The Velvet Underground was an American rock band first active from 1965 to 1970 (& 1970 to 1973 in a different incarnation). Its best-known members were New Yorker Lou Reed and Welshman John Cale.

Although never commercially successful during their time, the Velvet Underground have been regarded as one of the most important and influential groups of their era. A famous remark, often attributed to British musician Brian Eno, is that while only a few thousand people bought the first Velvet Underground record upon its release, almost every single one of them was inspired to start a band. Their sound influenced many later musicians in many genres, including experimental, punk, new wave, and gothic rock.

The foundations for what would become the Velvet Underground were laid in late 1964. Singer/guitarist Lou Reed had performed with a few short-lived garage bands and had worked as a songwriter for Pickwick Records, which Reed described as being “a poor man’s Carole King”. Reed met John Cale, a Welshman who had moved to the United States to study classical music. Cale had worked with experimental composers John Cage and La Monte Young, but was also interested in rock music. (Young’s use of extended drones would be a profound influence on the early Velvets’ sound). Cale was pleasantly surprised to discover Reed’s experimentalist tendencies were similar to his own: Reed sometimes used alternate guitar tunings to create a droning sound. The pair rehearsed and performed together, and their partnership and shared interests steered the early direction of what would become the Velvet Underground.

Reed’s first group with Cale was the Primitives, a short-lived group assembled to support a Reed-penned single, “The Ostrich”. Reed and Cale recruited Sterling Morrison—a college classmate of Reed’s who had already played with him a few times—to play guitar, and Angus MacLise joined on percussion. This quartet was first called the Warlocks, then the Falling Spikes.

The Velvet Underground was a book about the sexual underground of the early 60's by Michael Leigh that Reed found when he moved into his New York City apartment (left by previous tenant Tony Conrad). Reed and Morrison have reported the group liked the name, considering it evocative of “underground cinema”, and fitting, due to Reed’s already having written “Venus in Furs”, inspired by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s book of the same name, dealing with masochism. The band immediately and unanimously adopted the book's title for its new name.

The newly named Velvet Underground rehearsed and performed in New York City. Their music was generally much more relaxed than it would later become: Cale described this era as reminiscent of beatnik poetry, with MacLise playing gentle “pitter and patter rhythms behind the drone”.

In July 1965, Reed, Cale and Morrison recorded a demo tape at their Ludlow Street loft. When he briefly returned to Britain, Cale gave a copy of the tape to Marianne Faithfull, hoping she’d pass it on to Mick Jagger. Nothing ever came of the demo, but it was eventually released on the 1995 box set Peel Slowly and See.

When the group accepted an offer of $75 for their first paying performance at Summit High School, in Summit, New Jersey, MacLise left the group, protesting what he considered a sellout. “Angus was in it for art”, Morrison reported.

MacLise was replaced by Maureen “Moe” Tucker, the younger sister of Jim Tucker, a friend of Morrison. Tucker’s abbreviated drum kit was rather unusual: she generally played on tom toms and an upturned bass drum, using mallets as often as drumsticks, and she rarely used cymbals. (The band having asked her to do something unusual, she turned her bass drum on its side and played standing up. When her drums were stolen from one club, she replaced them with garbage cans, brought in from outside.) Her rhythms, at once simple and exotic (influenced by the likes of Babatunde Olatunji and Bo Diddley records), became a vital part of the group’s music. The group earned a regular paying gig at a club and gained an early reputation as a promising ensemble.

Andy Warhol became the band’s manager in 1965 and suggested they feature the German-born singer Nico on several songs. Warhol’s reputation certainly helped the band gain a higher profile. Warhol helped the band land a coveted recording contract with MGM’s Verve Records, with himself as nominal “producer”, and gave the Velvets free rein over the sound they created.

During their stay with Andy Warhol, the band became part of his multimedia roadshow, Exploding Plastic Inevitable, for which they provided the music. This show played a couple of months in New York City, then took to the road all over the United States and Canada until its last installment in May 1967. The show included 16 mm film projections and colors by Warhol.

In 1966 MacLise temporarily rejoined the Velvet Underground for a few EPI shows when Reed was suffering from hepatitis and unable to perform. For these appearances, Cale sang and played organ and Tucker switched to bass guitar. Also at these appearances, the band often played an extended jam they had dubbed “Booker T”, after the leader of the musical group Booker T. and the MG’s; the jam later became the music for “The Gift” on White Light/White Heat. Some of these performances have been released as a bootleg; they remain the only record of MacLise with the Velvet Underground. MacLise was said to be eager to rejoin the group now that they’d found some fame, but Reed specifically prohibited this.

