A New York band
The Velvet Underground took shape in New York in 1964 and 1965 around Lou Reed, a songwriter and guitarist, and John Cale, a Welsh-born classically trained musician who played viola, bass and keyboards. They were joined by the guitarist Sterling Morrison and, after the first drummer left, Maureen Tucker, who played a minimalist kit, often standing and using mallets. The band’s name is generally said to come from a paperback book about sexual subcultures.
Their music drew on rock and roll, but it also used drones, noise and an interest in avant-garde ideas, partly through Cale’s background. Reed’s lyrics took subjects from city life that were rarely heard in pop, including drug use, street life and sexual themes.
Warhol and the Factory
In late 1965 the band came to the attention of Andy Warhol, the pop artist whose studio, the Factory, was a meeting place for artists, filmmakers and hangers-on. Warhol became their manager and sponsor. He had them appear in his multimedia shows, billed as the Exploding Plastic Inevitable, in which the group played while films and lights were projected and dancers performed.
The arrangement gave the band money and exposure, but it also tied them to Warhol’s image, which some in the rock world found off-putting. At Warhol’s suggestion, the German-born singer and model Nico, who had a deep, flat voice and had worked with European and British musicians, was added to the group for some songs. The relationship between Nico and the band was uneasy, and she did not stay for long, but her voice became a distinct feature of the record.
Recording the album
The first sessions took place in spring 1966 in New York, reportedly with Warhol paying for studio time. The album was then completed in Los Angeles. Warhol was credited as producer on the sleeve, although his role was more as sponsor than studio worker. Tom Wilson, a producer who had worked with Bob Dylan, reportedly oversaw part of the recording and helped place the album with Verve, a jazz-oriented label of MGM.
The record was released in March 1967, after delays, with a cover by Warhol showing a banana. On the first pressings, the skin could be peeled back to reveal a pink fruit underneath. Its eleven tracks are:
- “Sunday Morning”, “I’m Waiting for the Man”, “Femme Fatale”, “Venus in Furs”, “Run Run Run”, “All Tomorrow’s Parties”
- “Heroin”, “There She Goes Again”, “I’ll Be Your Mirror”, “The Black Angel’s Death Song”, “European Son”
Nico sings lead on “Femme Fatale”, “All Tomorrow’s Parties” and “I’ll Be Your Mirror”, while Reed sings most of the others.
The songs
“Sunday Morning”, the opening song, is gentle and slightly uneasy, with a celesta part. “I’m Waiting for the Man” describes a visit to buy drugs in Harlem, with a pounding piano. “Venus in Furs” takes its title from an 1870 novel by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, and its drone and viola create a hypnotic effect. “Heroin” is the most famous and disturbing, speeding up and slowing down with the narrator’s mood, and it was debated at the time as to whether it glamourised or merely described drug use. The closing “European Son” is a noisy, loose piece, showing the band’s more abrasive side.
A slow start
Commercially, the album did very little. It did not sell widely, and it reportedly reached only a low place on the American album chart, if it entered the main chart at all in a meaningful way. Radio stations were unwilling to play songs about drugs, and the record was released in the same months as the more colourful psychedelic records that were being embraced on the West Coast. Distribution was also reportedly poor, and a dispute over a photograph on the back cover caused further trouble for Verve, though the details are unclear.
The band’s strong association with New York, and with Warhol’s circle, may also have limited its reach at a time when the national rock audience was looking toward San Francisco and Los Angeles. The Summer of Love was a hopeful, communal movement, whereas the Velvet Underground’s songs were cool and detached. The band had already parted ways with Warhol before the album appeared, and Nico left to pursue a solo career.
Reputation
The record’s later reputation rests on its influence. Over the next decade and after, a number of punk, art-rock and alternative musicians described it as a key influence. A line often repeated, associated with the musician Brian Eno, says that few people bought the record but many of those who did went on to form bands. It is usually quoted in paraphrase, and the exact wording is uncertain, so it is better treated as a saying than a quotation.
The album is a reminder that the landmark records of 1967 were not necessarily the best sellers. It also shows another side of the American counterculture, one that looked at the city’s dark corners instead of the hippie ideal, and it connects to the underground film movement and the experimental art world of Warhol’s Factory. The Doors’ debut, released in the same quarter in Los Angeles, offered a different kind of dark romanticism, and it sold far better.