Velvet Underground - Liturgies from the Underground

The Velvet Underground are one of the most innovative and influential groups in the entire history of rock. They are the dark, subterranean soul of American "alternative" culture, the roots of white, urban rock, but also the forerunners of punk and new wave a full decade ahead of time. Their birth is intimately tied to the milieu of 1960s New York: a melting pot of avant-gardes, artists and underground circles. A parallel reality, quite literally "underground" compared to the one on the surface.

In the early Sixties, Lou Reed (born Louis Firbank, originally from Freeport, Long Island, NY) goes to study English literature at Syracuse University with the poet Delmore Schwartz. But music is his real obsession. Together with fellow student Sterling Morrison, he plays in various New York bands. And it's in the Big Apple that he meets another "doomed genius", John Cale (born in Cwmamman, Wales), a composition student who had recently moved to the United States to work with Leonard Bernstein and devote himself to experimental art. Together, they form a band called Primitives, then Warlocks, then The Velvet Underground (named after a pornographic novella).

In 1965, Reed, Morrison, Cale and percussionist Angus McLise (already part of avant-garde musician LaMonte Young's circle) form the core of the Velvet Underground in New York, recording, under the name Underground, some demos (later included on the five-disc Peel Slowly And See, released in 1995) of songs that would make the band's history: "Venus In Furs", "Black Angel's Death Song", "Heroin".

But the Velvets' jagged sound is hardly what record labels of the time are looking for, as they scramble to find a counter to the "British Invasion". So for Reed and co. there's nothing left but the "underground" circuit. They play at the Café Bizarre, in Greenwich Village. But their lyrics are too scandalous, and they themselves grow tired of the constant censorship imposed on their performances. One night, despite an explicit ban, they play "Black Angel's Death Song" and are fired on the spot. That night, however, they find a new fan: Andy Warhol, king of pop art, trailing a large retinue of underground artists, but also prostitutes, drag queens, addicts and outcasts of every kind, pulled from the bowels of New York. Warhol wants the Velvet Underground for his multimedia show, first titled "Andy Warhol Up-Tight", then "The Exploding Plastic Inevitable".

This motley congregation of artists forges a mysterious, unsettling image for the group, in which drummer Maureen "Moe" Tucker meanwhile takes McLise's place. But the most significant change is decided by Warhol himself, who imposes his protégée Nico on the lineup, a blonde German valkyrie with a spectral voice and a past as a model and actress (an appearance in Federico Fellini's "Dolce vita"), who had come to America as Brian Jones's companion. She will embody the group's expressionist, Mitteleuropean soul, the one most intimately connected to surreal German theatre (Bertolt Brecht, Kurt Weill), but also to "accursed" French poetry (Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Verlaine). The Velvet Underground debut with Nico in February 1966 at the "Cinematheque"; a few months later comes the first official performance of Andy Warhol's show at the "Dom Theatre".

"Andy Warhol Up-Tight" boasts an eccentric touring troupe that upends New York nights. Besides the songs of the Velvet Underground and Nico, the show includes screenings of Warhol's films, lighting by Danny Williams, dancing by Gerard Malanga and Edie Sedgwick, slides and footage by Paul Morrissey, photographs by Billy Linich and Nat Finkelstein, filming by Barbara Rubin, and the active participation of the audience.

Another bizarre record of this collaboration is a 70-minute black-and-white film titled "The Velvet Underground And Nico: A Symphony Of Sound". A film with a troubled gestation: shooting is in fact interrupted by a police raid on the studio, prompted by complaints about excessive noise. The footage will later be used by Warhol's ensemble as a silent backdrop projection during live performances.

A natural evolution of "Andy Warhol Up-Tight", "The Exploding Plastic Inevitable" is a multimedia show with an even more devastating sonic and visual impact. The lyrics combine sadomasochistic frenzy with freely associated imagery. The overall sound seems to spring from a marriage between Bob Dylan and the Marquis de Sade. The performers (a troupe of twelve people) parade on stage with whips and leather boots, enormous electric torches, hypodermic syringes, barbells and wooden crosses. Gel filters of different colours placed over the lenses turn images from old black-and-white films into colourful kaleidoscopes. And then of course there's the deafening music of the Velvet Underground, with the dancers — Malanga foremost among them — writhing on stage ever more frantically. Everything is fused together into an ecstasy of collective hysteria, a hedonistic ritual in which the ghosts of pain (drugs, marginalisation, alienation, crime, paranoia) are transfigured into art and exorcised. In those shows, nothing is conventional. The drum kit, for instance, is often replaced by trash cans stolen off the street, with microphones placed underneath (an idea that will lead the more obtuse critics to speak of "garbage music"). These surreal happenings become the main attraction on the other side of the Big Apple, the darker and more seductive one. Singers, actors, promoters, artists, poets descend into the city's dark bowels to capture the wild spirit of the Warholian wreckage's weltanschauung. One night, Allen Ginsberg even takes the stage with Nico to sing "Hare Krishna": almost a bridge between the beat generation and the future new wave, which will likewise take root in New York.

