Apologies if there are more typos in this review than usual, but every reviewer of the Velvet Underground is contractually obliged to wear dark shades.
In the game of Six Degrees of Art Rock, Velvet Underground will always be at least a number 3. Their albums didn’t sell many copies in their lifespan, but everyone who bought a copy bought some crappy guitar and jammed the shit out of two chords before deciding to write some thinkpieces instead. I think that’s how the saying goes. The mistakes of Lou Reed, John Cale, Sterling Morrison and Maureen Tucker have gone on to form entire musical movements, and their many successes count them amongst the greatest and most influential bands of a decade full of them.
It’s important to understand that the band was not working in a musical vacuum. As well as traditional rock and roll, and expanding upon the sixties experiments of Dylan, the weirder side of rock would have its apex during the late sixties with Frank Zappa, Captain Beefheart, the Sonics and AMM, whilst music in general was diversifying from your Jazz Fusions and your Stockhausens, converging again into the popular music of the time as any article on the Beatles will tell you. It was a vibrant time for the evolution of the modern sound of popular music.
So what is it about the Velvet Underground’s four active years in particular that make them so influential? Well, many reasons, but as we tend to emphasise the art of Velvet Underground’s “pop art”, lets take a moment to address just what great pop they made. From good old fashioned rock&roll to gorgeous dreamy ballads, the band’s two chord basis would go on to form the simple, catchy artistry upon which the rest of the cacophonous sounds would form. As we will discuss later in the week, the band’s arc is one to find acceptance within a larger audience; Velvet Underground were not beyond pop. Anonymity was not what they would seek.
And some clout and publicity was given to them for their first record in the form of Andy Warhol. Admiring their contrarian attitudes in a live setting, the band would become part of the Factory lifestyle, and of New York, in a way that would greatly effect the content of Lou Reed’s lyrics: sexual deviance, prostitution, sadomasochism and of course the favourite subject of the decade drugs. But Reed’s lyrics are so minute in detail and so matter of fact that they act almost less as art and more like journalism (if the two cane separated). The young snarling cynicism of his words – and that iconic voice – would sometimes counteract with the lovely music coming from Cale, Morrison and Tucker, and would sometimes complement it perfect. It is with that the difference between them and their mentor emerged: Andy’s Warhol art would reframe popular culture in ways that changed its context to comment upon society; The Velvet Underground used pop culture to do that re-contextualising.
Warhol’s oversight extended beyond just the iconic banana cover, peeling to reveal the flesh coloured banana that demonstrated the band’s playful sexuality and willingness to confound expectations. In fact his sight was so over that he didn’t see the band at all. By all accounts his studio time was very minimal, but that lack of careful production and presentation would be large part of this record’s rough aesthetic, why it is seen as a precursor to lo-fi production, and of course making it one of the original examples of proto-punk. His main addition to The Velvet Underground and Nico is not himself but that second name, Nico, an often overlooked art rock and dream pop artist in her own right – listen to The Marble Index, at least – and another member of the Factory clique that Warhol . Her voice ends up a welcome addition to the vocal repertoire, with a foreign sensuality that is still delicate, but lacks any sense of some wilting ingenue, and counteracts perfectly to Reed’s own sensibilities in both pop and sexuality (matching perfectly with lyrics inspired by Raymond Carver and film noir). In most accounts this compromise would produce a rushed work without a sense of coherence, and whilst its not the most rigidly structured piece in the decade that brought rise to the concept album, the messiness is entirely appropriate for an album that would have such rough and messy songs.
But before that turmoil would come lushness and beauty. The opening celesta notes of “Sunday Morning” stand among the most gorgeous moments of pop music, John Cale’s delicate playing giving the impression of the music box that instigated the start of the narrator’s day. Tucker’s percussion playing is just as light precise as it is throughout the majority of the album’s more arranged tracks, and for a man who was mixed on the instrument Sterling Morrison is among the best and most inducing bass players in sixties rock, particular the descends throughout this track. On top of the beautiful viola and piano overdubs – did I mention how lovely this track sounds? – Lou Reed gives what at most glances is his most joyful performance, sounding dazed and emerging to life as though he is just coming to life. However, the majority of the lyrics conveys a much more paranoid mindset, one that worried of the waking day and those who will interact with them. “Watch out, the world’s behind you” is the song’s most famous line. Throughout the course of The Velvet Underground and Nico, we would see that world.
