He’s got the works, he gives you sweet taste”), while the grandiose, yet seamy “Venus in Furs” describes a sadomasochistic scene inspired by Leopold Sacher-Masoch’s infamous novel of the same name (“Tongue the thongs, the belt that does await you”) as Cale plays a sumptuous drone on electric viola, as Morrison repeats the same two-bar bassline and Tucker pounds ominously on tom-toms, one of the best marriages of rock and modal jazz ever recorded. “I’m Waiting for the Man”, with its pulsating beat by Tucker and Reed’s and Morrison’s distorted guitars, depicts a Manhattanite’s journey into Harlem to score some heroin (“Hey white boy, what you doin’ uptown?. Opening with the startlingly beautiful “Sunday Morning”, Reed’s narrator wakes up on the morning after a night’s debauchery, afraid to remember what happened the night before (“Sunday morning / And I’m falling / I’ve got a feeling / I don’t want to know”). Burroughs’ books Naked Lunch and The Soft Machine, a nonlinear tale of life in New York City. Some may argue that The Velvet Underground & Nico is not a concept album, but think about it: Lou Reed’s bittersweet, first-person narratives cut from scene to scene, much like William S. Wispy-gentle one moment, chugging and driving the next, disturbing a few minutes later, and cacophonous at the end, The Velvet Underground & Nico was so far ahead of its time that it still sounds fresh today, and thanks to a brand-new two-disc, Deluxe Edition of the album, fans can now own the definitive version. The result of that quick studio visit is astonishing, a combination of white noise, classic rock and roll, soul, and folk music, a sound that is impossible to categorize in anything else but “The Velvet Underground”. The Velvet Underground (Guitarist/singer Lou Reed, multi-instrumentalist John Cale, rhythm guitarist/bassist Sterling Morrison, drummer Maureen Tucker, and “chanteuse” Nico), on the other hand, needed just 3000 dollars and one day in the studio. Musically, the Beatles pulled out all the stops, meticulously recording their album over several months. Pepper had its lavish, high-concept album cover, while The Velvet Underground & Nico represented the postmodern side, with Andy Warhol’s banana on a white background, with the curious message “Peel Slowly and See” in fine print (when peeled, the listener would be treated to a pink, phallic banana underneath). Pepper, introduced a new form of rock music: the artsy concept album. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band in early 1967, but recorded close to a year before, The Velvet Underground & Nico, along with Sgt. Released a few months before the Beatles’ landmark Sgt. The Velvet Underground only released four albums, but those four albums ( The Velvet Underground & Nico, White Light/White Heat, The Velvet Underground, and Loaded) cover almost every facet of rock music, both musically and thematically: rock and roll as high art, experimentation, catharsis, redemption, and celebration. Aside from the Beatles, no band in the history of rock and roll has had more of an influence on younger bands than the Velvets, and that influence has lasted over 30 years, helping to spawn the likes of David Bowie, Roxy Music, the Sex Pistols, U2, Joy Division, New Order, R.E.M., Nirvana, and most recently, The Strokes. It’s all enough to make a jaded Tween teenager think, What’s the big deal?įact is, The Velvet Underground were, and still remain a very big deal, indeed. Plus, you’ve seen Andy Warhol’s famous banana album cover. And even if you’ve never heard the album, you’ve likely heard covers of their tunes by the likes of R.E.M., Nirvana, and David Bowie, and people like Bono and Julian Casablancas (The Strokes) describing the Velvets’ merits. What more needs to be said about The Velvet Underground’s first album, The Velvet Underground & Nico, that hasn’t been said already, countless times in the past, by musicians, hipsters, and myriad rock critics? You probably have come across many famous quotes about the band, ranging from Lester Bangs’s many tributes to the band to Brian Eno’s legendary line about how back in the late 1960s, not many people bought their albums, but those who did went on to form famous bands.
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