In 1969, The Velvet Underground embarked on a 70-day tour of the United States and Canada, occasionally allowing fans to record their performances using lo-fi hand recorders. Most of the recordings on that tour didn’t surface until September 1974, after the band won a lawsuit against former manager Steve Sesnick over the rights to the tapes. Two nights on that tour ultimately comprised the 17 tracks of 1969: The Velvet Underground Live, the band’s first major recording released to a wide audience.

After founding member John Cale’s departure, the Velvet Underground began distancing themselves from the New York art scene. Co-founder Lou Reed’s creative brush-ups with Cale, who was more formally experimentalist, is well-known today, but the two men did best to split ways. Both moved on to accomplished and prolific solo careers, Cale as itinerant composer/artist and Reed as the father of contemporary drone and noise music. Many post-1968 Velvet Underground sounds were grounded in American folk and rock, albeit filtered through the band’s distinctive, muddy sound.

One of the songs from the 1969 live album is a prescient example of how Lou Reed went on to preserve and refurbish classic blues and folk sounds for a more modern and younger audience, the same effort which goes on today through bands like the White Stripes. “Pale Blue Eyes” was recorded in October 1969 at the End of Cole nightclub in Dallas, TX. The former psychedelic rock venue shared recording duties with the Matrix club in San Francisco, and the resulting documents of those October nights were salvaged and released in 1974 as the band’s first live album.

The Kills’ Alison Mosshart and Jamie Hince performed their own rendition of “Pale Blue Eyes” as part of the Levi’s Pioneer Sessions in which musicians are invited to recraft classic songs which inspired their sound. Mosshart and Hince turn up the electric guitar and add a punchy drum line to the VU classic, which was written for Reed’s one-time muse and partner Shelly Albin.

***
Via Levi’s Pioneer Sessions