The Velvet Underground: The Velvet Underground & Nico (1966)

#19

What Made Lou Reed Immortal

Where I live, bananas are bloody expensive.

I state this fact by means of a confession; with a view to tying it in later somehow with this classic album. In my youth (five years ago) I used to peruse the fruit section of my local Tesco in the hope I would see a great big tarantula creeping across a batch of juicy bananas. One afternoon in March, I spotted three huge arachnids clinging to the Ffyes brand with alarming possessiveness and wondered just what the heck was going on. Yes, young Brian Vesuvius Lettsin was flustered. Especially since these spiders were huge tropical ones from the theraphosidae family. Yes... it was that exciting.

As the weeks passed, I discovered that these spiders were in fact munching their way through the entire batch of Ffyes bananas, and the reason for this has nothing to do with The Velvet Underground. So there is very little point of carrying on this preamble. Needless to say, the spiders were successfully hosed from the supermarket and everything was back to normal the following week. Look... sometimes my life is just dull, all right?

This album found its way into my CD player on February the 3rd 2005. I was, at the time, a scruffy student with one thing on my rotten mind, aside from the obvious preoccupations of a world-weary loser with ridiculously long, unkempt hair. That thing was guitars – played very noisily indeed.

Loud enough to engender some long-standing auricular damage or pop enough brain cells that the rest of my adolescence would unfold in prolonged periods of woe and super-woe, bubbling softly in through my subconscious. It made logical sense that I would make friends with this act, since they had sufficiently loud guitars, but also a precocious Welsh geezer with an equally noisome viola squalling over the avant-garde hullabaloo. A match made in heaven, surely?

Despite dissenting voices, some on this very site, that the moody persona and drab vocal stylings of Teutonic warbler Nico spoiled this legendary debut, I maintain The Velvet Underground have made one of the finest albums in rock and roll history which still remains thrilling to this day despite the awful production.

The man we blame for this production blip is misunderstood genius Andy Warhol, that awkward pioneer of pop-art; an artistic movement remembered for its cartoon cans of soup and pointless Marilyn Monroe paintings. Well, say what you will about the Exploding Plastic Inevitable, but no one could paint soup like Warhol. Mainly because they never tried. Monet was moved more by water lilies, the silly sausage.

Lou Reed formed The Velvet Underground through the influence of Warhol and the bespectacled one exerted artistic sovereignty over their debut as they took residence in his New York Factory to compose this album and kick-start his sixties underground revolution.

To the popular criticisms of this album – that the slow numbers are just throwaway psychedelic filler and Nico has all the personality of a heifer but none of the singing voice – I say poppycock. The album has an incredible flow and retains is its duality between mesmerising beauty and violent brutality.

Plus, pretty pieces such as Femme Fatale or I’ll Be Your Mirror do actually represent some of Reed’s softer and most intimate moments. The well-known classics remain undiminished like all great art, if I may get a touch pretentious, and the experimental pieces remain as purposefully difficult to absorb as they were all those years ago.

True, the wilful noise-making of closer European Son was surpassed by the brutal epic Sister Ray a year later, but this is but a mere act of historical nit-picking. The Velvet Underground & Nico is still one of the most important classic rock albums everyone is bugging you to hear for a reason – it is a flat-out work of genius. Explanations to follow.

I’m Waiting For My Man (4:37)

Ladies and gentlemen, we present the birth of three-chord punk. The perpetual pummel of this track is really all it has to offer, but it seemed to inspire the career of The Stooges and every other punk band who followed rather well. A simple, repeated two chord pattern dominates this abrasive and vamping garage rocker while Reed, here sounding like the coolest man ever to front a beat combo, waits notoriously for his heroin dealer on Lexington 1-2-5, feeling “sick and dirty, more dead than alive.”

To have been present that night at the Factory when the band dropped this particular sound-bomb would have been something quite extraordinary. All this tune does is thump, stomp and drill its way towards the centre of your brain, and if it fails then in the fourth minute piano chords are bashed to seal the endless headache while it hammers, thunders and storms towards its increasingly unstable end; reigned in with a mercy-killing fade-out. Find fault in this and you really do not like rock music.