In December 1966, Warhol and David Dalton designed Issue 3 of the multimedia Aspen. Included in this issue of the “magazine”, which retailed at $4 per copy and was packaged in a hinged box designed to look like Fab laundry detergent, were various leaflets and booklets, one of which was a commentary on rock and roll by Lou Reed, another an EPI promotional newspaper. Also enclosed was a 2-sided flexi disk, side one produced by Peter Walker, a musical associate of Timothy Leary, and side two titled “Loop”, credited to the Velvet Underground but actually recorded by Cale alone. “Loop”, a recording solely of pulsating audio feedback culminating in a locked groove, was “a precursor to [Reed’s] Metal Machine Music”, say Velvets archivists M.C. Kostek and Phil Milstein in the book The Velvet Underground Companion. Indeed, “Loop” predates Reed’s almost identical concept (Metal Machine Music being a double album, and being released to a larger audience, obviously with different feedback) by nearly ten years (and also predates much industrial music as well). More significantly, from a retail standpoint, “Loop” was the group’s first commercially available recording as the Velvet Underground.

At Warhol's insistence, Nico sang with the band on three songs off their début album, The Velvet Underground and Nico. The album was recorded in three separate studios during 1966; primarily in Scepter Studios in New York City during April. It was released by Verve Records in March 1967.

The album cover was famous for its Warhol design: a bright yellow banana with “Peel slowly and see” printed near a perforated tab. Those who did remove the banana skin found a pink, peeled banana beneath. This would later be used as the cover to one of several Velvets boxed sets, also titled Peel Slowly and See, released in 1995.

Eleven songs showcased their dynamic range, veering from the pounding attacks of "I’m Waiting for the Man" and "Run Run Run", the droning "Venus in Furs" and "Heroin" to the quiet "Femme Fatale" and the tender "I’ll Be Your Mirror", as well as Warhol's own favorite song of the group, the magnificent "All Tomorrow's Parties".

The overall sound was propelled by Reed’s deadpan vocals, Cale's droning viola, Morrison's often rhythm and blues– or country-influenced guitar, and Tucker’s simple but steady beat. Nico's European-accented vocal contributions lent an otherworldly quality to the group.

*March 12, 1967: The Velvet Underground and Nico, featuring the famous Andy Warhol–designed "banana" cover, is released, peaking at #171 on Billboard magazine's Top 200 charts.

The promising commercial début of the album was dampened somewhat by legal complications: the album’s back cover featured a photo of the group playing live with another image projected behind them; the projected image was a still from a Warhol motion picture, Chelsea Girls. The film’s cinematographer, Eric Emerson, had been arrested for drug possession and, desperate for money, claimed the still had been included on the album without his permission (in the image his face appears quite big, but upside down). MGM Records pulled all copies of the album until the legal problems were settled (by which time the record had lost its modest commercial momentum), and the still was airbrushed out.

The Velvet Underground performed live often, and their performances became louder, harsher and often featured extended improvisations. Cale reports that at about this time the Velvet Underground was one of the first groups to receive an endorsement from Vox. The company pioneered a number of special effects, which the Velvet Underground utilized on White Light/White Heat.

After the VU severed its relationship with Andy Warhol and Nico, they recorded their second album in September 1967, White Light/White Heat, with Tom Wilson as producer.

The recording was raw and oversaturated. Cale has stated that while the debut had some moments of fragility and beauty, White Light/White Heat was “consciously anti-beauty”.

The title track and first song starts things off with John Cale pounding on the piano like Jerry Lee Lewis. The eerie, hallucinatory “Lady Godiva’s Operation” remains Reed’s favorite track on the album.

Despite the dominance of noisefests like “Sister Ray” and “I Heard Her Call My Name”, there was room for the darkly comic “The Gift”, a short story written by Reed and narrated by Cale in his deadpan Welsh accent. The meditative “Here She Comes Now” was later covered by Galaxie 500, R.E.M., Cabaret Voltaire, and Nirvana.

*January 30, 1968: White Light/White Heat, the second Velvet Underground album, is released. White Light/White Heat entered the Billboard Top 200 chart for 2 weeks, at number 199.

