The Velvet Underground And Nico

“[…] we finally were signed to a record company really on the basis of Andy [Warhol] […] I don’t know if we’d have got the contract if he didn’t say he’d do the cover. Or if Nico wasn’t so beautiful”

And what a cover that was: a peelable yellow banana skin which, upon peeling, reveals a high contrast pink banana.

Warhol is also listed as the producer although in practice he gave the band members pretty much all control over the music.

I’m Waiting For My Man

The 2nd track off the album offers a good glimpse at what Rock’n’ Roll sounds like under the Velvet’s interpretation.

The first thing a listener would notice is the unrelenting fervor of the beat: apart from occasional embellishments (notably a catchy riff played on what sounds like a 12 string guitar), all the parts are locked into the same monotonic rhythm which propels the song forward and gives it abundant energy.

The song features a distorted guitar and a piano percussively playing chords (which get noisy as the song progresses, e.g. adding block chords and high-register extensions à la Boogie-Woogie). The bass plays a simple ostinato up until the end where it substitutes a walking bassline. Drums are played with no frills – merely keeping and accentuating the beat.

The structure of the song is that of a limerick – ABA’.

The A section has but two chords, alternating between the first and fourth chords (D, G respectively).
The B section has an ascneding sequence of chords: D, #F, G, A, creating an escalating tension before we’re back to D and G as before, providing an adequate resolution.

The effect of all this is exuberating: it gives an enormous feeling of energy (again), It might make you want to move, though the rhythm may be too simple for actually dancing.

Added to all this are the lyrics and the vocal performance of Lou Reed. The lyrics are an example of hard social realism very uncommon for popular music at the time.

They dryly describe a scene of waiting for a drug dealer, from the perspective of an addict. They include depictions of his withdrawl-induced state (“feel sick and dirty, more dead than alive”), commentary on social duplicity (“Everybody’s pinned you but nobody cares”) and racial geography (“Hey white boy, what ya doin up town?”), and a sombre look into the cycle of addiction (after getting his fix: “I’m feeling good […] until tomorrow but that’s just some other time”).

It feels authentic. As for the vocals – Reed’s performance has a semi-speechy pattern to it but without losing the melody or the energy of the song. There’s a nitty-gritty urban coolness to his delivery, the kind you’d associate with hard-boiled literature and film-noir.

So what do we have here? A song that tells a story; that feels authentic; that has simple harmony and rhythm, easy to groove to if not exactly dance to; that has something like a hook in that pleasant D-G harmonic back-and-forth combined with that cool guitar lick;

and that’s packed with energy to the brim – who cares about coffee, listen to this and it will pick you up.

Is it any wonder this song has been covered by so many artists? (We’ll get back to that later).

Now let’s move on to our next song.

Venus In Furs

The 4th track off the album is Sterling Morrison’s favourite. He felt this song exemplifies best what the VU were all about. Let’s see why.

Here the legacy of Cale’s work in minimalism comes to the fore – his viola is used to provide a constant drone during the verses, switching to a convetional role only during the chorus (as well as playing embellishments throughout the song).

The uses of a string instrument for melody, drone and embellishments were a complete novelty in popular music at the time and to this day are uncommon (not to be confused with the common use of string orchestra for harmonic support). The guitar too is played in a variety of techniques – including a very quick strumming which produces a noisy tone.

So right off the bat we have unique instrumentation and – possibly after acquiring a taste – it’s quite appealing.

But primarily this song is a mood oriented one. The drone, the monotonic rhythm, the drumming which accentuates the 4th and 1st beats of the bar, all work together to produce a state of trance in the listener. It’s not that there aren’t hooks at all – one could mention the catchy bass riff – but they’re not the focal point and aren’t strong enough on their own. The trance-like character and the quirky instrumentation are what makes this an interesting song, along with the taboo (for the time) subject matter: The lyrics are about BDSM / kinky sexuality, (indeed, the name “Venus In Furs” is after an erotic novel that Lou Reed found).

