Published on Apr 13, 2000
Like many visionary artists, musicians or otherwise, the Velvet
Underground were never fully appreciated while they were alive and
well. But thanks in part to the solo successes of band members Lou
Reed and John Cale, and in part to the numerous artists who cited
them as influences, including R.E.M., who covered three of their
songs on the
Dead Letter Office LP, the impact this album has had on rock
music is still being felt 30 years later.
The five CD
Peel Slowly And See box contains all four Velvets LPs and
more outtakes and B-sides than most of us would know what to do
with, and it is perhaps more vital to own than any other multi-disc
retrospective of a rock artist other than perhaps the Beatles. But
if budget permits only one Velvet Underground album for the time
being, make it this one, their groundbreaking debut.
Where to start? “Sunday Morning,” the record’s opener, may very
well be the only rock song ever with a celeste, a xylophone-like
instrument that Cale found sitting around in the studio. “Heroin”
is the most familiar track here, a haunting tale of drug addiction
set to Lou Reed’s quivering voice and two simple chords, repeated
over and over. But it’s far from repetitive; alternating between
slow and fast, loud and quiet, it keeps the listener hanging on
Reed’s every word.
The most accessible tracks other than “Heroin” are the poppier
ones, such as “Waiting For The Man” and “Femme Fatale.” The former
is a blues-like alienation dirge sung by Reed, while Nico, the
German singer who was only with the Velvets for this one album,
takes the vocals on the latter and sings an amusing story of a
woman is “just a little tease / see the way she walks / hear the
way she talks.” Nico also sings on “All Tomorrow’s Parties,” a
playful jab at the hipper-than-thou New York artsy social scene, of
which Andy Warhol tried to make the Velvets a part.
The more ambitious songs take a while to get used to, but are
ultimately even more satisfying. “Venus In Furs” and “The Black
Angel’s Death Song” are the album’s centerpieces, and are like no
music ever recorded, before or since. The slow pulsing of the
tambourine, Maureen Tucker’s delicate drumming, Lou Reed’s somber
vocals and bass guitar, and most distinct of all, Cale’s electric
violin. And “European Son,” described by Reed years later as
“musical masturbation,” is a seven minute wall of noise, not an
unusual piece by today’s standards, but this was 1967 after all,
the same year that “Windy” and “Kind Of A Drag” hit number one. For
a rock band to write about anything remotely disturbing other than
a broken heart was unheard of. It would be a gross understatement
to say that the Velvet Underground were ahead of their time.
Though it was probably unintentional, there has never been a
rock album so brilliantly sequenced. Rather than beginning with a
bang, the album starts off slow and builds to a climax – “Venus In
Furs” arrives just in time, and the album’s most intense moments
are evenly spaced among the comparatively lightweight. “Heroin” is
followed by “There She Goes Again,” perhaps the album’s most
‘normal’ song, but then comes Nico’s “I’ll Be Your Mirror,” a cute
but extremely eccentric acoustic love song. “The Black Angel’s
Death Song” tears that immediately to pieces, and then “European
Son” comes along and pandemonium ensues.
To fully explore all the nuances of
The Velvet Underground And Nico would take longer than the
eight hours it took to record the album in the first place, an
album that was probably never intended for this kind of analysis.
Perhaps then, the only real essence of what this album means is
that it set a blueprint for dozens, possibly hundreds of budding
musicians, and showed them they could do it too. The Velvets often
drew crowds of less than 100 to their shows, but among the
teenagers in their audiences were future Pretender Chrissie Hynde
and future Car Ric Ocasek, and many others who went forth and
started their own bands.
We hear the influence of the Velvet Underground most in the all
of the little bands that could; the informal garage band clutter as
a contrast to highly polished studio musicians. You could make a
good case for the Velvet Underground as the pioneers of
“alternative rock,” and thus for
The Velvet Underground And Nico as the first alternative
album. But labels aside, there is nothing quite like it.