The Velvet Underground

The Velvet Underground was an American rock band, active between 1964 and 1973, formed in New York by Lou Reed and John Cale, who also achieved success as solo artists.

Although experiencing little commercial success together, the band is often cited by many critics as one of the most important and influential groups of the 1960s. In a 1982 interview, Brian Eno repeatedly stated that while the first album of the Velvet Underground may have sold only 30,000 copies in its early years, "everyone who bought one of those 30,000 copies started a band".

Andy Warhol was the manager of The Velvet Underground and was the guest band at their studio, The Factory and at their events at Exploding Plastic Inevitable. The provocative lyrics of some of the band's songs gave a nihilistic perspective to some of their music.

Their 1967 debut album, The Velvet Underground & Nico (along with German singer Nico), was named the 13th Best Album of All Time and the most "prescient rock album ever made" by Rolling Stone in 2003. In 2004, Rolling Stone ranked the band No. 19 on its list of the "100 Greatest Artists of All Time". The band was inducted into the Rock Hall of Fame in 1996, inducted by Patti Smith..

History

1964-65: Beginnings

The band formed in 1964 when Lou Reed, who had played in a few short-lived bands, was working as a songwriter for Pickwick Records where he met Welshman John Cale, who had moved to the United States to study classical music and they played together in a group called The Primitives with the aim of promoting Reed's single "The Ostrich". Reed and Cale hit it off and thought about starting a new group. To do this they sought out Sterling Morrison, whom Reed had met in college and with whom he had already played, and Angus McLise, John and Lou's neighbor. Thus they formed The Warlocks, which would later be called The Falling Spikes. They got to record a tape where they were "Venus in Furs", "Heroin", "Wrap Your Troubles In Dreams", "All Tomorrow's Parties" and "The Black Angel's Death Song".

The name of the band arose from the title of a book on sadomasochism by Michael Leigh entitled The Velvet Underground that Jim Tucker, a friend of Reed and Morrison, found lying on the street.

The band was approached by a promoter named Al Aronowitz. When the group accepted a $75 offer to open for another Aronowitz band, The Myddle Class, McLise left the group, accusing them of commercializing themselves. MacLise was replaced by Maureen Tucker, Jim Tucker's sister, who had attended his own high school, Tucker had a very distinctive way of playing the drums, which added eccentricity to the already unconventional band. Tucker used to play with a very basic drum set, standing up and using mallets instead of sticks. Apparently, Ella Tucker started playing this way after the rest of the band asked her to do "something unusual". As Maureen pointed out to Rolling Stone years later, she wanted to apparently beat her drums like an ancient tribe in a trance.

After that concert, Aronowitz got them a contract to play as a resident band at a place called Café Bizarre. Soon the band was fired but two days before that happened Andy Warhol was brought to the establishment by Paul Morrissey who thought it was a good idea to have a rock band at the Factory.

Both the music, full of noise and distortions, and the lyrics that dealt with unusual topics for the time, such as sadomasochism, cross-dressing, or heroin addiction, set them apart from the typical bands of the American scene of that moment, in which psychedelia and hippie culture were reaching their peak in San Francisco.

1966-67: The Velvet Underground & Nico

Andy Warhol, who was the gang manager until 1968

After Andy Warhol became the band's manager, he suggested that Factory star and model Nico should sing in the band. The band was not comfortable with the suggestion, and Reed and Cale felt they were losing control, but eventually agreed to take advantage of the promotion Warhol could give them and became The Velvet Underground And Nico. Some songs were adapted to be sung by Nico and during those where Reed sang, she played the tambourine.

Warhol filmed the band rehearsing and the result is the film The Velvet Underground & Nico: A Symphony of Sound. This footage was usually projected during the band's early shows. Paul Morrisey devised a show with light shows, dancers and projections in which the band played. This show was called Exploding Plastic Inevitable and it took the band to play different venues across the United States.

During 1966 Angus McLise briefly returned to the band for several weeks when Lou Reed suffered from hepatitis which prevented him from playing some concerts they had already scheduled. During those shows, Cale sang and played organ and Tucker played bass. At those appearances the band began playing an improvised piece that became known as "The Booker T" after bandleader Booker T & The MGs. This piece would become the musical base for "The Gift" included in White Light/White Heat. Some of these presentations were released on pirated records and are the only records of the band with Angus McLise.

Their first album The Velvet Underground and Nico, recorded in a few days (there is disagreement about the exact recording time), took almost a year to be released due to factors such as the policies of the record labels Although the association with Warhol and the EPI guaranteed them a high profile, the content of the disc was not acceptable to the record companies that could not find ways to market it. Finally, Warhol got them a contract with the Verve label, a subsidiary of MGM.

The band did not want Nico to participate in the recording, as they maintained that they had given up enough by allowing him to be part of the live performance tour, but they finally accepted his presence.

The album was released in May 1967 with a famous cover design by Warhol and with Nico's name added to that of the group and only reached number 171 on the charts.

