The Velvet Underground

The Velvet Underground are the most extreme case of a truth that runs through the history of music: influence and sales are two different things, and sometimes opposite ones.

At the time, at the end of the sixties, almost nobody listened to them. Their first record barely reached number one hundred and seventy-one on the Billboard chart.

And out of that band almost nobody bought came half the rock of the decades that followed.

Thirty thousand bands

There is a line, from the musician and producer Brian Eno, that became the best description of this band.

He said it in an interview with Kristine McKenna published in the Los Angeles Times in May 1982. Eno said Lou Reed had told him that the first record sold some thirty thousand copies in its first five years. And he added: I think everyone who bought one of those thirty thousand copies started a band.

It is worth being honest about the figure, because the number circulates as though it were bookkeeping, and it is not. It is Eno quoting Reed, and MGM's records show something different: 58,476 copies sold as early as February 1969, almost double in under two years.

It makes no difference to the argument. Fifty-eight thousand copies in two years is still an outright failure.

What matters is the other thing, and that part is true: they did not reach the masses, they reached exactly the right people. Each of the few who heard them was so shaken that they went out and made music of their own.

They did not sell records. They sowed bands.

Warhol and the banana

The Velvets' story is intertwined with that of the most famous artist of their time.

In the mid-sixties, in New York, Andy Warhol took them under his wing: he was their manager between 1965 and 1967, brought them into his Factory world, and got them the contract with Verve.

He is credited as producer of the first record, and here it is worth being precise: he produced nothing in the technical sense. What he did was pay for the sessions and shield the band so it could sound however it wanted, with no interference from the label. The real work was done by Tom Wilson, a Verve producer, and John Cale on the arrangements. Reed himself called Wilson "the real producer".

Warhol also gave them their most iconic image: the yellow banana on a white background. On the original sleeve the band's name does not appear anywhere: the only things printed are Warhol's signature and an instruction, "Peel slowly and see". On the first pressings the banana was a sticker you could peel off, and that line is what makes the joke work.

And he imposed on them, for a time, a singer: Nico, a German model and actress with a deep, icy voice. Reed resisted. Nico sings lead on three tracks on the record and sings backing on another, and her ghostly tone is among the most remembered things about it.

The union of Warhol's avant-garde art with the band's raw rock created something that sounded like nothing else.

Singing what nobody sang

And there is what made them so dangerous.

While in 1967 love and flowers were the message of the era and psychedelia was luminous, The Velvet Underground sang about what nobody dared to name: addiction, forbidden sex, prostitution, the darkness of the city.

Lou Reed wrote like a bare-boned chronicler of the margins of New York, without judging and without embellishing, with a literary coldness that came more from the novel than from the pop song.

To that rawness they added music just as radical: noise, the screech of John Cale's electric viola, hypnotic repetition, ugliness sought on purpose.

In an age of sweetness they chose harshness. That, which cost them the sales, is exactly what made them immortal.

Though the failure was not only a matter of the taste of the time. The record vanished from the shops just as it was beginning to sell.

The back cover carried, without permission, an image of the actor Eric Emerson, projected at a screening of the Exploding Plastic Inevitable. Emerson threatened to sue, and MGM pulled the copies and stopped distribution until he had been airbrushed out.

What is worth remembering

The Velvet Underground are the definitive proof that a band's impact is not measured at the top of the charts, but in what it sows.

Put on "I'm Waiting for the Man", "Sunday Morning", "Heroin" or "Pale Blue Eyes", and you will hear the origin of so many things: the rawness of punk, the coldness of post-punk, the experimentation of art rock, the brutal honesty of telling what society prefers to hide.

David Bowie adored them and championed them. Punk as a whole was born, in part, from them. And The Strokes, thirty-four years later, went back to that rawness to revive guitar rock.

Lou Reed died in 2013; Nico, in 1988; Sterling Morrison, in 1995.

They were four people who failed at selling and triumphed at influencing as almost nobody has. Remember them as Warhol's banana: an object almost nobody looked at in its time and which today is an icon.

The band that lost its own era and won every one that came after.

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Sources

The Velvet Underground, an American band formed in New York in 1964, made up in its classic phase of Lou Reed (vocals, guitar, songwriting), John Cale (bass, electric viola, keyboards), Sterling Morrison (guitar) and Maureen "Moe" Tucker (drums). Andy Warhol was their manager between 1965 and 1967 and is credited as producer of their debut album, "The Velvet Underground & Nico" (1967); it is worth being precise that his real contribution consisted of paying for the sessions and protecting the band from the label's interference, while the production work was done by Tom Wilson, of Verve, and John Cale on the arrangements. Warhol and Paul Morrissey imposed the German singer Nico, who sings lead on "Femme Fatale", "All Tomorrow's Parties" and "I'll Be Your Mirror" and sings backing on "Sunday Morning". The sleeve, designed by Warhol, shows a banana and does not include the band's name: the only things printed are the artist's signature and the instruction "Peel slowly and see"; on the first pressings the banana was a peel-off sticker. The record was a commercial failure, barely reaching number 171 on the Billboard 200, but it is considered one of the most influential in history. Regarding Brian Eno's celebrated line, spoken in an interview with Kristine McKenna published in the Los Angeles Times in May 1982 — that everyone who bought one of those thirty thousand copies started a band — it should be clarified that Eno attributed that figure to Lou Reed and that MGM's records list 58,476 copies sold as early as February 1969. Their lyrics dealt bluntly with taboo subjects in contrast to the dominant luminous psychedelia around 1967, and influenced punk, post-punk, art rock, alternative rock and goth, and artists such as David Bowie and Roxy Music. Lou Reed died in 2013; Nico, in 1988; Sterling Morrison, in 1995. David Bowie and The Strokes have profiles of their own in this series. Externally authored text, edited and verified for Rebobinados. Interpretations of the meaning of their work are offered as the author's reading. No song lyrics are reproduced, for copyright reasons. Information drawn from Rolling Stone, Billboard, Quote Investigator, Wikipedia and other coverage.