About the Album
“Brewed in New York's seedy alleys and Andy Warhol's wild Pop-art Factory scene, VU's lyrically unforgiving, sonically mesmerizing debut all but invented the concept of alternative music.” EW’12 Their debut album, The Velvet Underground & Nico, only sold a few thousand copies in its first year, CS but producer Brian Eno famously said “everyone who bought one went out and started a band.” JD
One “could just as easily say that every song on their epochal 1967 debut…started a musical genre.” CM “”These 11 songs stretch so far that we now take them for granted.” CM The album “bristled with a kind of satanic glee, mixed with the droning ballads that typify an early morning drug haze mixed with post-cabaret desultoriness.” JSH “The record is explicit and rough, unflinching and chaotic as it held a mirror to life in New York City during the late ’60s.” CQ
The album was “so far ahead of its time that most people who came across the band or this release rejected them with explicit antagonism (radio stations banned it from the airwaves, magazines rejected ads for it, stores refused to stock it).” CM The Velvet Underground were “influential, hypnotically intense, misogynistic, and ruthlessly cool, they were scarier than the Rolling Stones and the Doors put together. Lou Reed introduced himself as the anti-Dylan, celebrating narcotic absorption and loveless sex with a brutal urban vision.” VB
Chapter One of Alternative Rock
Indeed, “one would be hard pressed to name a rock album whose influence has been as broad and pervasive as The Velvet Underground and Nico.” AM It was “simultaneously prepunk and postmodern.” CS In 1970, the New York Times said the Velvets were “playing experimental rock in 1965 when the Beatles just wanted to hold your hand and San Francisco was still the place where Tony Bennett left his heart.” CS
This is “chapter one of alternative rock” BL “with nearly every band emerging as part of that modern scene taking their cues from this record.” CQ “Glam, punk, new wave, goth, noise, and nearly every other left-of-center rock movement owes an audible debt to this set.” AM “Referring to their sway over the rock music of the ‘70s and ‘80s, critic Lester Bangs stated, ‘Modern music starts with the Velvets, and the implications and influence of what they did seem to go on forever.’” NRR
“Rock just means songs that are played w/ bass, guitar, drums and vocals w/ maybe a few exotic embellishments, so it ties in easily with the loft scene where artists tend to dwell…But it wasn’t always so—‘rock’ (or pop) music had to move into the galleries, and it was on the wings of this group.” JSH “The Velvets made rock & roll a dangerous place” BL and became “the poster children of the avant-garde.” TL
Radical Themes and Radical Music
“At the time of its release, it was art rock at its finest; however, that’s all it was. Topics such as prostitution, drug abuse, and living in the squalor of NYC were so isolating that no one really knew about it – or cared to, for that matter.” CQ They took their “band name from a book about S&M” TL and, at the time, “Lou Reed’s lyrical exploration of drugs and kinky sex” AM was “risky stuff in film and literature, let alone ‘teen music.’” AM
Even though the content “received the most press attention, …the music [they] played was as radical as the words they accompanied.” AM It “is amazingly complex and sophisticated, deserving of a place beside contemporary masterpieces such as Pet Sounds and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.” JD Such classic status is due in part to the VU’s “reputation for inspiring generations of noise rockers,” RV but also because they created an album that “has gentle melodies juxtaposed against the harsher tunes.” RV The music combined “crunchy rock, rhythm and blues, free jazz, and avant-garde experimentation.” CS While they have become known as “defiant anti-commercial revolutionaries, the Velvets were well aware of AM radio” JD and crafted songs to fit “demands at the time, though there is usually some twist to the standard formula.” JD
The Band Members
“Although they weren’t particularly adept at their instruments, they had a reputation as a fiery and dissonant live band” NO and “created some of the most innovative sounds anyone had ever heard.” NO Of course, Lou Reed, as the band’s lead singer and guitarist, has become an iconic figure, but this was hardly just a Reed & Co. affair.
