A 1967 debut sleeve bearing a single yellow banana and the instruction to peel slowly and see (1967)
The Velvet Underground & Nico — the Warhol banana peeled off to reveal a pink fruit underneath, which made the sleeve ruinously expensive.
Popular music · Rock
The Velvet Underground
1964–1973 · American (New York)
Art rock and proto-punk; the New York avant-garde
The Velvet Underground sold almost nothing in their lifetime and changed everything afterwards. Lou Reed's flat, reportorial songs about drugs, sadomasochism and city life met John Cale's classically trained drone, and Andy Warhol attached them to his Factory and to the German singer Nico. Their four studio albums became the founding text for punk, indie and art rock alike.
How to spot them
- ▸Lou Reed (guitar, vocals), John Cale (viola, bass, keyboards), Sterling Morrison (guitar), Maureen 'Moe' Tucker (standing drums, no cymbals)
- ▸Andy Warhol as manager and 'producer'; the multimedia show the Exploding Plastic Inevitable
- ▸Nico, the German model-singer imposed on the first album, on three tracks
- ▸Cale's amplified viola drone, learned from La Monte Young; Tucker playing mallets on an upturned bass drum
- ▸Cale left in 1968 and was replaced by Doug Yule; Reed left in 1970 before the fourth album was released
Songs & albums
A seven-minute 1967 song about waiting for a dealer, its narrator scoring on a Harlem street corner (1967)
'I'm Waiting for the Man'.
A 1967 song after Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, with whipcrack rhythm, ostrich-tuned guitar and droning viola (1967)
'Venus in Furs' — 'shiny, shiny, shiny boots of leather'.
A 1968 second album recorded so loud that engineers walked out, ending with a seventeen-minute improvisation (1968)
White Light/White Heat, closing with 'Sister Ray'; it was John Cale's last album with the group.
A 1969 third album of hushed, almost devotional songs, its sleeve a grey Factory sofa photograph (1969)
The Velvet Underground — 'Pale Blue Eyes', 'Candy Says', 'Jesus'; made after Cale's departure with Doug Yule.
A 1970 album made to order for a record company that wanted hits, its two best-known songs later staples of every bar band (1970)
Loaded — 'Sweet Jane' and 'Rock & Roll'; Reed left before it was released and disowned the edits.
A 1970 song about a five-year-old girl whose life is saved by a New York radio station (1970)
'Rock & Roll', from Loaded — the girl is Jenny, who puts on a New York station and is saved.
A 1967 song that a member of the group later said was about deciding to write about heroin the way a novelist would (1967)
'Heroin' — its tempo accelerates and collapses in imitation of a rush.
Quick-fire facts
- •Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996 by Patti Smith; the plaque names Reed, Cale, Morrison and Tucker
- •Brian Eno's much-quoted remark is that the first album sold only about 30,000 copies, but everyone who bought one formed a band
- •Andy Warhol is credited as producer of the first album, a role he later described as mostly leaving them alone
- •The band's name came from a paperback about suburban sadomasochism that Tony Conrad found on a New York pavement
- •Nico died in 1988 after falling from her bicycle in Ibiza; Sterling Morrison died of cancer in 1995; Lou Reed died in 2013 after a liver transplant
- •Lou Reed had written throwaway pop for Pickwick Records before the band formed; 'The Ostrich' gave the group's odd guitar tuning its name
- •Maureen Tucker played standing up, with mallets on an upturned bass drum and tom-toms, and used no cymbals
- •The double album 1969: The Velvet Underground Live, drawn from Texas and San Francisco club tapes, was not released until 1974
- •The surviving members reunited for a European tour in 1993, which broke down again over Reed and Cale's disagreements
- •Todd Haynes's documentary The Velvet Underground was released in 2021; John Cale and Maureen Tucker, the surviving members, both took part
Drill it — 10 cards
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Sources
- Rock and Roll Hall of Fame — The Velvet Underground — Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee page
- Victor Bockris and Gerard Malanga — Uptight: The Velvet Underground Story