The Velvet Underground and Nico, with Warhol's infamous banana record-jacket art, was originally recorded in '66 at the Cameo-Parkway Studios on Broadway with money from a shoe salesman under the vague guidance of Andy Warhol who seemed as interested in the blinking lights on the mixing board as in the music. The floors were ripped up and the walls were gone and only four mikes worked, but somehow the record was made. Then when Verve signed the Velvets, the band was given ten hours at an L.A. studio to re-record four songs with Wilson.
"Waiting For the Man," with a breezy rock groove, follows a Reed character into the black section of town where he deferentially explains to one and all that he isn’t there for the women, but for his "man," his drug dealer. Reed is almost giddy with self-contempt as his need for drugs drags his social status below that of ghetto dwellers. That defiant self-contempt defines the Velvet's status as the first post-modern band and the progenitor of the entire punk/new wave movement.
"Heroin" takes the external adventure of obtaining drugs into the internal realm and captures the seduction of addiction with a power, beauty and grace that makes it all the more frightening. To this day the song is equally horrifying and compelling, its structure of intense build and release literally mirroring the drug experience, an experience that the singer makes clear will inevitably end in death.
"Venus In Furs," an unblinking examination of an S&M relationship, captures both the power of the drone and harnesses its ability to convey an ennui of almost black hole density. "All Tomorrow’s Parties" is Nico's finest moment: a towering aural monument to ephemeral glamour with the pulse of dread, Cale's supportive rolling piano, and Reed's destabilizing frantic guitar.
Also on the record are two more pretty Reed-penned, Nico sung jewels, "I'll Be Your Mirror" and "Femme Fatale" (which is surely Nico's theme song), and the loveliest song of Reed's career, the preternatural "Sunday Morning," which opens the album. Wistfulness is a very difficult emotion to convey: it has the evanescence of a soap bubble and when one tries to capture it, one is likely to destroy it. Reed captures both the hope and regret of a dawning Sunday with a delicacy that encases the bubble and preserves it for all time. Neither the Velvets, nor Reed, nor very few others have created such an original, complete and satisfying musical statement as The Velvet Underground and Nico in the ensuing years.
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?