The Velvet Underground & Nico album came out in 1967 amid the hippie revolution in the summer of love. The Velvet's were disillusioned with these ideas and presented a darker side of things, one that was diametrically opposed to the popular counterculture movement of the time. They laid the foundation for punk and glam rock, and even influenced electronic music movements. The Velvet Underground were able to demystify the s**ual freedom and the drug culture of the 1960's through matter of fact observations of New York street life that served as the antithesis to the West Coast feel good vibe and in doing so, created one of the most influential, prophetic albums of all time that expressed an alienation not being represented in popular culture before them
The Velvet Underground were a quintessentially New York band. They embodied the streets they knew in every way. They wrote songs about real things that they saw, and they certainly saw some interesting things during their time with Andy Warhol's eclectic gang of outcasts. Their peers consisted of artists, junkies, h*mos**uals, and transvestites. Like Andy Warhol's pop art, their music was “anti-art made by anti-art elitists” (Heylin XI). They were one of the first rock and roll bands who had no chance of reaching a ma** audience because they clashed so deeply with much of society's foundations. Their music was intellectual but they weren't intellectual 'elitists' in the traditional sense of the word. They took inspiration from trashy paperback novels rather than the widely regarded literary cla**ics
The first track, Sunday Morning, is the most delicate on the album and the last to be recorded. It's really the only track that aims to be beautiful, and is. It's a sort of precursory reminder to the audience that the cacophony and noise about to come is intentional; it isn't stemming from a lack of musical sk** or knowledge. This sort of attitude is what the whole punk movement was based upon, but the punks adapted an attitude that preexisting musical knowledge wasn't necessary. The attitude and the ideas behind the song are what really matters, and this is what the Velvet Underground served on their debut album. With the opening number, their softest track, they prove that they weren't relying solely on shock appeal and a confrontational attitude. ‘Sunday Morning' represents the calm before the storm and it is unclear whether the song is first or last in chronological order of the album. The song contains the most commercial sound on the album but also somber lyrics. It reads like a peaceful Sunday morning after a long, hard week in New York City. Though not overt or as confrontational as the rest of the songs, it shows their multiple personalities. One when they are relatively sober, albeit coming down as he sings “Sunday morning and I'm falling down.” The album takes no moral stance on all of the crazy things they've seen in the streets and been a part of; but they represent real things going on and not a dream world where everything is always fine. Some of these things are hard to confront as Reed sings “I've got a feeling I don't want to know.” This could be about what happened or what's about to happen throughout the album. It recognizes that, although the album consists of a series of vignettes representative of NY street culture, all of the stories aren't completely contained within the album. It doesn't manage to tie everything up in a neat way. There are stories from before the album and after that are parts of the same narrative but the audience won't be let in on them
The Velvet Underground were used to deep alienation beyond the normal level. Even within the biggest counter-cultural movement in American history going on, they couldn't (or didn't want to) find a place within a larger cross-section of American culture. The only place they seemed to fit in was with Andy Warhol's factory crowd, a self-described group of misfits. Instead of going on along with the hippies rebelling against post-war conformity and conservatism in the 1950's, they pushed the boundaries even further than the hippies out west and intentionally made people feel uncomfortable. Hippie music became popular and eventually co-opted by the mainstream like every other large cultural movement before and after (Jazz, Blues, Punk, Hip-Hop etc.). The Velvet's pushed the boundaries about as far as they could be pushed, nothing was off limits. Subject matter was real and dark, portraying the seedier side of New York and America as a whole. Instead of singing specifically about equality in race relations, racial issues are subtly brought up within the narrative of the songs that feel deeply rooted in the New York that Reed was living in. In ‘I'm Waiting For The Man' he sings “hey white boy, what you doing up town?” The rest of the lines around it are unclear what the narrator of the song actually is doing uptown sparking much debate as to if it's as straight forward as it first appears, that the narrator is looking to buy ‘smack.' Another popular interpretation is that ‘the man' of the song was actually a h*mos**ual lover of the narrator. This theory comes from the lines where the narrator is asked “hey white boy, you chasin' our women around?” and he responds “oh pardon me sir, it's the furthest thing from my mind, I'm just looking for a dear, dear friend of mine.” This dear friend of his may have been more than someone that just sold him narcotics. Reed wasn't writing these songs as a peace activist or even outwardly promoting equality like the West Coast was fond of. He provides a succinct, but ultimately telling story of race relations in New York City in a nonchalant, conversational tone. The song is set in Harlem, a predominately African-American community, and the tone in which the narrator is addressed suggests that he, a white man, has no business being there, thus is up to no good. He's looking for something that needs to be hidden from mainstream white society, whether it be d** or unconventional s**uality. Here, he takes no explicit position, like in ‘Heroin,' but establishes the setting with a gritty realism and doesn't try to hide what's really going on in the neighborhoods of America. He's not trying to sell anything, but he does tell the story of an underrepresented cla** of people in America whose issues had been largely ignored. Reed has no qualms about calling it like it is
