The Velvet Underground & Nico entry

The Velvet Underground was an avant-garde music group that was together for only four years in the 1960’s.  Between 1966 and 1970, the group released four albums: The Velvet Underground & Nico (1967), White Light/White Heat (1968), The Velvet Underground (1969), and Loaded (1970).  The original four band members were Lou Reed, John Cale, Maureen Tucker, and Sterling Morrison.  John Cale was a prodigy in piano and violin.  He performed on BBC when he was only eleven years old.  He had a classical background and earned a degree in classical music from Goldsmith’s College in London, England.  While he was at Goldsmith’s College, he became interested in modern avant-garde composers.  He took their philosophies and incorporated them into his own developing theories.  By the early 1960’s, Cale was completely dedicated to avant-garde.  He came to the U.S to pursue a Leonard Bernstein Scholarship and began working with Aaron Copland.  His professional relationship with Copland would soon end and he found himself in New York where he worked with composers John Cage and La Monte Young.  At this point, Cale began to develop an interest for rock and roll music.  He met Lou Reed and soon formed the Velvet Underground.  Reed was a rock musician from Long Island, working for Pickwick Records as a songwriter.  Cale and Reed were the two primary songwriters for the group.  Reed did much of the lyric writing, while Cale did a lot of the musical composition and arranging. 

The groups line up was very different than any other group at the time, with Sterling Morrison and Lou Reed on guitar, Maureen Tucker on drums, and John Cale on viola/violin, bass, piano and occasionally guitar.  Having a female drummer and a viola was very unusual. In 1967, pop artist Andy Warhol began to promote the group and insisted they add a German model named Nico to the band.  Nico served as a singer, adding a doomy quality to the bands sound with her deadpan vocals. Warhol produced their first album, The Velvet Underground & Nico.  Norman Dolph also helped produce the album and tried to interest several record companies to distribute it. Verve Records finally accepted the offer with the help of a Verve Producer by the name of Tom Wilson. 

The group was very different than any other rock/pop group during the time and their first album made a huge statement to conventional rock and roll.  Because of their association with Warhol, the band was widely influenced by Art and Film; becoming more of an art band than just a simple rock & roll band.  The Velvet Underground was the first band to create an alliance between pop music and the avant-garde.  They had a commercial and avant-garde combination that revolutionized contemporary rock music at their time. 

Although their first album, The Velvet Underground & Nico, sold only 10,000 copies, it was still able to become known as one of the most influential albums of the 60’s and the 13^th greatest album of all time, according to Rolling Stone Magazine.  The band was not well received during the 60’s.  A large art of the bands limited commercial success was due to bad timing.  The beginning of the hippie movement and the summer of love overshadowed and drowned out any influence the band would have during their time.  Most other bands were singing about happy things, being optimistic in their lyrics, and having “groovy” melodies and beats that would become the popular music of that era.  Love songs were sweet and happy, full of affectionate emotions and would have a positive overall feel.  During this time, where most bands were still caught up in this west coast flower power, the Velvet Underground introduced a bit of “street realism and doubt” into pop music.  Songs that they wrote were quite different than the average rock and roll song.  Their songs were mostly dark and not all optimistic.  Their love songs were sad and depressing and their lyrics attempted to bring literary sensitivity to rock music.  Their songs were like short stories of different people in different situations and were about reality and things that actually happened, as opposed to making up a fictional story or situation and singing about it, pretending it happened.  These lyrical characteristics would prove to be a major attribute of the group that would portray them as very different than any other group at the time. 

The Velvet Underground & Nico album was different than anything else being played on the radio at the time.  Most radio stations didn’t even want to play them because of their unconventionality.  It wasn’t until the 80’s that the album would really become a significant influence. As a listener, I feel that the band was ahead of their time, and the Velvet Underground & Nico album displayed that exceedingly well.  It was a revolutionary album that was full of innovative musical experiments and lyrical poetry.  At the time, people didn’t know how to deal with something so radical as this album.  Once time caught up with it, the Velvet Underground’s influence on Punk music was more evident than ever.  “The times changed and the influence carried on.”  This album was indeed very influential, just not at the time it was released.  As an industry professional, I can understand how and why the album was not accepted when it was released.  It is difficult to start a revolution and inspire a movement.  The members of the band were brilliant musicians and their work eventually paid off.  Their inventive musical ideas and style left a mark on musical culture forever.