The Velvet Undergound and Nico Vinyl record review. Produced by Andy Warhol

 

Welcome back to ROX-TV for the vinyl review of “The Velvet Underground and Nico” album, which was produced by the world famous film maker, photographer, and artist Andy Warhol. I was first introduced to this album back in 1998 and to be honest…I had never heard of the Velvets before that point. I did know about the lead singer in a round-about way because of the song “Take a walk on the wild side” but had no idea who Lou Reed was, or knowledge about the 1972 “Transformer” album at that point. I was simply at a pretty wild party at Knob Hill and someone put the “Velvet Undergound and Nico” in the stereo. What happened next was simply amazing.

The song that came on was called “Heroin” and it was so different than anything that I was messing with at the time. I was a rap head for the most part, with my ear on the local groups coming out of Detroit and Flint at the time. I wasn’t really into classic rock, although it wouldn’t have mattered because the Velvet Undergound was hiding a lot deeper than the radio was willing to go, even thirty years after its release and with such a famous producer in Warhol.

The song was moving slow, but with a majestic purpose and I went into a trance like state. It was as if I didn’t want to miss a second of whatever I was being exposed to. Very few songs or albums can do that to me, and I have learned to pay attention when I come across them. The melodic drumming of Maureen Tucker (Moe) sounded so raw and simplistic, but still got done what she needed to do.

Lou Reed’s voice was calming at times, singing about…well heroin. If your reading this at home and you are scratching your head, going “what the fuck is this”, all I can say is that you have to listen to the music and judge for yourself. The album was released in 1967 and the subject matter was about as taboo as William Burroughs release of Junky some fourteen years earlier in 1953, talking about similar topics. The song takes the listener on this fantastic audio voyage, out into the world of Lou Reed’s mind.

The song had been, at least partially inspired by Lou’s drug habits, drug users and the world around him in New York during Factory years. Lou was a big fan of the arts, with a heavy mark on poetry and authors, and it shines through with his work. Many years later, I would devour Lou Reed material, and the content was exactly what someone might expect with his background and taste. He sang about depravity, love, ugly things, wonderful things, sex, drugs, drinking, fucking, loss, sadness, and beyond. I would learn all this later….so back to that first record.

 

When “Heroin” stopped playing, after a very exotic ending, it was over for me. I was in. The ending reminded me of the NIN’s song Hurt, from the 1994 release Downward Spiral. Lou’s ending of “Heroin” reminded me of Trent Reznor closing out the tune “Hurt” in dramatic fashion (just an observation). Anyway, before I had more time to regain my composure, another track came on from the “Banana Album” and this time it was “Venus in Furs”.

This was another spellbinding song as I would come to find out over the next five minutes or so. The song has heavy reflections about taboo sexual practices which might best be labeled under “BDSM” ( activities involving bondage, discipline, dominance, and submission for those looking to spice things up on the couch or bedroom). I didn’t know it at the time, but the song was named after a novella, written by an Austrian author named Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, which was also called “Venus in Furs” and was published in 1870.

For the Velvets, I simply refer to them as “smart music” and not because they are some bullshit mad geniuses or anything like that. They just had a lot of interesting perspectives, influences, and one of kind music, that most of  1960’s America could not wrap their heads around.

There were no more songs after that, the party bugs had heard enough and were moving onto something a little harder. I believe it was “Waiting Room” by Fugazi but it’s been a long time. My friend Nate-Dogg was a huge supporter of punk music and when he got going, “one never could tell” once the Polish punk rocker got going. Most songs lasted about thirty seconds after midnight, but it was the 1990’s so who gives a shit.

The party ended around 4am and that was that. I went home and passed out, nearly forgetting the new stuff I had heard, like a dream wearing off after a couple of minutes in the morning. I still remembered the songs, forgotten the names, and kind of left it where it sat in my head. By design or dumb luck, a few days later, while drinking again, I started watching the The Doors movie by Oliver Stone, which had come out in 1991.

There comes a point, when Jim Morrison and other members of the Doors, attend a party at Andy Warhol’s famous factory in New York City, or so the movie goes. In real life there was definitely interactions while The Doors were in New York City, Andy Warhol had reportedly wanted Jim to appear naked in a movie he was making but couldn’t build the nerve to ask. Jim and Nico would start some kind of romance, much to the disliking of Lou and the other band mates, who probably despised the Doors and what they were doing. I think it had more to do with a jealous heart, but who knows, all three of them are dead, making it rather difficult to solve capers at this point. The relationship with Nico was over in a month and Jim was back to his rocket ship of destruction, eventually dying on July 3rd, 1971 in France. He is buried at Pere Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.

So anyway…Jim and the Doors are at the factory in the movie, and the song “Heroin” by the Velvets is playing in the background. I suddenly remembered the band, the evening on Knob Hill, and I started to get serious. This was obviously a sign from the great cosmic vibration god of the universe and I would have been a fool to ignore him. I decided to get busy. I first needed to get a copy of the album “Velvet Undergound and Nico” and start doing my homework. I didn’t know why, but the message had been received.

