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.
Reed grew up on Long Island where his rebellious impulses led him to rock 'n' roll, as well as sexual and drug experimentation. By the early-'60s he was also attracted to the wildness of avant-garde jazz and the intellectual and emotional stimulation of poetry. Reed was also strongly influenced by troubled poet/educator Delmore Schwartz while studying at Syracuse University. After graduating, Reed lurched in another direction, writing and producing hack pop and rock tunes for Pickwick Records in NYC.
After Reed and Cale met, they performed briefly as the Primitives - even recording a dance spoof single called "The Ostrich" - then mutated into the Velvet Underground, named after a particularly virulent S&M novel. They sought not just to entertain, but to challenge: to prove that rock 'n' roll could be dangerous again. They gravitated toward Andy Warhol - who brought Austrian actress/model/chanteuse Nico into the fold - and became fixtures in Warhol's multimedia organization, the Factory, and in the Village bohemian art scene.
Live, the Velvets were a bizarre amalgam of vigorous R&B, pretty pop songs, extended experimental noise jams (often grounded in Cale's drones), and the performance art of Warhol's touring Exploding Plastic Inevitable. The original band lasted just two albums, The Velvet Underground and Nico, and White Light, White Heat (both '67).
In an interview, Cale told me, "It seemed to work even when we were playing in the exact opposite corners of the musical spectrum on the same piece. We were capable of anything. The dichotomy was given as great a value as the ability to unify on something. That was something that Andy believed in as well. It just angers me that there wasn't more work done because we were so good at it."
In an interesting juxtaposition, pioneering producer Tom Wilson (Bob Dylan, Simon and Garfunkel, the Animals, John Coltrane, Sun Ra) was supervising the first albums of both the Velvets and Frank Zappa's Mothers of Invention at the same time. Both "art" bands, they shared a surface freakiness that masked the underlying gulf between them. The Velvets reveled in the sensory-based hedonism that the puritanical Zappa railed against. The fact that both bands performed in Exploding Plastic Inevitable at the Trip club in Los Angeles is a great Warholian irony.
Article comments
1 - Nigel E. Richardson
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...
2 - Rodney Welch
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."
3 - James Russell
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.
4 - Rodney Welch
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?