However, tensions were growing: the group was tired of receiving little recognition for its work, and Reed and Cale were pulling the Velvet Underground in different directions. The differences showed in the last recording session the band had with John Cale in February 1968: two pop-like songs in Reed’s direction (“Temptation Inside Your Heart” and “Stephanie Says”) and a viola-driven drone in Cale’s direction (“Hey Mr. Rain”). (None of these songs were released until they were included on the VU and Another View compilation albums.) Further, some songs the band had performed with Cale in concert, or that he had co-written, were not recorded until after he had left the group (such as “Walk It and Talk It”, “Guess I’m Falling in Love”, “Ride into the Sun”, and “Countess from Hong Kong”).

Before work on their third album started, Cale was eased out of the band and was replaced by Doug Yule of Boston group the Glass Managerie, who had opened several VU shows. The Velvet Underground was recorded in late 1968 (released in March 1969). The cover photograph was taken by Billy Name.

*March 12, 1969: The self-titled third Velvet Undergound album is released. It fails to make Billboard’s Top 200 album chart.

It has often been reported that the early edition of the Velvet Underground was a struggle between Reed and Cale's creative impulses: Reed's rather conventional approach contrasted with Cale's experimentalist tendencies; according to Tim Mitchell, Morrison has reported that there was creative tension between Reed and Cale but that its impact has been exaggerated over the years.

In any case, the harsh, abrasive tendencies on the first two records were almost entirely absent on their third platter, The Velvet Underground. This resulted in a gentler sound influenced by folk music, prescient of the songwriting style that would form Reed's solo career. Another factor in the change of sound was the band's Vox amplifiers and assorted fuzzboxes being stolen from an airport while they were on tour; they obtained replacements by signing a new endorsement deal with Sunn. In addition, Reed and Morrison had purchased matching Fender 12-string electric guitars. Doug Yule plays down the influence of the new equipment, however.

Morrison's ringing guitar parts and Yule's melodic bass guitar and harmony vocals are featured prominently on the album. Reed's songs and singing are subdued and confessional, and he shared lead vocals with Yule, particularly when his own voice would fail under stress. Doug Yule sang the lead vocal on "Candy Says", which opens the LP, and a rare Maureen Tucker vocal is featured on "After Hours", a song that Reed said was so innocent and pure he couldn't possibly sing it himself. The album's influence can be heard in many later indie rock and lo-fi recordings.

The Velvet Underground spent much of 1969 on the road, feeling they were not accepted in their hometown of New York City and not making much headway commercially. The live album 1969: The Velvet Underground Live was recorded in October 1969 and released in 1974 on Mercury Records at the urging of rock critic Paul Nelson, who worked in A&R for Mercury at the time. Nelson asked singer-songwriter Elliott Murphy to write liner notes for the double album which began, “I wish it was a hundred years from today….”

During the same year, the band recorded on and off in the studio, creating a lot of material that was never officially released due to disputes with their record label. What many consider the prime of these sessions was released many years later as VU. This album has a transitional sound between the whisper-soft third album and the pop-rock songs of their final record, Loaded.

The rest of the recordings, as well as some alternate takes, were bundled on Another View. After Reed’s departure, he later reworked a number of these songs for his solo records (“Stephanie Says”, “Ocean”, “I Can’t Stand It”, “Lisa Says”, “She’s My Best Friend”). Indeed, most of Reed’s early solo career’s more successful hits were reworked Velvet Underground tracks, released for the first time in their original version on VU, Another View, and later on Peel Slowly and See.

In 1969 MGM Records president Mike Curb wanted to purge any drug- or hippie-related bands from MGM, and the Velvets were on his list, along with Frank Zappa’s Mothers of Invention. (Nonetheless, MGM insisted on keeping the tapes of their unissued recordings.)

Atlantic Records signed the Velvet Underground for what would be its final studio album with Lou Reed: Loaded, released on Atlantic’s subsidiary label Cotillion. The album’s title refers to Atlantic’s request that the band produce an album “loaded with hits”. Though the record was not the smash hit the company had anticipated, it contains the most accessible pop the VU had performed, and several of Reed’s best-known songs, including "Sweet Jane” and “Rock and Roll”.

Though Tucker had temporarily retired from the group due to her pregnancy, she received a performance credit on Loaded. Drums were actually played by several people, including Yule, engineer Adrian Barber, sessioneer Tommy Castanaro, and Doug Yule’s brother Billy, who was still in high school.

