The Velvet Forum

I was tangentally involved in the preperation of "Live '69," so let me tell you what I know.

The A&R person in charge of the project knew I was a VU fan and asked me if would listen to ALL the tapes acquired and come up with a sequence/song selection for the double LP. I was sent seven reels of 7 & 1/2 i.p.s. reel-to-reel tapes to listen to. Each box was marked as a 1:1 transfer (i.e., direct copies of what Mercury had; possibly the original reel-to-reel tapes were transfered from acetates; I don't know).

The tapes pretty much had all that was eventally released on vinyl except for a longer, slower version of "Heroin" (later issued on the CD version), a track called "Rock & Roll Moody (an acoustic version of "Rock & Roll" wtih Lou and Mo), a version of "WL/WH" which sounded suspiciously like the version that was released (they timed out EXACTLY the same), and a supposedly alternate version of "Ride Into The Sun" (again, both released and alt versions timed out EXACTLY the same). To me, "Ride Into The Sun" was a demo, not live, but I could be wrong.

I do know that Sesnick did NOT directly sell the tapes to Mercury. HOWEVER, the third party that did sell them may have acquired the tapes/acetates from Sesnick--or someone else. I was not privey to that info.

FYI, no demos were included the tapes sold to Merc ury (except maybe "Ride"). I know this because I received a copy of the memo sent by the A&R person to the studio that had the tapes instructing them to send me EVERYTHING they had. No distinction was made between live or demo tracks.

If I remember correctly a very nice, concise history of the recordings that appeared on "End Cole" is included in the "Uptight--The VU Story" book.

Technical notes on 1969 Live CD reissues: there are audible crackles on some tracks as if they'd been taken from disc. When the tapes were originally purchased by Phonogram, some of the tracks were taken off acetates rather than tapes, notably Real Good Time Together, Beginning To See The Light, Over You, and Some Kinda Love. Levenson speculates that what probably happened was that "in 1969 they made recordings on two-tracks and then cut acetates, and those became the masters". It would appear that Polygram never had access to the so-called eight hours of tapes that Paul Nelson compiled the original 1969 Live from. However the acetates and tapes that Polygram were given for the CD did include some extra material. For some reason, this included two studio out-takes of Ride Into The Sun complete with vocals (which appear on various bootlegs). Also present were the two extra songs used on the CD releases, plus an acoustic Rock 'n' Roll entitled Rock 'n' Roll Movie (ed: I guess this is the version offered as bonus on Live At End Cole Ave bootleg CD), which apparently collapsed fairly quickly, and a live take of I'm Sticking With You (ed: maybe the version available on the scarce CDEP companion to the French 1990 Polydor box set). Both these tracks were considered unsuitable for release.