The foundations for what would become the Velvet Underground were laid in late 1964. Singer/guitarist Lou Reed had performed with a few short-lived garage bands and had worked as a songwriter for Pickwick Records, which Reed described as being “a poor man’s Carole King”. Reed met John Cale, a Welshman who had moved to the United States to study classical music. Cale had worked with experimental composers John Cage and La Monte Young, but was also interested in rock music. (Young’s use of extended drones would be a profound influence on the early Velvets’ sound). Cale was pleasantly surprised to discover Reed’s experimentalist tendencies were similar to his own: Reed sometimes used alternate guitar tunings to create a droning sound. The pair rehearsed and performed together, and their partnership and shared interests steered the early direction of what would become the Velvet Underground.
Reed’s first group with Cale was the Primitives, a short-lived group assembled to support a Reed-penned single, “The Ostrich”. Reed and Cale recruited Sterling Morrison—a college classmate of Reed’s who had already played with him a few times—to play guitar, and Angus MacLise joined on percussion. This quartet was first called the Warlocks, then the Falling Spikes.
The Velvet Underground was a book about the sexual underground of the early 60's by Michael Leigh that Reed found when he moved into his New York City apartment (left by previous tenant Tony Conrad). Reed and Morrison have reported the group liked the name, considering it evocative of “underground cinema”, and fitting, due to Reed’s already having written “Venus in Furs”, inspired by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s book of the same name, dealing with masochism. The band immediately and unanimously adopted the book's title for its new name.
Early stages (1965–1966)
The newly named Velvet Underground rehearsed and performed in New York City. Their music was generally much more relaxed than it would later become: Cale described this era as reminiscent of beatnik poetry, with MacLise playing gentle “pitter and patter rhythms behind the drone”.
In July 1965, Reed, Cale and Morrison recorded a demo tape at their Ludlow Street loft. When he briefly returned to Britain, Cale gave a copy of the tape to Marianne Faithfull, hoping she’d pass it on to Mick Jagger. Nothing ever came of the demo, but it was eventually released on the 1995 box set Peel Slowly and See.
When the group accepted an offer of $75 for their first paying performance at Summit High School, in Summit, New Jersey, MacLise left the group, protesting what he considered a sellout. “Angus was in it for art”, Morrison reported.
MacLise was replaced by Maureen “Moe” Tucker, the younger sister of Jim Tucker, a friend of Morrison. Tucker’s abbreviated drum kit was rather unusual: she generally played on tom toms and an upturned bass drum, using mallets as often as drumsticks, and she rarely used cymbals. (The band having asked her to do something unusual, she turned her bass drum on its side and played standing up. When her drums were stolen from one club, she replaced them with garbage cans, brought in from outside.) Her rhythms, at once simple and exotic (influenced by the likes of Babatunde Olatunji and Bo Diddley records), became a vital part of the group’s music. The group earned a regular paying gig at a club and gained an early reputation as a promising ensemble.
Andy Warhol and the Exploding Plastic Inevitable (1966–1967)
Andy Warhol became the band’s manager in 1965 and suggested they feature the German-born singer Nico on several songs. Warhol’s reputation helped the band gain a higher profile. Warhol helped the band secure a coveted recording contract with MGM’s Verve Records, with himself as nominal “producer”, and gave the Velvets free rein over the sound they created.
During their stay with Andy Warhol, the band became part of his multimedia roadshow, Exploding Plastic Inevitable, for which they provided the music. They played shows for several months in New York City, then traveled throughout the United States and Canada until its last installment in May 1967. The show included 16 mm film projections and colors by Warhol.
In 1966 MacLise temporarily rejoined the Velvet Underground for a few EPI shows when Reed was suffering from hepatitis and unable to perform. For these appearances, Cale sang and played organ and Tucker switched to bass guitar. Also at these appearances, the band often played an extended jam they had dubbed “Booker T”, after the leader of the musical group Booker T. and the MG’s; the jam later became the music for “The Gift” on White Light/White Heat. Some of these performances have been released as a bootleg; they remain the only record of MacLise with the Velvet Underground. MacLise was said to be eager to rejoin the group now that they’d found some fame, but Reed specifically prohibited this.
In December 1966, Warhol and David Dalton designed Issue 3 of the multimedia Aspen. Included in this issue of the "magazine", which retailed at $4 per copy and was packaged in a hinged box designed to look like Fab laundry detergent, were various leaflets and booklets, one of which was a commentary on rock and roll by Lou Reed, another an EPI promotional newspaper. Also enclosed was a 2-sided flexi disk, side one produced by Peter Walker, a musical associate of Timothy Leary, and side two titled “Loop”, credited to the Velvet Underground but actually recorded by Cale alone. “Loop”, a recording solely of pulsating audio feedback culminating in a locked groove, was “a precursor to [Reed’s] Metal Machine Music”, say Velvets archivists M.C. Kostek and Phil Milstein in the book The Velvet Underground Companion. Indeed, “Loop” predates Reed’s almost identical concept (Metal Machine Music being a double album, and being released to a larger audience, obviously with different feedback) by nearly ten years (and also predates much industrial music as well). More significantly, from a retail standpoint, “Loop” was the group’s first commercially available recording as the Velvet Underground.
The Velvet Underground and Nico (1967)
The Velvet Underground and Nico album cover.At Warhol's insistence, Nico sang with the band on three songs of their debut album, The Velvet Underground and Nico. The album was recorded primarily in Scepter Studios in New York City during April. It was released by Verve Records in March 1967.
The album cover was famous for its Warhol design: a bright yellow banana with “Peel slowly and see” printed near a perforated tab. Those who did remove the banana skin found a pink, peeled banana beneath. This would later be used as the cover to one of several Velvets boxed sets, also titled Peel Slowly and See, released in 1995.
Eleven songs showcased their dynamic range, veering from the pounding attacks of "I’m Waiting for the Man" and "Run Run Run", the droning "Venus in Furs" and "Heroin" to the quiet "Femme Fatale" and the tender "I’ll Be Your Mirror", as well as Warhol's own favorite song of the group, "All Tomorrow's Parties".
The overall sound was propelled by Reed’s deadpan vocals, Cale's droning viola, Morrison's often rhythm and blues– or country-influenced guitar, and Tucker’s simple but steady beat.
The album was released on March 12, 1967, peaking at 171 on Billboard magazine's Top 200 charts. The promising commercial début of the album was dampened somewhat by legal complications: the album’s back cover featured a photo of the group playing live with another image projected behind them; the projected image was a still from a Warhol motion picture, Chelsea Girls. The film’s cinematographer, Eric Emerson, had been arrested for drug possession and, desperate for money, claimed the still had been included on the album without his permission (in the image his face appears quite big, but upside down). MGM Records pulled all copies of the album until the legal problems were settled (by which time the record had lost its modest commercial momentum), and the still was airbrushed out.
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