Recommendations of the Editorial team
When you hear a Classic rock broadcaster today, why don’t they play Velvet Underground there? Why only Boston and Led Zeppelin? And why are the Stones so much more popular than the Velvets?
Okay, I already know why they are more popular. But some of me always thought that it should actually be the other way around. Velvet Underground were far ahead of their time. And their music was strange. I still couldn’t believe that this shouldn’t be the most heard music in the world.
Hearing these four studio albums today is how to read a good book that plays in a distant time. When I hear “The Velvet Underground and Nico” or “Loaded”, I feel moved in Andy Warhol’s factory of the 1960s or in Max’s Kansas City. As Lou Reed wrote and sang -about drugs and sex and the people around him -that was so factual, so unpretentious.
In the way he described crazy situations, Reed could be romantic, but he was also real in a highly intensive way. Poetry and journalism in one.
The Velvet Underground: “White Light / White Heat”:
A lot of people associate the velvets with feedback and noise. “White Light/ White Heat” is the kind of plate for which you have to be in the right mood. You have to sit in a fucked -up pub and be really bad in a mood.
Mo Tucker sounded hotter than Nico
The Velvets also made very nice music. “Sunday Morning”, for example -with John Cales Viola -, “Candy
Says “,” All Tomorrow’s Parties “. I can only imagine this song with Nico as a singer, although Maureen Tucker had a cool voice. She had something feminine. I thought it sounded hotter than Nico.
In the beginning, the strokes were clearly based on the mood of the Velvets. When we started the band and I wrote the first songs, I heard “Loaded” on the current volume. For four months only “loaded” and a greatest hits album from the Beach Boys.
Many of our guitar sounds are based on what Reed and Sterling Morrison were doing. I really wish we could have copied them more. We didn’t get close enough. But that was okay because it got our thing more.