This deep cultural alienation can inevitably lead to drug use, and sometimes abuse, when a certain sect of society is ignored or marginalized. The Velvet Underground understood this and with Reed's lyrics and the backing instrumentation, these groups of alienated people are addressed. While the west coast largely advocated drug use, especially LSD by groups such as Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead, The Velvet Underground made music about d**, and inspired by d** but didn't ostensibly advocate their use. This is a key difference between the two coasts; the Velvets understood that d** were an escape, one which some people found necessary to modern life. Not everyone took them to party or have a good time. Hardcore drug users need the d** because the life they perceive is so bad that something drastic is needed to violently shake them from that world. Reed addresses the issues that lead to drug abuse within ‘Heroin' and also cedes that “when the smack begins to flow,” he “just doesn't care anymore” and it makes him “feel like a man.” The whole song is a musical representation of what shooting h**n feels like to the user. While there is no endorsement or denouncement, the first verse is certainly the most joyful section of the song. It opens with a singular guitar, with a very calm riff hat slowly builds with added instrumentation layered on top of each other. The drums follow the heartbeat of the user, starting off steady and once the h**n is injected, it becomes much more frantic and erratic. Around the five minute mark, the screeching viola reaches a pinnacle with the heartbeat drums driving forward faster and faster almost drowning out Reed's vocals, perhaps signifying that the drug doesn't allow the mind's thoughts to fully come through and they are distorted through the lens of the drug
The Velvet Underground and the hippies both used and sang about d**, but their approaches were completely different. Lou Reed sings in ‘Heroin' that it makes him feel like “Jesus' son.” He acknowledges that the drug obviously makes the user feel powerful while also making a slight jab at Christianity and the idea that Jesus was actually married to Mary Magdalene and fathered children with her. Heroin is an escape for the user and the lyrics acknowledge this when they say “when the h**n is in my blood, and that blood is in my head, thank God I'm as good as dead, and thank your God that I'm not aware, and thank God that I just don't care.” There is another shot at religion with “your God” and it reveals the desperation that h**n users face, and the mindset that leads to drug addiction, to get away from the world that we live in and temporarily escape to a place where there are no “jim jims” or “politicians making crazy sounds.” The ephemeral joys that the drug provides are just that, there is no end in sight. Lou Reed once said, “I take d** just because, in the 20th century, in a technological age living in the city, there are certain d** you have to take just to keep yourself normal like a caveman, just to bring yourself up or down.” He didn't advocate using d** or not, he is matter of fact about the way they feel and what causes him. It is just something you do to feel “normal” in his eyes. The music emulates the feelings of a drug user and goes up and down with the highs and lows. John Cale stated that the long vamps on two chords that droned on was “an attempt to control the unconscious with the hypnotic.”
Lou Reed, the main songwriter who shared vocal duties on the album with Nico, was not afraid of adverse reactions to his lyrics. He actually welcomed them and the inside sleeves of the album displayed some of the negative reviews the press had written about the shows, displaying that the band were “perversely proud of them” (Hogan 39). One of the major themes in Lou's songwriting was s**uality, more specifically non-traditional s**ual practices. The name for the band was drawn from a book published in 1963 by Michael Leigh called The Velvet Underground about paraphilia (intense s**ual arousal to atypical objects, situations, or individuals) in the United States. They found the name “evocative of underground cinema” (Phoenix 1). The title seemed fit for the name of the band as they had already written the song ‘Venus in Furs' based off the book by the same title. The word Sado-Masochism is derived from Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, the author of said book. The cover of The Velvet Underground book says “Here is an incredible book. It will shock and amaze you. But as a documentary on the s**ual corruption of our age, it is a must for every thinking adult.” The band seemed to take this philosophy wholeheartedly into every facet of their music and their live shows
The fourth track of the album, ‘Venus in Furs', is an adaptation of Sacher-Masoch's 1870 novel into song form. Severin, the protagonist of the book is madly in love with Wanda von Dunaj**, the novel's central female character. He is so infatuated with her that he literally asks to be her slave and asks her to treat him as such, in increasingly degrading ways. The fourth line in the song, “strike dear mistress, and cure his heart” is seemingly directly from the novel. In the novel, Severin asks to be whipped hard by Wanda so he can be ‘cured' of his severe infatuation to her but the abuse he receives only deepens his love and intensifies his extreme feelings and devotion. Sach-Masoch refers to this as “suprasensuality.” The more frequent and violently abused, the more devoted he became to his “mistress,” as she makes him refer to her as. The parallels between the novel and Reed's own life are hard to ignore. Both the novel, and Lou's childhood used extreme measures to ‘cure' a perceived problem through harsh techniques. Lou's deviant behavior, described as “h*mos**ual tendencies,” was regarded as a mental illness in the 1960's and he was ‘treated' with electro-shock therapy which he later wrote about in ‘k** Your Sons' during