I was able to find a copy of the “Banana Album” at a local record shop and so began my sweet sweet love affair with the Velvets, which has stood the test of time, even though there wasn’t much to work with. The album (cd) that I owned first became a permanent resident in my stereo. I played it beyond what I would consider a normal or healthy infatuation. It became cult like for awhile, and I didn’t feel the need to move beyond that first album for some time. I decided that I would need to find copy on vinyl, and original if at all possible. I started hitting record stores in Detroit and Ann Arbor, and while I was in AA I managed to find an album for about twenty bucks. It obviously wasn’t an original, that had the “peel-able banana graphic art work, that revealed a pink banana” designed by Andy Warhol. No, it was just a lousy reproduction, but it was a record, affordable, and my Velvet journey was to continue.

There was one original release album in Ann Arbor, but it was missing the peel-able sticker and they wanted like fifty bucks, which I had trouble coming up with considering in 1998, the year this was going on I had made $4.80 an hour at the grocery store I had worked at and $8.00 an pouring concrete. It all went into gas, beer, and cigarettes back then, leaving very little behind for fifty dollar semi complete records.

About six months later, I came across a box set containing all the V.U. material and brought one. But things didn’t end there. The more I learned about Lou Reed, the more I was interested. I would go on to locate a copy of Victor Bockris’ book “Transformer” which chronicled Lou’s life in wonderful detail and never looked back. I was lucky enough to catch Lou Reed on tour in Detroit, when he played St. Andrew’s Hall back in 2003.

He played some Velvet material and also a lot of stuff off his eighteenth studio album “Ecstasy” which had come out in 2000. As the years wore on, the Velvets finally burned off a bit for me, but only after I had them riding shotgun for five solid years. Most Lou Reed/Velvet Underground fans are the same way, at least all fourteen of them I have met since 1998.

That’s a joke, kind of. The Lou Reed show at St. Andrew’s in Detroit was sold out, so there’s got to be at least a couple hundred of us, but that was nearly twenty years ago, so who knows. It was once said that the “Velvet Undergound and Nico” album had sold about thirty thousand copies in it’s first five years of existence, or so said musician Brian Eno in 1982. Eno said “everyone who brought one of those 30,000 copies started a band”.

I once watched a documentary on Lou Reed and he said something to the affect that “if that was true, I’d like to see the royalties” or something like that. That’s classic Lou right there. Sharp, witty, humorous, and interesting…just like his music. Well, I guess I can get on with the music review. So here goes:

                                                                                                                 Side One

 Song #1  Sunday Morning (2:53)

Song #2 I’m waiting for my man (4:37)

Song #3 Femme Fatale (2:35)

Song #4 Venus in Furs (5:07)

Song #5 Run Run Run (4:18)

Song #6 All Tomorrows Parties (5:55)

Side Two

Song #1 Heroin (7:05)

Song #2 There she goes again (2:30)

Song #3 I’ll be your mirror (2:01)   

Song #4 The Black Angel’s death song (3:10)

Song #5 European Son (7:40)

Obviously, I’ve covered a little bit about “Heroin” and “Venus in Furs” which are both amazing songs and probably some of the most recognizable Velvet Underground material, outside of “I’m waiting for the man” which is about a guy going to score some dope. Unlike “Heroin” as far as sound and atmosphere, “I’m waiting for the man” covers similar topics. Drugs. The piano by John Cale is so amazing on that piece, that it can be just as addictive as the Venus and Heroin. You can get stuck on a song, and then when you finally get over it, there are more lined up, just waiting for you. It can be a curse, but I didn’t mind it at all. Not nearly as much as the people who had to get drunk with me and listen to “yet another night of V.U. classics” over the the years. There are worse things in life….I’m sure of it.

 

I enjoy the Nico tracks, but she really wasn’t part of the band and wasn’t around much after this album. She went on to do some pretty interesting solo stuff, but that is for another day (Frozen Warnings). European Son and The Black Angel’s death song are pretty good, but obviously I have my favorite favorites. And for Andy Warhol’s part in all this? Besides paying for everything, he let the band be who they were. Allowing for the music to be made in the first place. Andy Warhol did not meddle, and maybe that’s how you produce correctly, giving space for people to be who they are. I’m sure it doesn’t work well in translation to other things, but in the case of this album….and the people invloved….it was pure genius.

 

I guess there really isn’t that much more to say about this album except that if you’ve never heard of the V.U. and perhaps your looking for something that is “just different” than go pick it up. For twenty bucks, your really not out shit, and who knows, it might speak to you in a way that you’ve never experienced before.

 

Further: The album vanished shortly after release, which may only have been noticed at all because of Andy Warhol’s profile at that time in America and his association with the group. But a funny thing started to happen about ten years after the album’s release. People finally started to recognize the genius of it, even if it took a long time. In 2003 Spin magazine included the Velvets in the top fifteen most influential bands of all time. NPR released a top 100 list in 2000, which they cited as “the most important musical releases of the 20th century” and the Velvets made the list.

In 2003 Rolling Stone Magazine listed “The Velvet Undergound and Nico” album at number 13 of the top 500 albums of all time. In 2012, that list was re-visited and the Velvets held onto to that spot respectively. In 2006, the VU album was named by Time Magazine as one of the 100 best albums of all time.

That’s all for this edition of the vinyl review. I hope the readers at ROX-TV have enjoyed the stories, music, and everything else in the middle. Please keep coming back for more reviews, news, books that matter, odd movies, and other shit including the music from the underground and beyond. Thanks again and have a good night.

 

Signing Off,

 

Mike Shepard

ROX-TV Head Writer

shepard2909@hotmail.com

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