It’s in songs like “Waiting for the Man” that we see Lou Reed’s penchant for storytelling in full effect. The scenario is one that has since been dealt with before, that of a narrator making a transaction for drugs – Velvet Underground after all helped to demonstrate the effectiveness of taboo subjects through the lens of popular music – but its the detail that he brings to the scene that paint the picture better than any of his imitators. The location, the agitation, the familiarity, the foreignness, and even that element of racial tension and divide in events as seemingly small as this one paranoid man wanting to get hooked up with some heroin. As is demonstrated in so many of these songs, its the perfect perspectives that Reed chooses which make the subject matter so effecting. But of course the music acts to assist that agitation, with the continuous pelting of percussion and the counteracting guitars demonstrative of the jam based style that would form the basis of most of the first two records (particularly White Light/White Heat). By the end the chords are as confrontational and hectic as its lead character, and with one of the many fade outs in this album we are left with the sense of a story that will always continue, that man always waiting even when he has what he wants.
We take a break from that chaos with the serene beauty of “Femme Fatale”, the first to feature Nico’s vocals that here manage to be both airy and hoarse (though that impression is mainly from the buzzing of the album’s blown out mixing). In the manner of the character type, Nico sings of her false coloured eyes and her ulterior motivations, though interestingly Nico doesn’t actually play that character, instead talking as an all knowing being. But the femininity of her voice makes her descriptions like “she’s going to play you for a fool” more inevitable than judgemental, with the band’s playful backing vocals adding both a sarcastic and varying perspective to the lyric (buried in the left channel of the stereo speakers. We’ll probably be having most of the conversations about Velvet Underground’s playful mixing for the next record). All the while the music gives the impression of the dream like, Hollywood world which creates this characters, with the beautiful appegiated playing of the guitars and the mixing of the rest of the backing instrumentals which give this more of a psychedelic vibe than many of the songs overtly about drugs.
This match between simplicity, experimentation and rude subject is optimised in what is among the band’s greatest songs. “Venus in Fur”, named after a book I won’t pretend is on my reading list, is all about sadomasochism and bondage, from the point of view of the tired submissive who still loves to be whipped, and occasionally the dominator doing the commands. The session is as intense as the music, full of “ostrich guitars” by Reed tuned to the same string, representing both a safe base and a constant clash, and Cale’s overpowering drone of viola strings, apparently tuned with different strings to get the precise kind of strange, Middle Eastern sounding instrumentation he required (though the result of both is more akin to Indian sitars). By the end the tension of all the strings, and Tucker’s constant hit of tambourine, is much like the whipping of the leather; a continuing mix of foreign environments that lash out upon us, that we are both exhausted by but don’t yet wish to leave from.
By contrast, “Run Run Run”, starts off sounding like one of the record’s safest songs, with a traditional rock and roll number that sounds like early Beach Boys crossed with the electric work of Bob Dylan (their really is a Dylan timbre to Reed’s voice here more on other songs). However, as the song progresses the repetitive chords are overlaid with chaotic, buzzing guitar lines that each do the aforementioned running of the title for the characters in question, and the carefree nature of that run is always balanced with this constant spectre of “Gypsy Death” hanging over them like those guitar screeches. It’s not too long after the rolling, almost skiffle like percussion, combined with these chords that are less rock&roll than rock&collapse on the floor, that the songs demonstrates those early garage rock vibes that made so many of those apocryphal record buyers want to start those groups.
Perhaps the song that most displays the environment and contexts that affected The Velvet Underground and Nico’s creation, with Nico taking lead vocals again for a song about the kind of character that would make up the parties of the Factory collective (no wonder it was Andy Warhol’s favourite of the band’s work). Again with the Nico track, it is a very female specific narrative, depicting a somewhat sad narrative of a women wearing a hand-me-down dress to make herself appear in a different class to those around her, ultimate being sad and crying at those surroundings. The song is said by Cale to be of a women who had three of her children taken away from her, but even with that context there is a feeling of repeating loss. The music meanwhile meets that clash between a dancing beat and the morose atmosphere; the piano in particular seems both melancholic and of a jamming party. Both completely inappropriate and entirely of a piece. It’s dripping with both mood, character and narrative, which explains why its name has been evoked in so much other media from books to films.