his solo career (Hogan 6). In both cases, these techniques only brought about more suffering. Reed's deviance wasn't accepted by society or more importantly, by his family and this led to intense alienation which would later drive his work. The hippie mindset of peace and love wasn't the reality Reed faced in the New York streets. There were real consequences for being different and doing something that most people didn't approve of. Later in the song, Reed sings of “ermine furs” which “adorn the imperious.” While displaying his vast vocabulary and familiarity with obscure literature, he is able to vividly describe the imagery of the novel and stay true to the main components of the story, essentially poetically summarizing the novel. The use of “imperious” reinforces the dominatrix relationship while “ermine furs” strengthen the imagery of the scene that is being described while the musical ensemble is a “whips ‘n' chains atmosphere called up by John Cale's viola drones cut by slashes and Maureen Tucker's slave master time keeping on kettle drum and tambourine” (Zak 57). The instrumentation allows the Velvets to explore areas that a novel can't and portray the sinister and desperate situations described through the imagery of their ensemble
The main root of their drug use (and abuse) and s**ual deviance was an intense sense of alienation. They were in the fast paced east coast world that didn't care about your feelings; it was about getting things done. Getting together and feeling alright was not on the agenda. This alienation led them down a path that no one in popular music had been down before. One of their main goals was to antagonize the audience, whether it was the audience at home listening to the record or the audience at the show. At their live shows, Andy Warhol movies would be playing in the background while the band wailed away on the guitars with feedback which “sounded like 12 million guitars going at one time with the amplified, intensified screeches that really hurt the eardrums” (Heylin 43). The goal was to create an atmosphere that was uncharted territory and pushed the audience pa**ed their limits. Warhol said about the pictures that played behind them, “if the audience can take it for ten minutes, I show it for fifteen minutes” (Heylin 49). The effect was to disorient the audience and leave them “too stunned to think or say anything or give any kind of opinion” (Heylin 45). They struck chords deep within people that made them think about what it truly means to be alive. These songs weren't mindless pop tunes to wash over the listener and make them feel safe or momentarily give them pleasure, but they brought out the raw emotions that lay deep within and forced the listener to at least consider an alternative, at times being so radical that they wouldn't even know how to react. This approach was obviously not popular with the ma**es and at their shows most of the audience would end up leaving early with about ninety percent of the remaining spectators were “hostile to the show” (Heylin 48)
Ralph J Gleason, a respected critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, described their performance nothing more than a bad condensation of all the bum trips of the Trips Festival. He reportedly pulled the plug when they left the stage with their guitars leaning on the amps to create a “squalor of electronic noise” (Schindler & Schwartz 315). They also did this to Bill Graham at another show in San Francisco and set about smashing Morrison's drum kit after their set with the amps still blaring. He confronted them after the show and they brushed him off; they later said he was muttering something about “insurance reasons” as Reed was injured from a flying cymbal to his head and was bleeding profusely after the chaotic destruction. This is not to say that all of California was against them, but many prominent hippies were. They actually had a stronger following in California than any other state probably because they antagonized the hippies and anyone that felt alienated by the hippie movement could listen to the group that defined alienation. The Velvet's music and performances were dark and abrasive. The Grateful Dead and other San Francisco Sound bands focused on beautiful melodies where the Velvets focused on long droning noises composed of vamps on one or two chords. Maureen Tucker called the Dead the “most boring band” she'd ever heard while Lou Reed said their music was “tedious, a lie, and untalented” (Jovanic 85)
The Velvet Underground remained a shape shifting, and ultimately widely influential band that came from the bottoms of the society and completely represented that through their art. They made music about d**, not-traditional s**ual practices, and other issues of modern life that were rooted in a sense of alienation from the major countercultural narrative of the 1960's. Even with the recent pa**ing of primary songwriter Lou Reed, their direct influence lives on in popular bands such as The Strokes and Arctic Monkeys and with the advent of the internet, their legacy has a potential to continue to spread for the foreseeable future
Bibliography
Heylin, Clinton. All Yesterdays' Parties: The Velvet Underground in Print, 1966-1971. N.p.: De Capo Press, 2006. Print
Hogan, Peter. The Rough Guide to the Velvet Underground. 1 Edition ed. N.p.: Rough Guides, 2007. Print
Jovanic, Rob. Seeing the Light: Inside the Velvet Underground. N.p.: MacMillan, 2008. Print
Phoenix, William. "The Velvet Underground: Five-Star Flashback." Examiner. N.p., n.d. Web. 14 Nov. 2013
Schindler, Scott, and Andy Schwartz. Icons of Rock: Velvet Underground ; The Grateful Dead ; Frank Zappa ; Led Zeppelin ; Joni Mitchell ; Pink Floyd ; Neil Young ; David Bowie ; Bruce Springsteen ; Ramones ; U2 ; Nirvana. N.p.: Greenwood Publishing Co., 2008. Print
Stratton, Jon. "http://www.jstor.org/stable/3877595." JSTOR. Cambridge University Press, n.d. Web. 9 Nov. 2013
The Velvet Underground & Nico, The Velvet Underground & Nico. Verve, 1967. LP
Von Sacher-Masoch, Leopold. Venus in Furs. N.p., 1870. Print
Zak, Albin. The Velvet Underground Companion: Four Decades of Commentary. N.p.: Schirmer Trade Books, 2000. Print