This is my favourite track on my favourite live album, recorded by The Velvet Underground in 1969 at a San Francisco club called The Matrix.

My memory of it is inextricably tied to a night in 1975 or 1976 with my oldest and best friend Ben, when we worked together as porters at Christies and I was living at my Aunt Gillian’s flat in South Kensington.

We had spent an evening drinking free wine at gallery openings along the Fulham Road and came back to the flat in Sumner Place to do what we did most nights – smoke pot and listen to records.

Ben had some hash oil and he smeared it along the Rizlas before rolling a joint while I put on my recently acquired Live 1969 album by the Velvets: already my favourite band by then, and still my favourite today. 

This is the first track of the second one, a much longer version of a song recorded for (but not included on) the last Velvets album Loaded, which would become the final track on Reed’s first solo album (with a band including future Yes members Steve Howe and Rick Wakeman).

Built around the intertwined guitars of Reed and Sterling Morrison, and Doug Yule’s organ, it’s nearly 11 minutes of blissful trancelike euphoria (even without a joint), with Maureen Tucker’s drums and cymbals simulating the crashing of those waves.

“I am a lazy son,” sings Reed. “I never get things done.” As I lay on the floor, half-asleep, very happy and very stoned, I could identify with that.