The Velvet Underground - It Began Here
Published August 15, 2002
One of the greatest rock albums of the '60s and the very first alternative rock album ever, The Velvet Underground and Nico has finally been given the Deluxe treatment it so richly deserves on a new two-CD set that includes the original album in both stereo and mono, the singles, and five tracks from the first Nico solo album, Chelsea Girl.
After bravely jousting the twin enemies of indifference and open hostility in its sad lifetime - followed by a few decades of neglect - the world appears finally ready to embrace the Velvet Underground as one of the most important bands in rock history.
Recording a mere four studio albums (only two with the original lineup) in the late-'60s, the group established an aesthetic so extreme and alien that it has taken three decades for the world to catch up. The essence of that aesthetic is an unapologetic embrace of the opposite poles of the musical, emotional, and thematic spectrum: naked power on the one end and exquisite beauty on the other - squalid Saturday night nihilism followed by pristine Sunday morning reverence, yin and yang at their widest reach conjured from the urban essence of New York.
Brian Eno has famously said that hardly anyone bought the Velvet's albums when they were originally released, but everyone who did formed a band. Bands as diverse as the Patti Smith Group, Talking Heads, Sex Pistols, R.E.M., U2, and Sonic Youth have claimed the Velvets as their most important influence, not to mention obvious soundalikes like Yo La Tengo, Luna, and the Strokes.
The Velvets have received the star treatment of late with an exhaustive five-CD box set, Peel Slowly and See, released in '95; induction to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in '96; a vastly expanded version of the Loaded album re-released in '97; a single-CD collection in Universal's 20th Century Masters series (2000); a three-CD set of live tapes recorded by famed guitarist Robert Quine (2001), and now The Velvet Underground and Nico: Deluxe Edition.
There is fitting irony in the release of every scrap the Velvets ever committed to tape, considering even the band's greatest material was barely heard while it actually existed. The Velvet Underground formed in 1964 when singer/guitarist/songwriter Lou Reed (Louis Firbank) and Welsh multi-instrumentalist John Cale met and decided to form a rock band (eventually with Sterling Morrison on bass and guitar, and Maureen "Mo" Tucker on percussion), drawing upon their mutual interest in R&B, the free-form jazz of Albert Ayler and Ornette Coleman, and the avant-garde minimalism of John Cage and La Monte Young.
Prior to his date with rock 'n' roll destiny, John Cale had studied composition at London University's Goldsmith College from 1960-63, where he was drawn to contemporary experimental music and met Aaron Copland, who induced Leonard Bernstein to grant Cale a scholarship to study in the United States. Cale played viola in Young's experimental combo (the Theater of Eternal Music, then the Dream Syndicate) from '63-'65, concentrating on the sonic and metaphysical implications of the drone.
- The Velvet Underground - It Began Here
- Published: August 15, 2002
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- Section: Music: Alternative Rock
- Filed Under: Music: Rock
- Writer: Eric Olsen
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Two of the eleven songs on the most important album in rock history -- "Black Angel's Death Song" and "European Son" -- are among the most unlistenable the band ever recorded; they look forward to the noisy experimentation of White Light/White Heat
with little or none of the interest of the songs on that album, even at their most sonic. This does not undercut the importance of the Nico album -- but it should serve to remind us that great doesn't mean perfect. Great can also mean "wildly uneven." Then again, the other nine songs are classics.
I'm in my 40s, and when I was coming along, the standard opinion for greatest album among the hipoisie was Bob Dylan's Blonde on Blonde, which I contend makes a much more compelling case for the title, and it's influence was at least as monumental as the Nico record. On Blonde, you can really see someone song for song pushing the form as far as he can lyrically and musically, and every great band of the 1960s was listening. Dylan's mid-1960s output was truly the high tide that would raise all boats.
I'll probably wind up buying the deluxe Nico set, but I echo Nigel's comments on its necessity. I bought the deluxe Loaded; it was interesting, but I can't really say it was super-revelatory, except maybe to a complete audiophile -- the same kind of people who would spend a hundred bucks on one of those Charlie Parker box sets so they could compare five or so versions of "In the Still of the Night."
Given that the band intended for the album to be in mono and not stereo (just listen to how bad the stereo mix is in many places), I'd argue that having the mono mix back in circulation does add something, yes.
Raising the question as to which is the "real" record? Reed also had a beef with the mixing of the third LP, The Velvet Underground, yet that's the record people know. Which is the real Beatles record -- the one released in Britain or in the US? Which is the real movie -- the one the studio approved or the director's cut? Which is the real Look Homeward, Angel -- the one Max Perkins edited the bejesus out of decades ago or the restored version that Wolfe wrote and was only released last year?
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Yes, TVUAN is probably the most important album in rock history..... but why did it need to be re-issued in this "deluxe" format? Do the two mixes add anything or is it just exploiting the rocknerd need to own everything? Call me an old curmudgeon, but this release (along with the "rock and roll hall of fame" malarky) just seems to say that the VU has now been declared safe enough for the "star" treatment, cosily set in aspic as a historical artifact in rock's rich tapestry.
You also say that Mo Tucker played "percussion". No, no, no. Tucker played DRUMS, there was nothing tinkly about her work. She either clobbered all hell out of her kit or sat back and watched - no middle ground. I've always thought it was her drumming (and lack of it during those pretty songs that lesser mortals would have messed up) that defines the pure Velvet Underground sound.
A great album, but buy the original version and spend the rest of the money on something you haven't already got twice...