Myths. When David Bowie came to New York City in 1971, he thought a certain Lou Reed was still fronting the Velvet Underground: that notorious band whose early Factory associations had given them a very Warholian fifteen minutes of fame, but whose last two years of existence had been wrought with both personnel problems and public indifference. Of course, by then Lou had long gone solo — his breakthrough album, Transformer, would be produced by Bowie less than a year later — but at the time, the breakup of a band like the Velvet Underground was far from big news. Lou Reed was not a man, but a myth. One can even understand why, half the world away, European fans were still turning up for shows by a "fake" Velvets lineup fronted by replacement bassist Doug Yule ... only to rapturously approach Yule afterwards, convinced he was the mysterious Reed. How should they know? They'd never seen the VU before.

It was a time before Alternative Nation, before Pitchfork, before a plethora of blogs were around to fill you in on the latest stirrings of every low-profile hipster act in existence. It was a time when myths, not fact, had the real rock and roll currency. And perhaps more so than anyone else, the Velvet Underground embody those strange times. Unlike groups of similar vintage and historical status, their true essence has remained shrouded in mystery and conjecture: we have the albums, a few archival recordings, some arty black and white photographs, and not much else.

Few people got to see the Velvets while they were together, and still fewer ever saw the original John Cale line-up in action. So we've used myths to fill in the gaps: they were the dark horses of the peace-and-love '60s, you see, a crew of black-clad, scowling, drug-addicted degenerates who refused to play blues licks and got their name from a trashy sexpose book they found in a gutter. The fact that this image is only partly true (if that) doesn't matter a bit. These guys aren't the Beatles. They're hardly even real. They're the Velvet Underground: part fiction, part dream, all myth.

Well in 1993, the myth shattered. There had been stirrings of a reconciliation in the air for some time; 1990 had seen the mutually antagonistic Reed and Cale reunite to record Songs for Drella, a surprise tribute to their old Svengali Warhol and as much an indicator of increased goodwill between the pair as one could hope. Even so, their announcement of reunion shows in Europe three years later could only have come as a shock. There they were, the original lineup of the Velvet Fucking Underground, playing to crowds who'd probably never had the chance to see them the first time around ... and, chances were, taking the show to US audiences soon after.