Venus In Furs (5:08)

Still arguably one of the scariest pieces of music ever recorded, I would concur with one-time Sex Pistols manager Malcolm McLaren that this is impossible to listen to without picturing some disturbing S&M practice, or indeed your favourite dominatrix.

Visions of Shelley McTavish, that spirited punisher down in Galashiels appear for me whenever this brutal classic screams out from my speakers. Which is presumably the intention. An overwhelmingly arresting piece of music, this is dominated by the howling screech of Cale’s electric viola, which in turn is draped around the thunderous guitar work from Reed and Sterling Morrison and the hypnotic one-drum approach from Moe Tucker.

The track can only be described as some nightmarish trip through the darkest annals of human consciousness, and plays like the soundtrack for the dreams of David Lynch while it shivers towards its blood-curdling, ejaculatory climax. There is something medieval and indeed primeval about this trance-like behemoth while Reed spills out his spot-on lyrics: “Downy sins of streetlight fancies, chase the costumes he shall wear/ Ermine furs adorn imperious, Severin, Severin waits you there.”

Run Run Run (4:19)

Those unimpressed with the fret-work on the solo records of Lou Reed will be satisfied here, unless they lost their hearing during the first four tunes. Which is entirely possible. This is the first genuine demonstration of the faultless pop skills of Reed, and he spruces up his impossibly catchy lead hook with some outrageous solos which defy the realms of physical possibility and cement his reputation as one of the finest guitarists who ever walked the earth.

The tune is lyrically bound to the poetic depiction of New York he would never really budge from until, that is, he began writing about himself or whatever was bugging him that particular week. It is indeed the solos that impress the most here, and the production in this instance seems to serve them well – they squeak and howl with more delirium than a field full of chickens being savaged by twelve farmers armed with cattle prods.

His lead guitar is made to sound as though there is in fact genuine electricity coursing through his veins, or as though his fingers are being guided by the Lord herself. Goodness me.

All Tomorrow’s Parties (5:57)

Almost impossible to imagine without the dull, dronish vox of Nico, this does suffer at the mixing desk of Warhol but retains its oppressive sound due to the hypnotic repeated melody which suits her vocals well. What reads in the lyric sheet like some straightforward attack on fashion is delivered with such deadpan power that the tune sounds personal, embittered and wickedly caustic.

Tucker provides the throbbing percussive beat over the piano line which snakes its way up the left speaker for the duration of the track like a very irritating itch. Reed and Morrison provide the solos and general guitar presence, but wait carefully for Nico to finish, sit down and phone her agent before they enter. It is difficult not to feel threatened by her commanding German vocals, especially towards the final modulation where she warbles: “A blackened shroud, a hand-me-down gown of rags and silks – a costume fit for one who sits and cries for all tomorrow’s parties.”

Heroin (7:09)

The centrepiece of each blazing Reed concert in the early seventies, this tune has never appeared in more devastating form than on this album. John Cale provides the viola magic here which lifts the tune into its untouchable realm of musical transcendence while Reed supplies the oppressively strummed guitars and Tucker the gut-wrenching primal drums. The task? To convey the nightmare of drugs and their repercussions using music as their art form. The results?

As ruthless, hideous on the ear and nightmarish as taking any Class A substance I suspect would be. The violin and feedback clamour at once convey the sensation of a needle shooting into an open vein and the (briefly) pleasurable dissonant guitars offer the proverbial calm before the storm.

The blistering third half is an avant-garde masterclass; a dark journey into the heart of the heroin nightmare from someone who has no doubt been there himself. Heroin probably functions as the finest anti-drugs tune every composed, if played at full volume into the ears of any potential user, especially as Reed groans his way through the final chorus: “When the heroin is in my blood, and the blood is in my head, thank God that I’m good as dead.”