Despite the harshness and abjection of the subject matter, Warhol and company's art is "cultured", aristocratic. In it one can identify a generational fringe light years away from the peace-and-love hippies of the West Coast. Nevertheless, the "Exploding Plastic Inevitable" attempt to make inroads even in the radiant California of flower-power. And naturally, the "disgusting New York bacteria", pale and emaciated, clad in black and silver leather, still cause a scandal. Malanga is arrested by the San Francisco police and held in jail for a night on charges of possessing an object intended to cause offence (his whip...).

Shiny, shiny, shiny boots of leather

Whiplash girlchild in the dark

Clubs and bells, your servant, dont forsake him

Strike, dear mistress, and cure his heart

("Venus In Furs")

But the move from stage to recording studio is now ripe. Warhol, through the Factory — a kind of permanent artistic studio for his clan — gets his protégés' debut album released, and he himself signs off on the cover with the most famous banana in the history of rock, even peelable in the first limited edition of the record.

The Velvet Underground And Nico (January 1967) is one of the most important albums of the twentieth century, one of those works that mark a before and an after, a definitive watershed between two eras and two ways of conceiving rock music. The guitar pairing of Lou Reed and Sterling Morrison, the "factotum" John Cale (viola, piano, bass), the fatal chanteuse Nico, and rock's most famous female drummer, Maureen Tucker, form a unique and devastating alchemy. A sick, depraved ritual, a nightmare set to the obsessive, nervy pulse of the metropolis. Modern like none of their contemporaries, yet steeped in a wild primitivism, Lou Reed and co. manage to forge a unique, unprecedented sound, with an electric viola, a guitar run through full distortion with the volume always maxed out, a singular tom-tom beat, and a second guitar providing support for the first. LaMonte Young's legacy is represented above all by the use of drones from Indian music and the avant-garde fusion of raga and psychedelia.

The Velvet Underground And Nico stands in relation to the Jefferson Airplane's acid-blues the way Decadentism stands in relation to Romanticism. There's no more room for dreams and for "total" love, only for a desperate nihilism, depicted through stories of alienation, loneliness, physical and moral ruin, amid sadomasochistic relationships, drugs, prostitutes, violence and murder. The vehicle used isn't far removed from European Expressionism. But the Velvets are the bards of the turbulent, vice-ridden New York of those years, intoning both its triumphant apology and its funeral lament. Urban decay dresses itself in the surreal colors of pop art and the sounds of the avant-garde to become a work of art. And the West Coast sun sets forever in the basements of New York, making way for the darkness of the Velvet Underground.

The record's opening, however, is a soft, sun-kissed ballad, "Sunday Morning", with Reed's voice rendered effeminate through numerous overdubs and a reverb effect. The following "Waiting For The Man" again puts Reed center stage in a rough rock'n'roll, with a monotone rhythm and a detached, repetitive vocal delivery: a lodestar for the entire subsequent Detroit sound of the Stooges and MC5. The lyrics narrate the anxieties and fears of someone waiting for his fix from "The Man", the dealer who hangs around Lexington Avenue.

"Femme Fatale", entrusted to the enchanting voice of Nico, is a sweet, retro-flavored ballad that, behind so much apparent tenderness, lets threatening signs of perversion seep through, to the point that it would later be regarded as the prototype of the "bitch-oriented song". In fact, the track was inspired by Edie Sedgwick, the young actress who reigned over the Factory, who broke with Warhol in February 1966 following a furious falling-out over money (switching to the camp of his "great rival" Bob Dylan), and who would die of a barbiturate overdose in 1971, at the age of 28.

