Circus, June 1970
THEY WORK AS MUCH AS THEY WANT TO AND GET TOP BILLING IN THE MAJOR cities across the country. They have a particularly strong following in Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago. Their three albums have all received praise in reviews and the first one, which hit the charts twice, has sold 220,000 copies and is still selling. They are Velvet Underground.
And Fillmore East audiences requested them in a poll—they turned the gig down. So why aren’t they considered a major group? Why have so many people never heard of them? Why the Velvet Underground mystique? Well, there are all of the “too weird, too far ahead of their time” kind of explanations.
The Velvets really were too weird for everyone except the most avant of the avant-garde in 1966. And it’s doubtful that even those who accepted the strangeness of the band really knew what their music was about.
The Velvets’ vision went far beyond the surface implications of their lyrics. They weren’t merely into drugs and deviant sex. They were and are concerned with art. They were literate and articulate and they enjoyed using their intellect to create music that explored new concepts of form, content and presentation. And they chose the most modern tools of technological America with which to construct their pieces. For example, Lou Reed had all sorts of pre-amps and speed and tremolo controls built into his guitar so that it would literally play itself. He could make it play sixteen notes for every one he played, or, he could tune all the strings to one note, set the guitar up to feed back and leave the stage and go into the audience to listen to an incredible, totally mechanical music. (He did exactly that at the old Fillmore in San Francisco and Bill Graham promptly freaked out and ran around the stage disconnecting the amplifiers.) The Velvets were the first group to use controlled feedback and distortion and they used it like another instrument altogether, not as simply a variation on a guitar sound.
Currently, the band is about to begin work on a new record for Atlantic. They recently switched to that label from MGM, which some members of the group felt didn’t know what to do with them so they didn’t do much of anything as far as promotion and publicity was concerned.
The group is happy with their new affiliation. They feel they are now dealing with a record company that believes in what they’re doing. And Lou says the new record will be the first “real” album the band has done.
They have enough material for at least two records and they will be working with a producer (possibly Jerry Ragavoy) who knows studio techniques—an area the band admits they know nothing about and have little interest in.
The forthcoming album will be broader than any of the others and will include a song called “Here Come the Waves,” apparently a major work, and “I’m Stickin’ with You,” a country show tune by Maureen Tucker, the group’s drummer.
In the past the Velvets have been dismissed by some (mostly those who have never heard them) as a pop art put-on. That classification undoubtedly stems from their association with Andy Warhol—although Andy is a very serious artist who never put anyone on in his life. Andy and the Velvets and Nico, an underground goddess of sorts who wanted badly to be a singer, staged the first of the mixed media shows called the Exploding Plastic Inevitable with music, light projections, dancers, leather, whips—just a total theater experience. It took place at the Dom, a bar on the then silent St. Mark’s Place underneath the immense Polish National Hall which was to become the Balloon Farm (where the Mothers of Invention first played in New York) and later the Electric Circus.
Prior to the Exploding Plastic Inevitable (and what a prophetic title that was) the band had been rehearsing and experimenting in the Filmmakers’ Cinematheque where they held what one observer called “ritual dances devised by dope fiends with nothing better to do.”
Before that, the Velvets had been working at the Cafe Bizarre on West Third Street in the Village and it was there that they met Andy.
After the Inevitable, everyone in the group pooled their shares of the proceeds and rented a recording studio for one day and recorded the first album. Andy did the cover which consisted of a big yellow banana on a white background with instructions to “peel slowly and see” in small black letters. When the yellow banana was removed it revealed a slightly smaller reddish-pink one underneath. Andy was also credited with producing the record for whatever publicity value his name might have, but in actuality he had nothing to do with the group musically. And aside from singing on a couple of songs, neither did Nico.
That album, entitled The Velvet Underground and Nico, was a departure in many ways. From the pop art cover, to the length of the selections, to the lyric content (“Heroin,” a junkie monologue; “Venus in Furs,” a song of sado-masochism and leather fetishes), to the very sound and structure of the music, the record was a first in the annals of pop.
