Velvet Underground's The Velvet Underground and Nico (3 page)

Before long, I fell under the spell of Boston’s underground music scene, discovering amazing bands like Reddy Teddy and the Real Kids, and records like
Live at the Rat
and
Live at CBGB’s.
There were close ties between the Boston and New York scenes (Alpo from the Real Kids caught crabs after stealing a pair of pants from Dolls’ drummer Arthur “Killer” Kane … I’m talking
strong
ties here). Velvets-influenced New York bands Television, Blondie, Patti Smith and the Ramones joined my local favorites; and by late ‘77 I was standing with one foot in the underground/punk scene, the other foot still rooted in the quasi-metal cover band circuit, playing “Sweet Jane” off
Rock and Roll Animal
while fellow East Bostonian Amadeo “Ricky” Risti heroically rendered
both
sides of the Hunter-Wagner double leads. But my stylistic schizophrenia couldn’t go on forever. The Stones and Who covers in our set squirmed uncomfortably next to the Stooges’ “Search and Destroy,” Patti Smith’s “Pumpin’ (My Heart),” and “Personality Crisis” by the New York Dolls.

There are certain records that changed my way of looking at music forever: Willie Loco’s “Hit Her Wid De Axe” and “Mass Ave” singles,
The Modern Lovers, The Real Kids,
and Patti Smith’s
Horses.
These records were like neon road signs for me, pointing the way to rock and roll bliss via a new and unknown path. And they all shared one important, unifying element that I was then unaware of (in case you haven’t been paying attention) and that was the Velvet Underground. I had no idea that Willie “Loco” had toured as a member of the last-gasp, Doug Yule-led Velvets, but the four chord sleigh ride to rock Valhalla called “Mass Ave” leveled me. In those days, back before I became aware of the role or importance of a producer, I failed to notice that the same name appeared in the production credits for both
Horses
and
The Modern Lovers
—not to mention the first Stooges album we’d scavenged songs from. That name was John Cale. I had no idea that John Felice of the Real Kids had originally been in the Modern Lovers, nor where the primary influence for the inspirational sound of
The Modern Lovers
sprang from. In an interview with Richman in 1998 he was unequivocal:

Joe Harvard:
I heard the Modern Lovers long before I heard the Velvets … had they influenced you
a lot as far as the sound you were going for on the black record? Or did you sound like that before?

Jonathan Richman:
If there was no Velvet Underground there would have been no such record. Does
that
tell you what you need to know?”
¹¹

My musical life had, in fact, been thoroughly infused with, surrounded by and enriched because of the Velvet Underground. I just never knew it. Bowie, Iggy, the New York Dolls, most key Boston and New York underground bands—all had been so strongly influenced that discovering the Velvet Underground’s records was like meeting someone’s parents. Suddenly, a whole lot of things started to make sense. Little idiosyncrasies, unique mannerisms you find attractive in little Junior—here, their source is laid bare, revealed as hereditary after just a few minutes with Mom and Pop. Listening to the Velvet Underground I could hear bits and pieces of the aural landscape of my favorite records, elements of much-beloved bands who inhabited my world. Willie Alexander’s relentless EMI electric piano drone, the monotone vocal-meets-distortion-over-a-jungle-drum-beat of “Pablo Picasso,” the remorselessly unyielding metallic piano of “I Wanna Be Your Dog,” screeching seagull squalls from Patti’s “Birdland” and the two chord
trip around the world in Jonathan Richman’s “Road Runner.” It was all there, and a whole hell of a lot more, on
The Velvet Underground and Nico.

In a recent conversation I had with Jonathan Richman he commented on the fact that “folks like to imbibe simulated darkness and decadence, when a guy like John Cale can give them the
real
thing—using only chords, tones and textures.” Therein lies the true force of great music. Yet Cale, despite his classical training, rejected the classicist’s use of music alone in creating atmosphere and narrative, in favor of working with a lyricist whose words augmented and expanded such musical themes. The success of the Velvets’ “medium is the message” approach is so complete, in fact, that there is a danger of mistaking their songs as being synonymous with the subjects they explore—hence, those who don’t approve of drugs or homosexuality conclude that the band’s material is just sensationalist trash. While I generally believe that pop and rock music is closer to a craft than an art, and that even most of the good stuff is merely artful craft, there’s that tenth of a percent which transcends craft and becomes not just artfulness but art itself. This is where the Velvets’ music has to be placed,
and (as much as I hate to say this about anybody’s rock music) any discussion of their material must be framed accordingly: as an exploration of art. Persons far more eloquent than myself have already provided ample, compelling arguments against the idea that exploring unpopular or immoral themes diminishes the work of talented writers and artists. What applies to the peaks of high culture should also do for the busy thruways of popular, “low” art forms like rock music.

