=Bratsche.jpg
, caption=
, background=string
, hornbostel_sachs=321.322-71
, hornbostel_sachs_desc=Composite chordophone sounded by a bow
, range=
, related=
*Violin family ...
1967 studio personnel
*
Lou Reed –
lead vocals,
rhythm guitar
*
John Cale –
viola
; german: Bratsche
, alt=Viola shown from the front and the side
, image=Bratsche.jpg
, caption=
, background=string
, hornbostel_sachs=321.322-71
, hornbostel_sachs_desc=Composite chordophone sounded by a bow
, range=
, related=
*Violin family ...
,
bass,
piano
The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keybo ...
*
Sterling Morrison
Holmes Sterling Morrison Jr. (August 29, 1942 – August 30, 1995) was an American guitarist, best known as one of the founding members of the rock group the Velvet Underground, usually playing electric guitar, occasionally bass guitar, a ...
–
lead guitar
Lead guitar (also known as solo guitar) is a musical part for a guitar in which the guitarist plays melody lines, instrumental fill passages, guitar solos, and occasionally, some riffs and chords within a song structure. The lead is the featu ...
,
backing vocals
A backing vocalist is a singer who provides vocal harmony with the lead vocalist or other backing vocalists. A backing vocalist may also sing alone as a lead-in to the main vocalist's entry or to sing a counter-melody. Backing vocalists are ...
*
Maureen Tucker
Maureen Ann "Moe" Tucker (born August 26, 1944) is an American musician and singer-songwriter who was the drummer for the New York City-based rock band the Velvet Underground. After they disbanded in the early 1970s, she left the music industry ...
–
percussion
A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a beater including attached or enclosed beaters or rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or struck against another similar instrument. Ex ...
Cover versions
Nirvana
A version of the song was recorded by American rock band
Nirvana
( , , ; sa, निर्वाण} ''nirvāṇa'' ; Pali: ''nibbāna''; Prakrit: ''ṇivvāṇa''; literally, "blown out", as in an oil lampRichard Gombrich, ''Theravada Buddhism: A Social History from Ancient Benāres to Modern Colombo.' ...
in April 1990, during a session at
Smart Studios
Smart Studios was a recording studio located in Madison, Wisconsin. It was set up in 1983 by Butch Vig and Steve Marker to produce local bands. The studio produced bands such as Killdozer, The Smashing Pumpkins, L7, Tad, and Nirvana. After in ...
in
Madison, Wisconsin
Madison is the county seat of Dane County and the capital city of the U.S. state of Wisconsin. As of the 2020 census the population was 269,840, making it the second-largest city in Wisconsin by population, after Milwaukee, and the 80th-lar ...
with
Butch Vig
Bryan David "Butch" Vig (born August 2, 1955) is an American musician, songwriter, and record producer, best known as the drummer and co-producer of the alternative rock band Garbage and the producer of the diamond-selling Nirvana album ''Neve ...
. It was released by The Communion Label in 1991 on the compilation album ''
Heaven & Hell: A Tribute to the Velvet Underground'' and as a
split single with
the Melvins
''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the m ...
, who covered the Velvet Underground song, "
Venus in Furs
''Venus in Furs'' (german: Venus im Pelz, links=no) is a novella by the Austrian author Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, and the best known of his works. The novel was to be part of an epic series that Sacher-Masoch envisioned called '' Legacy of Cai ...
." Another version was recorded during a radio session in
Hilversum, the Netherlands on November 25, 1991 for the
Dutch
Dutch commonly refers to:
* Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands
* Dutch people ()
* Dutch language ()
Dutch may also refer to:
Places
* Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States
* Pennsylvania Dutch Country
People E ...
stations VPRO and VARA. This version remains unreleased. The song was occasionally covered by the band in concert in 1990 and 1991.
Other versions
Cabaret Voltaire recorded a cover version on their debut EP ''
Extended Play
An extended play record, usually referred to as an EP, is a musical recording that contains more tracks than a single but fewer than an album or LP record. '' in 1978.
The song was also covered by
dream pop
Dream pop (also typeset as dreampop) is a subgenre of alternative rock and neo-psychedelia that emphasizes atmosphere and sonic texture as much as pop melody. Common characteristics include breathy vocals, dense productions, and effects such as ...
band
Galaxie 500
Galaxie 500 was an American alternative rock band that formed in 1987 and split up in 1991 after releasing three albums: ''Today'', '' On Fire'' and '' This Is Our Music''. The band was made up of guitarist/vocalist Dean Wareham, drummer Damon ...
as a bonus track for the reissue of their 1990 album ''
This Is Our Music''.
References
{{authority control
The Velvet Underground songs
1968 songs
Songs written by Lou Reed
Song recordings produced by Tom Wilson (record producer)
Songs written by John Cale