Disillusioned with the lack of progress the band was making and pressured by manager Steve Sesnick, Reed decided to quit the band in August 1970. The band essentially dissolved while recording the album, and Reed walked off just before it was finished. Lou Reed has often said he was completely surprised when he saw Loaded in stores. He also said, bitterly, “I left them to their album full of hits that I made.”

However, Reed was particularly bitter about a verse being edited from the Loaded version of “Sweet Jane”. “New Age” was changed as well: as originally recorded, its closing line (“It’s the beginning of a new age”) was repeated many more times. A brief interlude in “Rock and Roll” was also removed. (Years later, the album would be reissued with the edits restored.) On the other hand, Yule has pointed out that the album was to all intents and purposes finished when Reed left the band and that Reed had been aware of most, if not all, of the edits. The few weeks between Reed’s departure in late August and Loaded’s arrival in the shops in September of the same year also would have left little room for the whole process of editing, reviewing, mastering and pressing.

Although Loaded’s spin-off single “Who Loves the Sun” did nothing, the album itself is something of a muted triumph. “Sweet Jane” and “Rock and Roll” became U.S. radio favorites, and the band, featuring Walter Powers on bass and Doug Yule promoted to lead vocals and guitar, went on the road once more, playing the U.S. East Coast and Europe. By that time, however, Sterling Morrison had obtained a B.A. degree in English, and left the group for an academic career with the University of Texas at Austin. His replacement was singer/keyboard player Willie Alexander. The band played shows in England, Wales, and the Netherlands, some of which are collected on the 2001 box set Final V.U.. Certain fans began mocking the new lineup as the “Velveteen Underground”. This was perhaps unfair: Yule has expressed discomfort with the group being promoted as the V.U., and extant recordings show that the group performed plenty of newly written material, rather than relying solely on the earlier songs written by Reed.

In 1972 Atlantic released Live at Max's Kansas City, a live bootleg of the Velvet Underground’s final performance with Reed, recorded by fan Brigid Polk on August 23, 1970. By this time Doug Yule was once again touring the United Kingdom, this time backed with hired hands, as Sesnick had sent home Tucker, Powers and Alexander, effectively ending their time with the band. Later that year, Sesnick managed to secure a recording contract with Polydor Records in England, and Yule recorded Squeeze (1973) under the Velvet Underground name with Deep Purple drummer Ian Paice.

Squeeze is a controversial item among Velvet fans, generally held in low regard by fans and critics: Stephen Thomas Erlewine notes that the album received “uniformly terrible reviews” upon initial release, and was often "deleted" from official V.U. discographies. Due to perceived middle of the road content, Squeeze is sometimes dismissed out of hand by Velvet Underground fans. However, with the advent of Internet audio file sharing, the previously obscure record has gained some supporters, who speculate that Squeeze might have fared far better if it had been promoted not as a V.U. album, but as Yule's solo debut, with some arguing that some of the songs would not have been out of place on Loaded.

Reed, Cale and Nico teamed up at the beginning of 1972 to play two concerts in London and Paris. The Paris concert performed at the Bataclan club was bootlegged, but finally received an official release as Le Bataclan '72 in 2003.

Reed and Cale, in the meantime, developed solo careers. Sterling Morrison was a professor for some time, teaching Medieval Literature at the University of Texas at Austin, then became a tugboat captain for several years. Maureen Tucker raised a family before returning to small-scale gigging and recording in the 1980s; Morrison was in a number of touring bands, among others with Tucker’s band.

On July 18, 1988, Nico, the German-born singer and early associate of The Velvet Underground, died of a cerebral hemorrhage following a bicycle accident.

The band was name-dropped in the 1982 Fleetwood Mac song “Gypsy” (So I'm back to the Velvet Underground / Back to the floor that I love / To a room with some lace and paper flowers), a reference to songwriter Stevie Nicks returning to her childhood home where she listened to the Velvet Underground as a teenager. Nico was clearly an influence on the very young Nicks, who was just 19 and starting to open for Janis Joplin with Fritz in the Bay Area in 1967 when The Velvet Underground and Nico was released.