1968: White Light/White Heat

Lou Reed fired Warhol from his managerial position after his relationship with the band waned and also fired Nico. Soon, in September 1967, they began recording their second album, White Light/White Heat, which was released in January 1968.

This album brought the main characteristics of the band (noise, distortion, atonality) to their rawest peak. Cale defined the album as "consciously anti-beauty". The album entered the Billboard top 200 for exactly one week at number 199.

Tensions were growing within the group due to the little attention the group received and also due to the growing differences of interests between Reed and Cale. Finally, Reed proposed to the rest of the band to choose between him or Cale; Tucker and Morrison stayed with Reed, the main songwriter within the band. Much has been rumored about Reed's envy of Cale due to his prodigious talent (he had studied classical music since he was five years old and had already composed by eight) and his classical musical training. Cale's place was filled by bassist Doug Yule.

1969: The Velvet Underground

The band's third album was recorded in late 1968 and released in March 1969. The sound represents a major change from the previous two albums. It has a more traditional, quiet style, similar to the sound that would later characterize Lou Reed's solo career. This change is due to the fact that the creative control of the band had been completely taken over by Reed after the departure of Cale, who was the member most oriented towards experimentation and directly responsible for the most avant-garde side, with the detail of his multi-instrumental contributions in the piano and electric viola.

A lot of material that didn't see the light of day was recorded between the release of the third album and the release of the fourth. That all these songs remained unpublished is partly due to problems with the record company. These recordings were released after the band's separation on the albums VU (1985) and Another View (1986).

1970: Loaded

The Velvet Underground's last official album was recorded and released in 1970 on Atlantic Records after they were fired from their previous label, MGM, because the brand new president of the company, Mike Curb, decided to eliminate all bands related to drugs or hippies from the label.

The album, titled Loaded, is the most traditional and accessible of all the band's. It contains some of the most classic numbers, such as "Sweet Jane" which would become one of Reed's best-known tracks. Due to Maureen Tucker's pregnancy, the drums were recorded by several people including Doug Yule, engineer Adrian Barber, session player Tommy Castanaro, and Billy Yule, brother of bassist Doug.

After a long residency at the celebrated New York club Max's Kansas City, (during which Billy Yule played drums replacing Tucker and the album Live at Max's Kansas was recorded City) Reed decided to leave the band in August 1970 and return to his parents' home on Long Island.

1971-73: Squeeze

The album Loaded was, thanks to "Sweet Jane" and "Rock And Roll", the closest, if not successful, album of the band's career, but the leader and songwriter for the band was no longer in it so Doug Yule took over. Interestingly, the band's popularity, while staying the same in the United States, grew in Europe during this stage. The band toured the East Coast of the United States and then Europe with Yule on vocals and guitar, Walter Powers (Yule's Grass Menagerie bandmate) on bass, and Willie Alexander (also from Grass Menagerie). on vocals and keyboards replacing Sterling Morrison who had left the band in 1971 to pursue an academic career at the University of Texas. Part of the public of the band made fun of this formation calling it The Velveteen Underground.

The band still owed the record company a record but the label decided to release Live at Max's Kansas City recorded during the series of shows the band played at the club in 1970 prior to Reed's departure. Because of this some members walk away leaving Yule only in possession of the name along with manager Steven Sesnick who gets a contract with Polydor. Finally, Yule records an album under the name The Velvet Underground, with Ian Paice, Deep Purple drummer, and a bunch of session players. There was also a female singer on the recording but her identity is unknown. Usually it is believed that Willie Alexander participated in the recording but it is false. Yule composed all the songs and arrangements, played all the instruments except the drums, and produced the record.

The album was called Squeeze and was despised by critics and even, with the passage of time, disappeared from the band's official discography. The disc was never reissued and its rarity and value has increased over the years, which is why pirated copies of the disc often circulate. It was not until 2012 that it was released for the first time on CD.

Yule put together a new line-up and went on tour, this time without Sesnick as manager because he had recently left the group. Yule became the manager out of necessity, but the tour didn't work out as they had hoped to promote the record because the release delay caused them to not have copies of Squeeze for sale during the tour. This delay was mainly due to the record's masters being missing for a while. It was also rumored that Lou Reed had tried to prevent the release but there is no proof that this is true.

The band played their last show at Oliver's in Cambridge on April 27, 1973, and Yule finally dissolved the band in June of the same year. Part of the live material from this last stage of the band was compiled in 2001 when Final V.U. saw the light of day, a box set that included material recorded at shows between 1971 and 1973.

1990-1996: meetings

The band reunited in 1993 and toured. They played the first concerts at The Playhouse in Edinburgh (Scotland) and later played at The Forum (London), Wembley and at the Paradiso room in Amsterdam (Holland). After a series of concerts they finished the tour opening for U2. Prior to this collaboration, U2's live shows played in Olympia (France) for three nights in a row, live shows of which one album, Live MCMXCIII, was released by Sire Records. Before they had a chance to record an album or go on tour in the United States, the rivalry between Cale and Reed (who had already worked together again on the album Songs for Drella ) once again divided the band. band.