Reed, “a rebellious Jewish kid from Long Island,” CM was a fan of Bob Dylan, “but most of his lyrical influences were writers and poets.” CM John Cale was “a Welsh prodigy who had arrived in New York City on a classical music scholarship.” CM He was “tutored by ambient composer John Cage” TL and “introduced the rock world to feedback through his shrieking” TL “hard-edged electric viola.” NRR
Reed and Cale met through Pickwick Records in 1964 where Reed worked as what he called “a poor man’s Carole King.” CM “Percussionist Maureen Tucker and guitarist Sterling Morrison make additional noteworthy contributions” NRR to what became the Velvets’ first album. Tucker notably “played primitive rhythms on a minimally sized kit while standing up.” CM Cale said, “We were trying to do a Phil Spector thing with as few instruments as possible.” CM
Nico
“Nico, the possibly German, possibly Hungarian model turned actress turned singer” TL was pushed on to the group by artist Andy Warhol, who would champion the band. “There’s a deceptive beauty to her contributions, a thorny languor.” CM Her “otherworldly vocals” NRR add “mystery to…[the] fragile and beautiful songs that she sings ‘in perfect mellow ovals, like a cello getting up in the morning,’ to quote critic Richard Goldstein” JD “While the significance of [her] contributions have been debated over the years, she meshes with the band’s outlook in that she hardly sounds like a typical rock vocalist.” AM She wasn’t “a conventionally beautiful singer by any means, her range was quite narrow, but she was very effective in getting emotions across.” AD
Andy Warhol
Warhol saw the Velvet Underground “as a musical extension of his creative philosophy of making people uncomfortable.” CM He tapped the group “as a traveling band for his Exploding Plastic Inevitable art exhibition. When he realized the brilliance of the Velvet’s music” he decided to back them in recording their first album. RV He “did little to earn his producer’s credit besides contributing the famous banana for the album cover;” JD he was more the “band’s benefactor and spiritual guru.” CS
Tom Wilson did the real heavy lifting when it came to recording and producing the album. He “had previously worked with Bob Dylan and Frank Zappa, so the strangeness of The Velvet Underground wasn’t too likely to freak him out.” AD However, even if Warhol’s “presence…was primarily a matter of signing the checks, his notoriety allowed The Velvet Underground to record their material without compromise, which would have been impossible under most other circumstances.” AM
Signing and Recording
Such a bizarre record had trouble finding a home. After getting rejected by “most of the era’s leading rock labels,” CM including Atlantic and Elektra the band were signed to the minor label Verve, which was owned by MGM. Tom Wilson, a newly recruited staff producer from Columbia, oversaw the re-recording of three tracks and the addition of “Sunday Morning” as a potential single. CM The album was then quietly released in March 1967.
Final Thoughts
“While Reed and Cale have both produced incredible bodies of work as solo artists, neither has ever topped the level of intensity that they reached while working together.” JD “Few rock albums are as important as The Velvet Underground and Nico, and fewer still have lost so little of their power to surprise and intrigue more than 30 years after first hitting the racks.” AM The album strikes “a balance between the polished beauty of great art and the raw spontaneity of great rock ‘n’ roll” JD “It was hipness on vinyl, but with an abiding narcotic beauty.” TL
“The Velvet Underground broke the rules of pop music as rock’s most visionary performers. They plumbed the depths of chaos and noise and proved that rock, too, can be art.” RV
Notes
The deluxe edition includes the stereo and mono versions over two CDs but doesn’t offer any previously unreleased material. The first disc also “includes the five songs from Nico's first album, 1967's Chelsea Girl in which Lou Reed, John Cale, Sterling Morrison, and Nico were involved in the songwriting; disc two adds the 45 rpm single versions of “All Tomorrow's Parties,” “I'll Be Your Mirror,” “Sunday Morning,” and “Femme Fatale.” AM
The Songs
Here are thoughts on the album’s individual songs.
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