Every ray of sunlight that has appeared so far is extinguished forever in "Venus In Furs". It's the masterpiece within the masterpiece, inspired by the novel of the same name ("Venus in Furs") by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, the writer from whom the term "masochism" derives. John Cale's electric viola drone conjures apocalyptic scenarios, with a melody that spirals in on itself, giving rise to a kind of "psychedelic madrigal". Lou Reed's calm, cynical spoken delivery, narrating a sick, morbid tale of sex, adds a further touch of anguish, blending perfectly with Maureen Tucker's tribal drumming and the deathly pulse of the bass drum. The following "Run, Run, Run" might seem almost like a breath of fresh air, but behind Reed's humming lies a surreal atmosphere worthy of Expressionist theater, heightened by a driving rhythm and brief guitar solos.

It's only a momentary distraction before plunging once again into the city's underbelly, with the funereal nursery rhyme of "All Tomorrow's Parties", Andy Warhol's favorite song, as well as a "milestone" for every dark sound to come. A splendid psychedelic opening, barely smudged by a few bursts of noise, accompanies Nico's entrance, more than ever a priestess of the night, with her spectral, emphatic singing. The pace is stately and hypnotic, with a surreal, repeated piano backdrop, martial drumming, dry guitar arabesques, and a bassline darker than ever. The descent into the underworld continues toward the abysses of mad decadence in "Heroin": seven minutes of pure paranoia, in which the "malaise of living" is dressed in majestic sounds and raw lyricism. Reed enters with his baritone vocal, telling of needles and poison in the veins, of fleeting ecstasy and perpetual anguish. We are far from the hippie philosophy that promotes drug use as a means of expanding perceptual capacities: here the only goal is unconsciousness, sleep, death. Tucker's lascivious tom-tom (a kind of funeral accompaniment with a two-toned drum that runs through the entire track), Cale's flayed viola and Reed's jingle-jangle guitars fuel an atmosphere of apocalypse.

If "There She Goes Again" is perhaps the record's only weak moment, with its carefree, jarring refrain amid so much desolation, "I'll Be Your Mirror" is another magical nursery rhyme, as well as Reed's act of love for Nico: a magic mirror for her statuesque beauty. But it's also the last chance to catch one's breath. The finale, in fact, offers two savage bacchanals in "Black Angel's Death Song" and "European Son". The first track, dedicated to his friend, the poet Delmore Schwartz, is an acid dive into the most noise-ridden, dissonant psychedelia, revealing the tendency toward obsessiveness and minimalism typical of John Cale. "European Son", meanwhile, is the journey's final stop: a free-jazz maelstrom of noise, distorted guitars, feedback and propitiatory tom-toms.

"The Velvet Underground And Nico" sold only a few hundred copies upon its release, but each of those who bought it is today a music critic or a musician.

(Brian Eno)

Released in a limited run, The Velvet Underground And Nico was virtually ignored by the public, but it immediately won over the critics of the time. As Brian Eno famously put it: "It sold only a few hundred copies upon its release, but each of those who bought it is today a music critic or a musician". It would later be word of mouth, or the band's gradual emergence from the shadows of history, aided also by the fame Lou Reed would go on to acquire, that brought it back to the surface. Prescient like almost no other record of its time, it has become a milestone for punk, new wave and even post-rock bands. Its noisy deconstruction of rock, its art-music synesthesia, and its violently urban, literary lyrics make it a unique, unrepeatable work.

But the band's internal balance soon shatters. The struggle for leadership within the group leads to Nico's departure and a break from Warhol's orbit. Even in New York, Reed and his bandmates begin to encounter the wariness of those who see in them the seeds of decadence and ruin. The band thus relocates to Boston, where they work on their second album, White Light White Heat (1967).

It's a work that heightens the noise-driven, paranoid extremism of the sound, at the expense of the melodies and "fatalistic" tones of the debut. The horror narrative, made up of characters crushed by their paranoid-obsessive manias, is amplified by a swarm of feedback. The result is shattering, but, inevitably, something of the debut's perverse magic is lost.

The opening, entrusted to the title track, ranges between a Jerry Lee Lewis-style rockabilly, Reed's neurotic vocal and a "pop" chorus, before spilling out into a thicket of guitar distortion (the song would later be covered by David Bowie and would become a staple of his live performances).

