Let's get this out of the way: I admit I've never seen the Saturday Night Live skit parodying VH1's Behind the Music with Christopher Walken suggesting that Blue Oyster Cult needs more cowbell for Don't Fear The Reaper. Well, here's a true tale of cowbell, though in this case, it's an abuse of the instrument from a legendary group.
If you click onto Sweet Jane, feel assured that you could keep time better than the cowbell. One wonders what the Cowboy Junkies version of the tune would have been like had they added this element.
For the rest of the story, we go to David Fricke's liner notes for Loaded: Fully Loaded:
The early take of Sweet Jane moves at the sensual country-ballad tempo of the original stage version caught on 1969 Velvet Underground Live. (According to (Doug) Yule, that's manager Steve Sesnick playing the irritating, sluggish cowbell on the track. "He's way out, all over the place," Yule says with an amused sigh. "The guy couldn't dance either.") Also, (Lou) Reed's lyrics are still in the working stage; in the opening verse, Jack and Jane have not yet switched wadrobes (Jane is wearing the corset, Jack has the vest). Finally, this Sweet Jane does not have the identifying guitar lick, later created by Reed in the studio, that gives the final recording so much of its special power.
"I loved that lick," Reed exclaims. "I still, to this day, love playing that lick. And you know, you can make up lyrics to that lick all day long. I had to settle on something at some point."
Based on most accounts of the man, it's not a great shock to find Sesnick pulling a stunt like this. Here's Doug Yule's take from a 1994 interview:
Breaking up the Velvets was all Sesnick...he used the divide and conquer mentality. You take four people who are basically insecure and very hungry for something and you feed each one what they want to hear and you keep them from talking to each other by telling them that the other people are against them and keep them isolated from the group. I would be told by him that I was better than Lou and that the others were not really my friends I should not confide in them and he did that to everybody that way your only source of information becomes him and he can tell you whatever he wants because you're not talking to other people. My brother was in a band managed by him and they sat down one night in the living room after Sesnick went to Europe and abandoned what was left of the Velvets in London with no money. They started talking, it was the first time they'd talked and started relating stories of what he'd said to them and they found this all out. His whole scam collapsed on that band because they started talking to each other. The Velvets never talked to each other. He kept them apart and we never communicated much.
The country/folkish feel extended to other Loaded songs in the demo phase. Compare the two versions of I Found A Reason. On the demo, the harmonica sounds straight out of early Bob Dylan. The final version is one of my favourite Velvets tunes, thanks to the beautiful harmonies.
The group had started to splinter by the time the album hit record stores in the fall of '70. Reed left before it came out, Maureen Tucker was on pregnancy leave, Sterling Morrison was losing faith in the group's future. Sesnick attempted to propel Yule into the lead spot and a parade of members passed through the group before calling it a day in '73. - JB