So we covered mood and instrumentation. Another strong point is that this song sounds so different it makes you feel special. Add to that the enjoyment of breaking social taboos and the song’s appeal is clear.

Run Run Run

The 5th track off the debut album is a Boggie-Woogie song for people who enjoy a bit of noise.

Structurally, “Run Run Run” is a straightforward rocker, actually close to Boogie Woogie, considering its triplet-based rhythm, although some elements also bring Rockabilly to mind (the guitar tone at times, some of the licks used).

But this doesn’t sound like your average Rock’n’Roller or Boogie and the reason for this is its extensive and intensive use of a myriad kinds of noises and extended techniques – not only for embellishments but often for lead melodic roles!

The song is grounded in a boogy groove and a few killer hooks. its explicit harmony is actually much simpler then the typical bluesy progression – though the melody and bass often imply a richer implicit harmony.

It’s the minimal harmony that allows Reed to really take off in his solos which incorporate classic blues and rock licks but employ them within flights of free-jazz improvization and all sorts of noises and microtones – feedback, trills, glissandos (continuous and discrete), blue notes, minor seconds and block chords, hyper-quick strumming, and so on.

Why is this good? it’s hard to explain. Noise in music is like spice in food. To the uninitiated hot spices in food seem like madness. But when you suddenly acquire the taste almost everything becomes more fun and interesting with some spice (or noise!) added.
To those who acquire the taste – this song has it all. It’s cool, has a groovy backbeat, a wild energy, hooks and licks and riffs and free jazz mayhem and noise galore. Pure fun!

All Tomorrow’s Parties

The 6th track off the debut was Andy Warhol’s favourite. It features Nico on vocals as well as a different kind of drone.

This song was inspired by people Lou Reed met in the Factory and conversation he overheard during their stay as the resident band.
According to John Cale, it’s more specifically about “[…] agirl called Darryl, a beautiful petite blonde with three kids, two of whom were taken away from her.” (2006 interview)

There is something suitably sombre about the melody, about the texture of the song and specially about Nico’s ethereal vocal delivery which seems at once both icy-cold and sorrowful.

This isn’t quite a ballad though. Its tempo is not quite low enough for that and it’s peculiar elements make it too quirky.

By peculiar elements I mean of course the instrumentation: This is the first use in popular music of a prepared piano (paper clips were attached to the piano’s strings to modulate its timbre). This enables the piano to be used for providing a drone – since playing a chord repteadly doesn’t sound as percussive when it’s prepared this way, it sounds almost (!) like a continuous trumming and yet distinctly like the sound of a piano.

It’s clever. It sets a trance-like mood. Nico’s vocals are captivating. Reed’s soloing on the “Ostrich”-tuned guitar (which sounds a lot like a 12-string guitar) have a cool psychedelic flare to them, sounding not dissimilar to The Byrds on songs like “Eight Miles High”. The lyrics are endearingly sombre. All in all it’s a pleasant soursweet experience of a song.

Heroin

The 7th track off the debut is one of Reed’s most renowned songs.

Musically the song is notable for combining 4 features:

1. A constant viola drone employed for most of the song, only to break into chaos during the last verse
2. Harmonic minimalism – there are only 2 chords throughout
3. dynamic variation and tempo variation – every verse builds up not by means of a harmonic progression but by increaing its intensity and speed
4. Moe Tucker’s legendary tribal-like drumming

But to which end are these features used?

The music in this song is some of the saddest in the VU’s catalogue. It’s beyond sombre – it’s bleak. It’s pretty during the early stages of each verse (there is a lovely melancholic guitar hook) and it’s caustic during the late stages when it becomes intense, especially in that last verse where all hell breaks loose.

The Velvet Underground chose to shape this song’s sonic palette this way because it suits the lyrics.