There She Goes Again (2:38)

A terrific slice of vintage (if violent) pop, this seems so incongruous among seven-minute, avant-garde epics about drug overdoses and sadomasochism, despite the fitting allusions to physical violence towards the chorus. The syncopated drum and guitar parts help such barbed chorus endings as “There she goes again, she’s knocked out on her feet again... you’d better hit her” leap out at the listener, and the drums mirroring the punches from this thug makes the whole tune a disconcertingly rewarding listen.

The track is also a forerunner to the kind of pop mastery Reed would reel in for the final album with The Velvet Underground, the magnificent Loaded from 1970. Without this little cracker, R.E.M. would have never happened. I meant that to sound positive.

The Remaining Gems

Sunday Morning opens the album and is a fantastic, laid-back little lullaby with some innocent glockenspiel plonks over the exceptionally chilled-out vocals of Reed who was right not to assign singing duties to Nico in this instance. John Cale co-wrote only two tunes with Reed on this album, not including the improvised noise-making session European Son, and this has proven to be perhaps their prettiest or indeed finest collaboration of all time.

Femme Fatale seems written just to draw attention to the linguistic foibles of Nico and her unavoidable German accent but is another very mellow pop tune in the child-like vein which Reed rarely attempted in his solo career. The soft, intimate side of The Velvet Underground is easily as affecting and powerful as their rabid experimentalism.

I’ll Be Your Mirror proves this opinion to be entirely correct, and I will hunt down and execute any poor soul who is not quietly palliated by that gorgeous chorus of: “When you think the night has seen your mind, that inside your twisted and unkind, let me stand to show that you are blind... please put down your hands, ‘cause I see you.” This is definitely the tune which breaks Nico and invests her voice with a soft, delicate edge which is hitherto shrouded amongst her bland, detached drawl.

The Black Angel’s Death Song is pretentious not just in name only but also in arrangement, as it revolves around a jerky viola part, psychedelic poetry and terrible, head-grinding production. On no other album would this be acceptable. Here it sounds like the most normal track number ten in the world. A real document of the time and indicative of the fearless experimentation of the group. Whether you like it or not, The Velvet Underground would not be The Velvet Underground without this.

European Son begins with a snazzy bass line from Morrison and a neat hook from Reed, which proves to be entirely misleading since the track explodes into a miasmic eruption of thunderous feedback, tinny rattled guitars, random percussion explosions and shattered glass sound effects. There are dozens of solos here that splinter off into random burps of dissonance, and neat twists on the rhythm guitar which also end up forming the same kind of racket. This is a headache-inducing feedback dirge, and I absolutely adore all seven and a half minutes of it – the perfect climax to one of the finest debuts in musical history.

Deluxe Edition Extras

Unfortunately, the 2002 2-disc deluxe edition is low on decent extras, containing no outtakes or B-sides from the era but merely alternative cuts on the second disc and extracts from the first solo album from Nico, Chelsea Girl.

The second disc is merely the Mono Version of the original album, which to users of modern stereos really means very little. Some tracks run for one or two seconds longer, but the versions remain exactly the same unless one owns an old-fashioned stereo. Or gramophone, perhaps. The single version of All Tomorrow’s Parties is terrible, and the single cuts of I’ll Be Your Mirror, Sunday Morning and Femme Fatale are basically the same. I could not bring myself to drop the rating because, well... it’s The Velvet Underground.

As far as the Nico material is concerned, I cannot see the appeal of some of these interminable tracks, especially the dreary It Was A Pleasure Then or the endless drone of Chelsea Girls. Some tunes are bouncier, such as the mellow Little Sister or Winter Song which actually have some melodies behind the throb of the electric viola and celesta. The Reed-penned Wrap Your Troubles In Dreams is a pleasurable addition, however, and apparently sparked the rumours the he nurtured a secret love for the strange, brooding actress-cum-chanteuse. Heaven forbid.

The Velvet Underground & Nico will play havoc with your senses ten times more than that holiday you took to Guantanamo Bay. Avoid the Deluxe Edition and pick up the original remaster it all its badly produced, undiluted glory. Few bands have ever achieved these staggering heights of creativity and very few shall ever again. A bona fide classic.

Rating: 10/10