We move from the lowest apex emotionally to the highest apex artistically for what might be one of Velvet Underground’s most famous, most controversial and most evocative pieces of music in “Heroin”. With a title like that I’m sure you need no explanation as to what the song is about, and the drums by Tucker that mimic a beating heart that rushes to elation and the further pulsating speed of the two chords of the song in the choruses should help give it away to even the least clued in of listeners. Without having the perspective of actually, you know, having done heroin, I would still feel the need to paraphrase Francis Ford Coppola’s quote on the making of Apocalypse Now: “It’s not about Heroin; it is Heroin”. From the first rush of feeling like “Jesus’ son”, to the dependency of the drug and the love/psychosis that results (the laugh after “it’s my wife and it’s my life” still gives me shivers) and the pain finally outlaying the pleasure as the comedown occurs, and the screeching of the violas and organs completely encompasses and consumes the listeners. Like <i>Trainspotting</i> – inspired by the lyrics of Lou Reed – it neither glorifies or condemns the use of the drug. And like that movie, it has convinced me more than most pieces of art that I would never want to take it. Good thing I’ve got a masterpiece of a song to listen to instead.
We move from the suspended animation of that song into something more grounded with “There She Goes Again”. The main riff, taken from Marvin Gaye’s “Hitch Hike”, results in multiple, stabbing guitar chords that are as aggressive and hard-hitting as the narrator is to the woman of this narrative, as well as the tonal shifts that are at first unexpected and shocking, but soon become the expected norm. The song is almost clearly about prostitution, but unlike the other female-led narratives of this album, it is important that this is the only one to be sung by Lou Reed and Nico. It helps the bring the perspective, that of the pimp who is both angered with her and clearly in some form of infatuation with her, into further question. Like a final slap to the face, the song ends at its most fast paced, rockabilly like and joyous, the uncomfortably playful tone more effecting than many attempts at complete sorrow at the situation could ever be.
If there was any built in indication that Nico and the band were of a piece in the record that bares both of their names, it would be the track “I’ll Be Your Mirror”, appropriate as it was this Nico quote to Reed that formed the inception of what would be her final song on the album. It’s delicateness in both Nico’s vocals and the high notes of the guitars perfectly encapsulate the band and Reed’s “pop art”, a song about interconnectivity and artistic parallels that is still ultimately a great piece of aspirational pop for even the saddest of times. It would be the last delicate and stable piece before the safety net of Nico disappears from this record, so as it stands it is a short, ethereal Nancy Sinatra dream pop song that shows the last reflection before the mirror cracks.
The crack takes place in what is the most avant-garde piece on the entire record – meant in the tradition way and not, as sixties icon would say, “French for bullshit” – with the shrieking and rambling “The Black Angel’s Death Song”. The hissings on the track sound like pneumatic drills to the brain, as galloping guitars from Morrison would bring some semblance of normality against the chaos bubbling above the surface through Cale’s electric viola and Reeds lyrics that range from images of the Angels of Death to fallen cities to razor blades in the mouth to split didactics and the colour of mouse tales and what? Reed has admitted that the lyrics were mainly an exercise in stream of consciousness imagery, but that style of song would go on to influence one prominent artist that we have already covered in this series.
This moves on to the final song, and the one that seems the most obvious precursors to the experiments the band would take shortly after leaving Andy Warhol’s eye on White Light/White Heat, with “European’s Son”. Starting off sounding almost like surf rock, after a short verse the track devolves inter absolutely anarchy, with sparse percussion, repetitive bass and two guitars battling each other out with one of each channel of the stereo. One guitar acts in the background with low dubs as the percussion arrives to eventually attack upon it, and the other guitar sounds a cross between country slides and a man having a man having a fit. The track is said to be a tribute to an old English professor of Reed’s, but with the tone of the lyrics and the music after that tiny amount of verbiage I will assume they had a complex relationship. Or maybe a simple one. But no less complex or simple than anything else on the album.
Even after all these years, all the Rolling Stone grovel pieces and liberal inspiration other bands have taken from this record alone, The Velvet Underground and Nico both still find a way to surprise us. Whether that be the erratic nature of the music constantly making us second guess, or the hidden complexities still yet to be found, this debut stand among the smartest, most inventive, most hectic and most evocative music written for rock. And even if everything under the surface has been mined to death, that remaining surface is still beyond cool. But not everything seemed cool with the band as a whole. After the poor sales of this record – left in the wake of that album by General Veggie and his Solipsistic Aortic Pumps – the band would split off from Warhol as their mentor (with his blessing), and allow themselves to make the music they were building towards making. The spark had already been set by the end of this record, but no-one expected the explosion that it would leave.
Mainly because no one was listening at the time. But still, it was pretty fucking big…
What did you think, though?
Velvet Underground Album Rankings
- The Velvet Underground and Nico