"The Gift" is the unsettling tale of a man who decides to mail himself inside a parcel to his beloved, who, unaware, slashes the package open with scissors, killing him. Cale's narrating voice is backed by Tucker's monotone beat and disturbed by a jungle of distortion and noise. But the Velvets are also masters at crafting decadent melodies, and so, for a moment, the echo of the debut's ballads resurfaces in the sick psychedelia of "Lady Godiva's Operation", with Cale's dreamy vocal and Reed's rough one overlapping, while the latter's Indian-flavored guitar heightens the hypnotic effect.

And while "Here She Comes Now", a four-line dissertation, seems almost to grant a truce, with its soft guitar and relaxed atmosphere, the epileptic scream of "I Heard Her Call My Name" unleashes the adrenaline once again, in an impetuous rhythmic crescendo and a devastating roar of feedback.

But it's still nothing compared to the seventeen minutes of "Sister Ray", a deafening bacchanal of disjointed sounds and distortion, which remains to this day one of the most reckless tracks a rock band has ever composed. The listener is flogged by the convulsive, relentless beat of the drumming and by the violence of the wall of sound erected by Reed's guitar and Cale's dissonant organ. The result is an orgiastic ritual of unprecedented self-destructive virulence: a hymn to urban chaos and, ultimately, to the madness of the human race.

Candy says I’ve come to hate my body

and all that it requires in this world

Candy says I’d like to know completely

what others so discretely talk about

(“Candy Says”)

The band's perennially unstable and restless nature, however, led a year later to the departure of John Cale, replaced by Doug Yule. It thus fell to Reed alone to write the songs for The Velvet Underground (1969), which offers some fine compositions from the New York songwriter: “Candy Says” (dedicated to the drag queen Candy Darling, who would later appear in one of Reed's later hits, “Walk On The Wild Side”), the psychedelic “What Goes On”, the murky blues of “Some Kinda Love”, and the delicate “Pale Blue Eyes”, which probes the fragility, regrets and hopes of a love now spent and unrepeatable.

Refined songs, tinged with intimacy and aching melancholy, though no longer carrying the primal fury of earlier records. The Velvet Underground were heading toward their sunset, but theirs was still a noble decline, steeped in a fatalistic spleen that always holds a certain allure.

But the album's lack of success accelerated the band's ongoing process of self-destruction, and they broke up after recording the follow-up, Loaded (1970). Recorded with new bassist Yule singing on 4 of the 10 tracks and with Tucker now on maternity leave, Loaded reveals a partly unfamiliar side of the band: more reflective and bluesier, as shown by “Sweet Jane”, a track in D major built on four simple chords yet still able to stir even the most distracted listener, or “Rock & Roll”, which revisits the Rolling Stones through a warped, estranging lens, or again the proto-slowcore ballad “New Age”, the eccentric blues of “Train Round The Bend” and the bewitching grace of “Oh! Sweet Nuthin'”.

Although a step below the band's masterpieces, Loaded still offers a handful of great songs and marks a good starting point for understanding Reed's subsequent solo career.

The live albums The Velvet Underground Live At Max’s Kansas City (1972) and the double 1969 Velvet Underground Live (1974) tried in vain to reignite the legend. But it was above all the excellent solo careers of John Cale and Lou Reed that, by the late '70s, helped spark a rediscovery of the band's first two albums. These records became essential touchstones for new wave bands (from Pere Ubu to Joy Division, from Television to Sonic Youth) and even went gold in the '80s, following the release of two collections of rarities and unreleased material (VU in 1985 and Another View in 1986). Yet the story of these former New York outcasts seems marked by a curse. Their mentor Andy Warhol passed away, and two of the band's original members, Nico and Sterling Morrison, died in mysterious circumstances.

In 1990, Cale and Reed attempted a reconciliation with the Andy Warhol requiem-work Songs For Drella, followed by an improbable Velvet Underground reunion, which saw them touring the world in major arenas thirty years after their shaky beginnings in New York basements. Live MCMXCIII (1993) documents this rediscovered unity, but it did not prevent the band's definitive breakup. In 1995, Peel Slowly And See gathered a wealth of unreleased material from every album into a five-CD box set.

The legacy left by Reed and his bandmates to later generations is among the richest in modern music. Their sonic bacchanals, decadent ballads and raw, perverse lyrics left a permanent mark on rock history. So much so that the number of bands that, in some way, owe a debt to the Velvet Underground is practically incalculable.

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