Influence

Talking about The Velvet Underground's influence on rock and music in general is complex, since their legacy is quite extensive. The band was one of the first to directly experiment with form and noise within pop music, including influences taken directly from contemporary classical music. These influences came to the band thanks to John Cale, a disciple of John Cage who had also been part of the Dream Syndicate, a group formed by the composer La Monte Young. The influence of The Velvet Underground can be seen throughout the world of rock music. They influence artists from the 1970s such as David Bowie and Patti Smith.

They are widely considered the forerunners of punk rock, having influenced bands such as The Stooges (also considered a major influence on punk music), the Ramones and the Sex Pistols; The Velvet Underground were also pioneers in the use of noise and white noise in their music, which would later give way to noise and shoegaze, being able to draw a clear line that goes from Sonic Youth, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Big Black (in the noisier side), My Bloody Valentine, Cocteau Twins, Ride and Slowdive (on the Shoegaze side); influencing in this respect also the no wave scene (from which Sonic Youth emerged), where groups like DNA, Teenage Jesus and The Jerks and Swans created loud and caustic music; in the same way, bands like Siouxsie And The Banshees, Joy Division, The Fall, Wire, Television, Talking Heads and Echo and the Bunnymen, all of them early Post-Punk bands, name The Velvet Underground as highly influential; For its part, British gothic rock also takes a lot of influence from New Yorkers, in bands like Bauhaus and The Sisters of Mercy; without forgetting that practically all the alternative rock of the 80s and 90s drink directly from the sound of The Velvet Underground, influencing world-class bands such as the aforementioned Sonic Youth, NirvanaR.E.M. and Pixies.

Their use of simple, repetitive chords (drone music) inspired Spacemen 3 (whose 2 members Jason Pierce and Sonic Boom have shown the influence of the band in their respective solo careers) and all the Shoegaze bands. Along with their use of drone music, the alternative tunings with which they played stand out, a technique that would later be used by Sonic Youth and Pavement, among other bands.

The lyrics of The Velvet Underground earned the band much controversy and mistrust from the recording industry. Their songs talked about drugs ("I'm Waiting for the Man", "Heroin", "White Light/White Heat"), which was a subject that until then had been taboo in pop music, and as if that were not enough they weren't doing it in a condemnatory tone. In fact, its members used the drugs they sang about (heroin, amphetamines) and Lou Reed, for example, fought a long battle with heroin addiction throughout the 1970s.

Another song that aroused controversy was "Venus in Furs," a song about sadomasochism based on the book Venus in Furs by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch. Many of the band's less controversial songs are also riddled with eccentric characters, losers, cross-dressers, as well as references to sex or drugs, albeit to a lesser degree.

Brian Eno, the legendary producer of, among others, David Bowie and Talking Heads, claimed that although The Velvet Underground's first album only sold 30,000 copies, every person who bought the record started a band, which sums up to much of the enormous influence the band has had on rock music.

Formations

Temporary members and collaborators

• Angus McLise – He was a percussionist with Tucker, with Cale and Morrison in the main voices at a Chicago concert while Reed became sick of hepatitis, Juno-July 1966.
• Henry Flynt – Cale replacement for four live dates during September 1966.
• Nico – Collaborator of the band in the voice on four themes The Velvet Underground " Nico and several shows of Exploding Plastic Inevitable, 1966–1967. In addition, half of Nico's debut LP tracks Chelsea (1967), include songs composed and/or interpreted by Reed, Cale and Morrison. Some of these songs were included in compilations such as box-set Peel Slowly and See and the double CD Gold.
• Billy Yule – Replaced Tucker while pregnant, touching the battery on three tracks Loaded, at Max's Kansas City show, 1970 (and live album), and Boston, 1973.
• Tommy Castanaro – Tucker’s alternate drummer on two tracks Loaded.
• Adrian Barber – Tucker replacement in Loaded.
• Larry Estridge – Alternate Walter Powers Bajist live, during June 1971.
• Rob Norris (from The Bongos) – Guitarist on the English Tour Squeeze1972.
• George Kay – Bajist on the English tour Squeeze1972 and a Boston show, 1973.
• Don Silverman – Guitarist on the English Tour Squeeze1972.
• Mark Nauseef – Baterist on the English Tour Squeeze1972.
• Ian Paice – Session Musician (baterist) Squeeze (1973).

Discography

Studio Albums

• The Velvet Underground " Nico (1967)
• White Light/White Heat (1968)
• The Velvet Underground (1969)
• Loaded (1970)
• Squeeze (1973)

Live performances

Fonts

• Test included in the internal notes of the box set Peel Slowly and See
• All Music Guide
• "Velvet Underground Squeeze" Site dedicated to the latest record of the band.