Yes, the Velvet Underground wrote songs about heroin, orgies, methamphetamine, bondage and discipline, physical and emotional submission, violence, transgenders, transvestites, transsexuals, and street-wise deviants involved with any or all of the above ingredients. Why? Because no one had done so before, and because these things are interesting. If they weren’t, a lot of film directors wouldn’t be famous, True Crime authors wouldn’t be selling millions of books, and TV shows like
Law and Order
wouldn’t be so popular. But that’s now. In 1966, when no one was talking (much less singing) about such forbidden subjects, they were by extension even more interesting, and including them in songs aimed at public consumption wasn’t just another cheap thrill, it was a courageous and risky thing to do. It’s easy to climb the mountain after the real pioneers have been tramping a trail up to the peak for 35 years. In 1966, it took balls.

Likewise, the musicians who created these songs, as well as the people who inhabited the milieu surrounding the band and/or orbited like speed-fueled satellites around Warhol’s Factory, were a pretty entertaining bunch. Their personas and personalities matched those of the denizens of the Velvets’ songs. How could it be otherwise, when many of those songs were exercises in reportorial observation on Lou Reed’s part? Characters like the Warhol “Superstars,” Candy Darling and Holly Woodlawn and the regulars at Max’s Kansas City—even the band members themselves—made ideal fictional characters for observation, even if they happened to be real. Ambition, addiction, jealousy, passion, betrayal, fame, sex in 32 flavors—while these don’t make for a stable social environment, they do provide great stories. But it’s important to recognize that the controversial subject matter contained in Reed’s lyrics was only one component in a complex, meticulously crafted whole. The Velvets’ music wasn’t merely about shocking staid listeners (though the group admittedly reveled in that), it was about expanding the lyrical choice and voice permissible for rock writers, beyond the limits of “comfortable” topics.

Discussing his feelings about this record some 35 years after he helped make it, producer Norman Dolph remembered a quote: “All great art looks like it was made this morning,” and added, “whatever it is that
survives that’s great was modern at the time it was made, and the modernity of it still sits there on the wall of the museum 100 or 200 years later. As you listen to the record today it still sounds modern in that sense of the word.” Try, when you listen to this record, to ignore the group’s infamous reputation, to leave your preconceptions behind, and to let the music do the talking. Sit in a candlelit room, unplug the telephone, and listen to the entire album without interruption. An hour is not much time to give to a great record, considering what it will give back.

[NOTE: if you can get the record on vinyl, do, it always sounds better—and check out the “Peel Slowly and See” article by Sal Mercuri of the Velvet Underground Fanzine, located on the indomitable Velvet Underground Web Page (
http://members.aol.com/olandem/vu.html
). I highly recommend the ultimate VU starter kit, the 75 song, 5 CD
Peel Slowly and See
box set, which includes all the Velvets albums (plus the Ludlow Demos discussed later)].

For those who would like to play these songs, Shiroh Kouchi provides transcriptions, including tunings, chords and guitar tablature for these and most other Lou Reed compositions at the way-cool
Lou Reed Guitar Archive:
http://ww21.tiki.ne.jp/∼wildside/song.htm

Moe Tucker:
I didn’t like that love-peace shit.
¹²

John Cale:
By 1965 Lou Reed had already written “Heroin” and “Waiting for the Man” … At the time I was playing with LaMonte Young in the Dream Syndicate and the concept of the group was to sustain notes for two hours at a time.
¹³

Sterling Morrison:
I was a very unsensitive young person and played very unsensitive, uncaring music. Which is Wham, Bam, Pow! Let’s Rock Out! What I expected my audience to do was tear the house down, beat me up, whatever. Lou and I came from the identical environment of Long Island rock ‘n’ roll
bars, where you can drink anything at 18, everybody had phony proof at 16; I was a night crawler in high school and played some of the sleaziest bars.
¹⁴

