The Velvet Underground & Nico - The Velvet Underground & Nico (1967)

John Cale produced Patti Smith's debut album. The Patti Smith Group chose Cale based on his body of work with artists such as Nico and Iggy Pop. Although the group thought they were getting a technically savvy producer, they ended up with a more conceptual producer. From the beginning, Cale conflicted with Patti Smith as he challenged her to rewrite music, lyrics, etc. Not to be pushed around, Patti and the band pushed back and became surer of what they really wanted for the album. Cale did not care that many of his ideas were cast aside as long as what was recorded was truly believed by the artists. It is no stretch to consider that he had a similar impact on his first band.

John Cale had recently moved to New York to study classical music. Meanwhile, Lou Reed, already living there, worked as a songwriter for Pickwick Records and fell in and out of various garage bands. The two inevitably met through New York's underground music scene of the mid-sixties and found they both shared the same experimental tendencies especially towards drone music that would drive the partnership's early sonic direction. Reed acted as the group's primary songwriter, vocalist and guitarist while Cale provided his multi-instrumental skills on the viola, celesta, and piano among others. They rounded out the group with a friend of Reed's, Sterling Morrison on rhythm guitar, and a collaborator of Cale's, Angus MacLise on percussion. About this time, they had finally settled on an appropriate band name, The Velvet Underground.

The band sold out eventually and took a paying gig. The commercialism became too much for MacLise, who was "in it for art" according to Morrison, and he left the band to be replace by Maureen "Mo" Tucker, a friend's sister. Tucker brought her own unique style to the band. She dressed androgynously and utilized an abbreviated drum set (an upturned bass drum and tom toms). As she perceived her role in the band as timekeeper, she rarely used cymbals in her playing.

The Velvet Underground did not take off until Andy Warhol took over as their manager in 1965. He made them a part of his multimedia roadshow, the Exploding Plastic Inevitable, and teamed them up with Nico, a model turned chanteuse. The band did not necessarily welcome the collaboration, but consented for personal, business, and musical reasons. With Warhol's connections, the band quickly signed a recording contract with Verve Records. On all recordings, Warhol would act as nominal "producer" while simply letting the band direct their own sound. The Velvet Underground & Nico entered Scepter Studios in April 1966 to record their debut album (to be supplemented with another session later in the year under the supervision of veteran producer Tom Wilson). They released two singles from those sessions: "All Tomorrow's Parties" and "Sunday Morning" later in 1966 with neither charting. The band also released "Loop", a recording of audio feedback that descended into a locked groove, through the multimedia magazine Aspen (with that particular issue (#3) designed by Warhol).

Verve Records released The Velvet Underground & Nico in March of 1967 where it barely hung on in the Top 200. The album's controversial content led it to be banned from certain record stores and deemed it unplayable by radio stations. These factors and Verve's half-interested advertisement for the album led to its lack of commercial success. Critics also took little interest in the album. The album had an obvious experimental bend to it thanks in part to John Cale's droning viola and Reed's "drone strum". Morrison's guitar-work gave several of the songs a blues-rock feel. The album only featured Nico on four songs (the four songs found on the band's early singles) that held quieter more introspective tones and lyrics. The rest of the album had more of an underground and dirty edge to it with stories about attaining and experiencing heroin ('Run Run Run', 'I'm Waiting for the Man', 'Heroin') or sexual fetishes ('Venus in Furs'). The band's wildest experiments can be heard on those sans-Nico tracks.

The Velvet Underground & Nico eventually found widespread acclaim amongst rock critics: highly touted for its experimental content, poetic lyrics, and the strong influence it held on subsequent generations of rock musicians.

Here's the discography surrounding The Velvet Underground & Nico's debut album:

All Tomorrow's Parties (1966 single)
Sunday Morning (1966 single)
Loop (1966 flexi disc)
The Velvet Underground & Nico





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