Czech dissident playwright Václav Havel was a fan of the Velvet Underground, ultimately becoming a friend of Lou Reed. Though some attribute the name of the 1989 “Velvet Revolution”, which ended more than 40 years of Communist rule in Czechoslovakia, to the band, Reed points out that in fact the name Velvet Revolution derives from its peaceful nature—that no one was physically killed (“hurt”) during those events. After Havel’s election as president, first of Czechoslovakia and then the Czech Republic, Reed visited him in Prague. On 16 September, 1998, at Havel’s request, Reed performed in the White House at a state dinner in Havel’s honor hosted by President Clinton.

In 1990, Reed and Cale released Songs for Drella, dedicated to the recently deceased Andy Warhol. (“Drella” was a nickname Warhol had been given, a combination of “Dracula” and “Cinderella”.) Though Morrison and Tucker had each worked with Reed and Cale since the V.U. broke up, Songs for Drella was the first time the mercurial pair had worked together in decades, and rumors of a reunion began to circulate, fueled by the one-off appearance by Reed, Cale, Morrison and Tucker to play "Heroin" as the encore to a brief Songs for Drella set in Jouy-en-Josas, France.

The Reed–Cale–Morrison–Tucker lineup reunited in 1992, commencing activities with a European tour beginning in Edinburgh on June 1, 1993, and featuring a performance at Glastonbury which garnered an NME front cover. Cale sang most of the songs Nico had originally performed. As well as headlining, the Velvets performed as supporting act for five dates of U2’s Zoo TV Tour.

Before the band could tour the U.S. or record—an MTV Unplugged broadcast and album were proposed and there were vague plans to record a studio album—Cale and Reed fell out again, breaking up the band once more.

On August 30, 1995, Sterling Morrison died of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. The band seemed to reach their definitive end as a performing unit with Morrison’s passing. However, this prospect would change when the band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1996. Lou Reed and John Cale put their differences aside to reform the Velvet Underground for the last time, with Maureen Tucker in tow. Doug Yule was absent and is said to have been slighted by the band. At the ceremony, the band was inducted by singer/poet Patti Smith, and the band performed "Last Night I Said Goodbye to My Friend", written in tribute to Sterling Morrison.

The Velvet Underground continues to exist as a New York–based partnership managing the financial and back catalog aspects for the band members, but no performances will be forthcoming. In issue number 946 (April 15, 2004), Rolling Stone ranked the band #19 on its list of the "100 Greatest Artists of All Time".

* The Velvet Underground and Nico (recorded 1966, released 1967) * White Light/White Heat (recorded 1967, released 1968) * The Velvet Underground (recorded 1968, released 1969) * Loaded (recorded and released 1970) * Squeeze (recorded 1972, released 1973)

* Angus MacLise — sat in on percussion with Tucker switching to bass guitar and Cale and Morrison to lead vocals during a Chicago engagement when Reed was taken ill with hepatitis, June–July 1966. *Nico — collaborator on vocals with the band on four tracks off The Velvet Underground and Nico and several Exploding Plastic Inevitable engagements, 1966–1967. In addition, about half of the tracks on Nico's 1967 debut LP, Chelsea Girl, feature songs written by and/or featuring Reed, Cale and Morrison. These tracks are generally considered Velvet Underground songs, to the extent that some songs are included on compilations like the Peel Slowly and See box set and the Gold 2-CD set. *Billy Yule — stand-in on drums for a pregnant Tucker on three tracks off Loaded and at the Max's Kansas City 1970 engagement, including Live at Max's Kansas City; and the 1973 Boston engagement. *Tommy Castanaro — stand-in on drums for a pregnant Tucker on two tracks off Loaded. *Adrian Barber — stand-in on drums for a pregnant Tucker on a number of tracks off Loaded. *Larry Estridge — tour stand-in (bass guitar) for Walter Powers, June 1971. *Rob Norris — tour member (guitar) for the 1972 UK Squeeze tour. *George Kay — tour member (bass guitar) for the 1972 UK Squeeze tour and the 1973 Boston engagement. *Don Silverman — tour member (guitar) for the 1972 UK Squeeze tour. *Mark Nauseef — tour member (drums) for the 1972 UK Squeeze tour. *Ian Paice — session musician (drums) for Squeeze (1973).

* The Velvet Underground Web Page

*"Style It Takes" (John Cale on Studio 360 radio program from June 2, 2006); MP3 file; John Cale performing "Style It Takes" (talking about Andy Warhol, the subject of that song). *"Loop" from Issue 3 of Aspen magazine (December 1966).