The Velvet Underground's classic self-titled third album, released in March 1969, by MGM, was a departure from the band's first two albums in more ways than one. Gone was co-founding member John Cale, and in his place was a 21-year-old with Long Island roots named Doug Yule, who stepped right in. The record was also a stylistic leap, as Lou Reed describes it in Rolling Stone editor David Fricke's liner notes, 'I thought we had to demonstrate the other side of us. Fricke calls it 'a stunning turnaround… 10 tracks of mostly warm, explicit sympathy and optimism, expressed with melodic clarity, set in gleaming double-guitar jangle and near-whispered balladry. Or as the late rock critic Lester Bangs put it, 'How do you define a group like this, who moved from 'Heroin' to 'Jesus' in two short years?' Celebrating its enduring longevity, Polydor/Universal Music Enterprises (UMe) will releases The Velvet Underground - 45th Anniversary Super Deluxe Edition. This 64-track, six-CD package is housed in a case-bound book and features several different mixes including the remastered stereo mix by MGM house engineer Luis Pastor 'Val' Valentin, a set of 1969 recordings, many of which were previously unreleased, from the Record Plant in New York City that were supposed to be the band's fourth album, several of which ended up on Loaded and Reed's first two solo releases, and unreleased live recordings from The Matrix in 1969.