David Fricke, author of the excellent little book that passes as liner notes for
Peel Slowly and See
writes: “In 1965 rock and roll was a very young, carefree and essentially teenage music—everything Reed, Cale, Morrison and Tucker had outgrown by the time they became the Velvet Underground.”
¹⁵
A year after the Beatles released
A Hard Day’s Night
, and the year they recorded
Rubber Soul
, former electroshock patient, drug dealer and Syracuse English major Lou Reed graduated, having been nurtured under the mentorship of poet Delmore Schwartz (for his literary skills), and under the influence of every drug conceivable (for his songwriting). Reed got a hack songwriting job at Pickwick Records—a sort of poor man’s Brill Building gig, writing songs for nonexistent bands made up of Pickwick personnel so the label could cash in on the latest musical fads. Loaded to the gills one night, Reed wrote a dance song called “The Ostrich,” credited upon release to the fictitious Primitives. When sales of the record started taking off, the label scrambled to form a band that could support
it playing live dates; because he looked like a rock musician, John Cale was approached at a party and asked to “audition.” For laughs—and because someone mentioned a salary—John attended.

Cale was a classical composer and prodigy from Wales, whose first composition was reportedly written on a piece of plywood. A graduate of London’s prestigious Goldsmith College, a Leonard Bernstein Scholarship had brought him to the US. Plainly speaking, he was One Badass Classical Dude. He studied at the Tanglewood Music Center under Iannis Xenakis, a former member of Le Corbusier’s architectural group whose 1954
Metastasis
, a work based on architectural design, had been enormously influential. Cale disliked the stuffy atmosphere at Tanglewood, however, and soon moved to Manhattan to explore the avant-garde. There he played with LaMonte Young, proponent of the held notes called drones found in Indian and Arabic music.

At the Pickwick audition, Cale was flabbergasted to discover that “The Ostrich” was based on an open-tuned guitar part played by Lou Reed; with all the strings tuned to the same note (A#), the effect produced was the very same drone that Cale’s associates had been working with! Having instantly formed a very low opinion of the Pickwick operation, and having come to expect such technique only within his rarefied avant-garde circle, this was a shock akin to finding a monkey tuning
his viola. His attention thus captured, Cale joined the Primitives. They played just a few shows, but the experience of standing on a stage with a bunch of teenage girls screaming at him had its effect on the young Welshman: he was hooked. Infected with the rock bug, chumming around with Lou Reed, Cale finally listened to some of the “real” songs Reed had been pestering him about. Once again, he was more than pleasantly surprised. The Primitives’ demise notwithstanding, the two musicians drew closer.

When fellow ex-Primitive Tony Conrad moved out of Cale’s Lower East Side apartment, Reed moved in. Typical high-spirited lads, they shared their love for music and chemically-assisted recreation … principally opiates. Sensing the need for a band, and an opportunity to do something truly different and important, they recruited Angus MacLise, a neighbor who provided percussion along with electricity for their amps. A true bohemian, he would die of malnutrition in Katmandu in 1979.

Soon, Reed ran into an old Syracuse acquaintance, Sterling Morrison. Sterling was a former trumpet player, a brilliant guitarist, and he shared Lou’s tastes in rock and roll. He believed rock music should make folks want to tear shit up, God Bless Him, and Reed immediately enlisted him. Together the four worked
on songs throughout the summer of 1965, calling themselves the Warlocks, and then the Falling Spikes. When MacLise left the group, Morrison contacted the sister of an old friend, Jim Tucker, and Maureen “Moe” Tucker entered the picture. A keypunch operator who played to Bo Diddley and Stones records after work, Moe had developed a unique style, playing a bass drum on its side with mallets and a tom-tom, eschewing cymbals and busy parts for a super-simple, relentlessly pulsing beat. Tucker was on her way to becoming one of the few completely original drummers in rock. Over the next year she played a tambourine (and nothing else), then a set of well-used garbage cans turned upside down, before reverting back to her own weird-ass setup. The Velvet Underground was born.