The Velvet Forum

I'd be more surprised if Lou HADN'T tried heroin at one point or another.

Lou definitely did speed. Heroin is iffy, dosen't chage the song for me at all though.

Alright, I know about the speed, but I always assumed that he was into heroin too. Unless I'm mistaken, white HEAT is speed, white LIGHT is heroin. Then there's the incredibly relaxed buzz he often seems to have that makes me think of a downer, not an upper. Sometimes I even think he's starting to nod off in the middle of a song.

White light would be speed. When you shoot up smack, you feel warm inside until you come down. But I'm pretty sure WL/WH is an all speed song.

Well someone told me that white heat=speed and white light=heroin, but they might have been wrong. If it's just the other way around, though, and white heat is heroin, then I assume the song (and album) would be about both.

I think it was in Uptight or somewhere that Lou explained how the whole term white light/white heat meant speed in that apparently it gave you a blinding "white flash" in the eyes and also that your toes would feel all hot.

White light - Don't you know it's gonna make me go blind
White heat - Oh, white heat, it tickle me down to my toes

i've heard that "white heat" is just booze..

one can also "go blind" if you are drinking poor homemade booze

Regardless, the song is about amphetemine.

There might be a case for arguing that he wrote the song before experiencing the drug, but there's no way Lou wasn't into smack in a big way at various times, Cale and Nico also. I don't have very good recall for details from books but there's a story in Welsh For Zen where Lou visits Cale in the 70s (with Rachel I think) and nearly ODs in the toilet... the Bockris biog (hardly a reputable source but still) relates many grim junk tales, and LR himself kind of confirms them in the song Like A Possum - he's talking about crack in that one and it may not exactly be a diary entry, but you get the picture...