at a glance...

Hometown: New York, NY
Year Formed: 1965

Members:
Lou Reed -guitar, vocals
John Cale -electric viola, bass, piano
Sterling Morrison -rhythm guitar, bass
Maureen Tucker -drums, percussion
Nico -vocals

Bands In The Family:
Nico, Lou Reed, John Cale, Moe Tucker, Eno and Cale

Notes:
The Velvet Underground came to define the look, sound and attitude of rock 'n' roll New York. They built their reputation on the lower east side as house band for Andy Warhol's Exploding Plastic Inevitable, a travelling party/art installation that delivered maximum sensory impact through the vehicles of blazing light shows, noisy rock and rampant drug use. The band soon tired of the Warhol connection, with Reed in particular eager to forget art and get on with the rock. After two albums he and Cale went their separate ways, and the album Loaded was essentially a Lou Reed solo project. Not long after, The Velvets were no more, survived by their tremendous impact on underground rock.

Links:
Read Ink Blot's interview with Moe Tucker...
The Wild Side of Lou Reed
poems, bootlegs and more
Moe Tucker's TajMoeHal is
an incredible site run by Moe herself
Rock 'n Roll Animal
concert listing, bootleg page and more.

This much we know about The Velvet Underground: 1) Lou Reed's jaded junkie observations changed the rules for pop lyricists. 2) John Cale's dissonant noisescapes gave birth to the rock underground. 3) This album, dropped by Andy Warhol into the public consciousness like a live rat in a restaurant, changed the course of music without so much as a whiff of the pop charts.

Here's some things you might discover next time you listen to The Velvet Underground and Nico: 1) Reed was a great guitarist, spinning leads on "I'm Waiting For the Man" and "Run Run Run" like Chuck Berry with heartburn, layering venom on top of great rock 'n' roll riffs. 2) Mo Tucker and Sterling Morrison were a revelatory rhythm machine, as exciting at their quixotic best ("I'm Waiting For the Man," "There She Goes Again," "Heroin") as Bonham and Jones or Entwhistle, Townshend and Moon. 3) Andy Warhol was a nipple. Shoehorning "chanteuse" Nico into the lineup could have ruined some great chemistry (it didn't - she holds her own), and his eagerness to promote the band with his name was, in hindsight, ineffective and crass. But then Warhol was all about surface, and this album shows him to be out of his depth alongside the greatest art-rock band ever.

If you like The Velvet Underground, check out:
R.E.M. Murmur
Stereolab Cobra and Phases...
Spiritualized Pure Phase
Low Secret Name
Galaxie 500 This Is Our Music
The Velvet Underground Loaded
Lou Reed Transformer
Acetone Acetone