The Velvet Underground

St. James Encyclopedia of Pop Culture, Jan 29, 2002 by Kembrew McLeod

In an oft-repeated declaration, Roxy Music co-founder Brian Eno once said that the Velvet Underground only sold a few records, but everyone who bought their albums started their own band. While Eno's claim most certainly is hyperbole, the avant-garde guitar stylings the Velvet Underground developed during their period of activity in the second half of the 1960s was extremely influential. Their music shaped the sound and attitude of the New York Dolls, the Modern Lovers, REM, Suicide, Television, David Bowie, Patti Smith, Sonic Youth, Galaxie 500, Yo La Tengo, and countless other post-punk and indie-rock bands. Each of Velvet Underground's periods--their innovative noise, beautifully sparse neo-folk, and straightforward rock phases--laid the blueprint for a number of entire sub-genres of rock 'n' roll. And while the Velvet Underground did not sell many records by most commercial standards (for instance, their third album had only sold 50,000 copies over 20 years after it was released), their influence has been widespread enough to secure their entry in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

In the early-to-mid 1960s, rhythm guitarist Lou Reed met lead guitarist Sterling Morrison and bassist/violist John Cale, and the three of them--along with original percussionist Angus MacLise--began playing at Lower Manhattan poetry readings and happenings under the various names of the Warlocks, Falling Spikes, and the Primitives. As the Primitives, the group recorded a number of commercial dance-oriented singles for Pickwick Records, the company for which Reed was a staff songwriter. When Lou Reed met John Cale, Cale was playing in an avant-garde group founded by famed minimalist La Monte Young, and the two became intrigued by the idea of bringing Cale's avant-garde concepts to a rock 'n' roll format. In 1965, MacLise left to be replaced by Maureen Tucker, who became known for her peculiar standup style of primitive drumming.

The Velvet Underground soon began playing a regular gig at Greenwich Village's Cafe Bizarre--an engagement that abruptly ended when they played their screeching "Black Angel's Death Song" immediately after being told by the management never to play it again. Before the group was fired, they impressed Pop art svengali Andy Warhol, who invited them to play at a series of his film screenings called "Cinematique Uptight," and later in a multimedia spectacle called "The Exploding Plastic Inevitable." During this time, Warhol arranged for European chauntesse/aspiring movie star Nico to sing with the Velvet Underground for the Exploding Plastic Inevitable, something that caused a certain amount of resentment among members of the band.

In 1966, Andy Warhol took them into the studio to have them recorded--a series of sessions that resulted in two singles and the entirety of their first album, The Velvet Underground and Nico, which sported an Andy Warhol-designed peelable banana album cover. The album featured three songs sung by Nico, as well as Reed's infamous drug song, "Heroin." The Teutonic, monotone voice of Nico, and Reed's equally monotone voice, combined with lyrics about sadomasochism, hard drugs, and death made this album extremely uncommercial, particularly during a time dominated by the positive vibes of hippy flower-power.

Rather than going a more commercial route, the group instead followed their muse (and the path that was driven by taking an extreme amount of amphetamines) by making White Light/White Heat, their second album. This uncompromisingly noisy album whose lyrics dealt with prostitutes, sailors, and other sundry topics (and which culminated in a 17 minute noise-jam called "Sister Ray") was too dissonant to be heavy metal and too heavy to be psychedelic.

After a long-time power struggle with Reed, Cale quit the group and was replaced by Doug Yule, who only filled Cale's bass duties--the group never had another violist. After recording what would be called their great "lost" album, Reed radically changed the group's direction with their self-titled third album, which featured almost uniformly pretty, quiet songs like "Pale Blue Eyes" and "Candy Says." Their last studio album, Loaded, contained the oft-covered classics "Rock and Roll" and "Sweet Jane," and was the first to be recorded for Atlantic Records (after a commercially unsuccessful three-album stint at Verve Records). Loaded was their most conventional rock-oriented album, which was partially caused by Maureen Tucker's absence from most of the recording sessions due to pregnancy (Doug Yule's little brother, Billy Yule, filled in on drums). Reed quit the group before the album was mixed, and Reed claims that two songs--"Sweet Jane" and "New Age"--were significantly changed by Doug Yule and the rest of the group. (Reed's original vision was later restored on the 1995 Velvet Underground box set, Peel Slowly and See).