The Velvet Underground’s 45th-anniversary reissue of their self-titled third LP includes a ton of previously unreleased goodies, including a bunch of alternative mixes, mono versions, a live album recorded at the Matrix in San Francisco, and what’s widely known as the influential group’s “lost album,” a collection of songs that were mostly scrapped. Some were issued on the post-breakup records VU and Another View, while a few appeared on 1970’s Loaded and Lou Reed’s first solo albums.
Titled “The 1969 Sessions,” the super deluxe edition’s fourth disc comprises those recordings and includes an all-new mix of “One of These Days,” which would surface on VU in 1985. The new version, which you can hear above for the very first time, not only enhances the sound quality but presents a new edit of the song. The twangy slide-guitar solos are tweaked slightly, but the biggest difference comes as the song builds to its psychedelic-freakout climax — it runs 19 seconds longer than the VU version and includes a proper ending rather than a fadeout. Other mixes have surfaced, most notably on the 1995 box set Peel Slowly and See, but this is the first to feature this finale.
The six-disc reissue of The Velvet Underground is due out November 24 from Polydor/Universal Music Enterprises.