The lyrics are sung from the point of view of a heroin user. On the surface they simply recount the experience of taking heroin. Dig a little deeper and it becomes a song about the protagonist’s feelings of existential angst, meaninglessness and despair brought about by his modernity and its perceived ills. While at first the protagonist tells us how good heroin makes himfeel, he later reveals his true motivations are escapism and a deathwish, not mere fun. He wishes he had been born in a different time. He decries the social and political symptoms of a broken system. He implies that in fact in our world it’s better to just be high and not care, and he goes so far as to declare that (even if he dies as a result of his drug use), he’s better off dead and who are we anyway to moralise him? And maybe in some way he’s right.

The lyrics and the music make for a perfect match. The rise and fall in the musical intensity during each verse accompany the rise and fall in the thematic intensity of the lyrics.

“Heroin” is not a pleasant song (despite its pretty hook), not in any ordinary sense of the word. But it captures a certain mood that hadn’t been addressed before in popular music and it does that so well that it makes for a captivating listening experience.

I’ll Be Your Mirror

The 9th track off the debut is a beautiful melodic ballad. I’m including it here to show that the VU had this side to them as well.

“I’ll Be Your Mirror” features Nico singing the most positive lyrics to be found on the album: a token of sympathy and friendship (it could be read romantically, optionally), an offering of support, reassuring message to the object of the song that he or she is not alone.

This is one of the most easily likable songs the VU ever made, thanks to its conventionally beautiful musical hook and melody and its warm, endearing lyrical theme.

Interesting fact: Lou Reed wrote it especially for Nico and the inspiration came from her telling him “I’ll Be Your Mirror” after a concert (I don’t know if she meant something like what the song conveys though).

White Light / White Heat

‘The Velvet Underground and Nico’ was recorded in early to mid 1966 and was released eventually – after some unexpected delays – in late 1967.

After recording the album, the Velvets (and Nico) toured the U.S. as part of Andy Warhol’s series of mixed media events called ‘Exploding Plastic Inevitable’. These shows combined the Velvets’ music with a flamboyant light show, film screenings, dancers and other elements.

After this ended the Velvets wanted to move on. First, Nico left. Then, one day, Lou Reed surprised the rest of the band by firing Andy Warhol on all of their behalf. Following this, they started touring and performing a lot.

Their 2nd album, ‘White Light / White Heat’ was recorded  on a short break from touring and it shows. The material on their debut had been rehearsed and reworked for months before recording. But this? This was a hasty operation.

During touring the Velvets realised that audiences really didn’t care about the nuances of their musical experimentations and were happy with almost anything as long as it had a strong backbeat.

As a result, WLWH which contains songs written and performed on the road, is the most energetic and hard rocking of their albums.

The title track is the spiritual successor of “Waiting For The Man” from the debut LP.

Harmonically and structurally it’s a 12-bar blues (!). But sonically it’s another beast: It has the monotonic locked-in rhythm and the power chords of “Waiting For The Man”, except it’s even louder and with a slightly higher tempo. Rock’n’Roll!

The 2nd track, ‘The Gift’, is a spoken word experiment. One one channel, John Cale reads a macabre short story that Reed had written. On the other channel the band goes off on a jam session, a superb showcase of their jamming style – noisy feedback and free improvization abound but there’s always a backbone of melodicism. The jam is based on an appealing hook but it diverges from it considerably.

‘I Heard Her Call My Name’ takes its cues from Soul and Gospel music during the verses and chorus; In between them it features some of the most ferocious and exquisite guitar soloing ever recorded in its genre, the quality of which, in my mind, puts Lou Reed in the list of best Free Jazz guitarists of all times, alongside giants like Sonny Sharrock and Derek Bailey.

‘White Light / White Heat’ was recorded in 1967 and released in 1968. Its abrasive character was in part an antagonistic response to the prevalent hippie culture of that time.

It was around that time that internal tensions within the band started to brew haphazardly. There were two creative centers – Reed and Cale – and that’s an unstable structure for any musical group.

Some time after the release of WLWH things have come to a boiling point and Lou Reed presented an ultimatum to Tucker and Morrison – “Either John leaves, or I do”.

And thus John Cale was out.

The Self-Titled Album

To replace John Cale, the remaining velvets recruited Doug Yule, a fan who had been following their live concerts and thus was already very familiar with their existing repertoire.