Musically, The Velvet Underground and Nico was a balance of disparate elements. The songs ranged from airy, melodic pieces to electronic thunderstorms of sound. No one had heard anything like it before and about the only traceable influence was the modified Bo Diddley beat of Maureen’s drums. The long instrumental called “European Son to Delmore Schwartz” bore kinship to avant-garde classical music because of the backgrounds of Lou, Sterling Morrison and John Cale in the classics. Schwartz it should be noted was a poet and literary figure whom Lou and Sterl studied and drank with at Syracuse University. Try Selected Poems, published by New Directions.
The record was poorly recorded and did not accurately represent the fullness of the group’s sound. But despite the technical faults of the recording, the music was there and it was strangely hypnotic and addictive. On the surface it seemed very simple, but in fact, the Velvet Underground had already absorbed and incorporated many different styles into one unified whole. The guitars droned and sensuously dribbled out notes in a very Eastern way; visions of sheiks and harem girls and plodding camels in the desert. Maureen’s drumming was a distillation of all the rock and roll that had gone before and yet she played with mallets on two kettle drums while standing up. She’s methodical and steady like some entranced Zulu witch doctor. The vocal harmonies were lovely and almost tender like the early black groups (the Moonglows, the Five Satins, the Flamingos) but Lou Reed’s singing and phrasing had a Dylanesque quality without any Byrds type folk-rock connotations.
All of these factors plus the classical, jazz and electronic ingredients were present, but at no time did one get the impression that any of the diverse elements were conscious imitations. Their music was so much their own. Instead of taking influences and trying to combine them, and push them further to make something new, the Velvets sort of took everything that was out there in the cosmos and brought it down to earth to share with people. Their sound was ethereal and funky at the same time.
The group has done two more albums since then. The second, called White Light/White Heat, had the same kind of balance between soft, pretty songs and frantic, driving urgent material. The real standouts are “I Heard Her Call My Name,” which features an absolutely astounding lead guitar part with mathematically balanced phrases and piercing but perfectly controlled feedback shrieks, and “Sister Ray,” a very long epic filled with images of a sailor who “just got in from Carolina” and “didn’t like the weather”; also present are Rosie, Sister Ray, people wanting jobs, and someone who continually yells: “I’m searchin’ for my mainline, she keeps suckin’ on my ding dong.” The droning guitars set up a dreamy presence that subsides abruptly near the end of the piece. If you think acid-rock takes you into other realms, listen to “Sister Ray.” You’ll never be the same.
The third album, The Velvet Underground, is their most lyrical and haunting. Gone is the “other side” of the Velvets. The record flows easily with a gentle, melodic feel throughout. Many titles could be singled out such as “Candy Says,” “Pale Blue Eyes,” “Jesus,” “I’m Set Free” (“I’m set free to find a new illusion”). There’s a joy about it all even in the solemn songs. And Maureen sings one of her own tunes, a charming innocent thing called “Afterhours.” As a whole, this album is probably their most successful in an artistic sense, but it is subtle and hasn’t sold as well as the first two.
The Velvet Underground is a unique phenomenon in the pop world. A group that has survived and grown. (Doug Yule, bass and organ, replaced John Cale almost two years ago and the band now functions as an organic unit rather than separate parts.) What they do is totally real and honest and that approach will undoubtedly pay off eventually.
In the meantime the cult grows larger with every public appearance. They’re the kind of group that people turn their friends on to and those who dig the Velvets are almost religious about it.
Perhaps in view of all that’s gone down in the past four years, the public is now ready for the first Velvets album. But they had gone beyond that stage a long time ago. So maybe when the new Atlantic album is released, the group will again be too far ahead of their time for most listeners. Oh well, the Velvet Underground freaks will understand and jump for joy.