‘Sister Ray’: How The Velvet Underground changed songwritingRacking up at 17 minutes and 30 seconds, ‘Sister Ray’ is The Velvet Underground’s squirm-inducing answer to The Iliad. Unsurprisingly, it remains the longest song in the Velvets’ studio discography, taking up nearly all of side two of White Light/White Heat. The situation is a bunch of drag queens taking some sailors home with them, shooting up on smack and having this orgy when the police appear”. Oh, you shouldn’t do that, don’t you know you’ll stain the carpet?”By clawing back the curtain and dragging listeners by the heels through the dark corners of society’s underbelly, ‘Sister Ray’ left certain music fans in the late 1960s clutching their pearls. By embracing radical experimentation and poking the bear of lyrical controversy, The Velvet Underground knowingly alienated a potential mass audience in favour of creating raw, uncompromising art, a sound and attitude that would later become a blueprint for punk and noise rock.