During this late era of the Velvet Underground, they became less experimental. But they did retain some of their edge and much of their unique approach to Rock’n’Roll.

Candy Says

The self-titled album featured ballads much more prominently then previous albums. A stellar example of the VU’s beautiful balladry is the melancholic opening track, Candy Says.

Written by Reed about a known transgender sex worker who was around at the Factory in the 60’s during the VU’s time as the resident  band there, which is how Reed got to meet her. Unusually it features the newcomer Doug Yule on vocals.

Its lyrics deal with Candy’s yearning to be comfortable with herself and her body and live a less frustrating and tiring existence.

The music is simple and strikingly touching with its melody and arrangement making the song a likely earworm as well as easy to sing along to if you’re so inclined.

What Goes On

The album also had a couple of harder rockers on it, even if not at a level approaching the earlier material. What Goes On is a good example of that.

Gone is the heavily distorted rhythm guitar (though the lead guitar solo is still quite out there – a toned-down, summarised version of Lou Reed’s established noise-drenched style) as is the hard-hitting pulse of previous rockers in their oeuvre, but still – this is a groove-laced, fun and playful rock’n’roll tune. Ain’t nothing wrong about that.

The Murder Mystery

In this song the Velvets proved they were still an experimental band – though their experimentation takes a totally different form this time around.

‘The Murder Mystery’ is one of the most verbose songs in popular music history, containing over 1800 (!) words. Its lyrics are in fact an epic poem. It features all 4 members on vocals – for each verse a different pair of them recite different segments of poetry simultaneously, each taking a different stereo channel.

The result? Musically interesting enough but more a literary work then a song. And the quality? Judge for yourself. You might want to read along though, it’s hard to follow the lyrics by ear.

An in-depth musical and mainly literary analsis of the song and its themes was posted to youtube by Samuel Andreyev in 2017. It’s fascinating in my opinion.

After the self-titled album the band recorded some songs for what should have been their 4th album but was ultimately shelved by their label. As the record company suffered financial difficulties they decided to jettison their least succesful artists and the Velvets were one of them.

The tracks from these sessions were ultimately released post-humously in the 1980’s, most of them as part of the album VU.

Here is ‘Foggy Notion’ from these sessions, showcasing the remarkable lead guitar of Sterling Morrison. Reed’s humble praise of Morrison’s guitar style was indeed well earned:

Loaded

In response to their new label’s demand to make a record “loaded with hits” for a change, the band named their next LP “Loaded”, with tongue firmly in cheek.

The album did contain a few catchier numbers but failed to hit the high sales hoped for by their label.

It also notably features a different style of drumming then the usual, since Moe Tucker was in late stages of pregnancy and was on maternal leave at the time.

One of the best songs on “Loaded” was ‘Sweet Jane’. Lou Reed would later incorporate it – somewhat rearranged – in his solo repertoire and it became one of his most beloved songs.

A personal favourite of mine from Loaded is ‘Rock and Roll’:

‘Who Loves The Sun’ shows the band’s attempt to garner more mainstream appeal. Does it work? You be the judge…

Having done ‘Loaded’ The Velvets reached a crossroad. They were no longer feeling it. They were tired of being ignored and not gaining any ground towards success. Gradually the original members would leave the band. The first was Lou Reed who got fed up with the pressure and bored with the whole schtick and decided to see in which direction he could go on his own. He quit in August 1970.

And now the band which was basically Lou Reed’s band ever since Cale left, became Doug Yule’s band.

Under Yule’s leadership the band released one final album, ‘Squeezed’.

To fans of the band this incarnation of them was Velvet Underground in name only and its output is barely worth the time mentioning it.

In 1971 Sterlin Morrison left the band to pursue an academic career. Soon after Moe Tucker left as well.

In 1972 Doug Yule disbanded the group.

It seems like the end but it was really the beginning. A new generation of musicians would take what the Velvets had started to new apices in the 1970’s and beyond.

And the world of popular music will never be the same again.

Read about it here in the 3rd part of this book: