The Velvet Underground S The Velvet Underground And Nico

The Velvet Underground and Nico has influenced the sound of more bands than any other album. And remarkably, it still sounds as fresh and challenging today as it did upon its release in 1967. In this book, Joe Harvard covers everything from Lou Reed's lyrical genius to John Cale's groundbreaking instrumentation, and from the creative input of Andy Warhol to the fine details of the recording process. With input from co-producer Norman Dolph and Velvets fan Jonathan Richman, Harvard documents the creation of a record which - in the eyes of many - has never been matched. EXCERPT In 1966, some studios, like Abbey Road, had technicians in white lab coats, and even the less formal studios usually had actual engineering graduates behind the consoles. Studios were still more about science than art. Clients who dared make technical suggestions were treated with bemusement, derision, or hostility. The Velvets were a young band under constant critical attack, and the pressure to conform in order to gain acceptance must have been tremendous. Most bands of that era compromised with their record companies, through wholesale revamping of their image from wardrobe to musical style, changing or omitting lyrics, creating drastically edited versions for radio airplay, or eliminating songs entirely from their sets and records. With Andy Warhol in the band's corner, such threats were minimized.

The Velvet Underground and Nico has influenced the sound of more bands than any other album. And remarkably, it still sounds as fresh and challenging today as it did upon its release in 1967. In this book, Joe Harvard covers everything from Lou Reed's lyrical genius to John Cale's groundbreaking instrumentation, and from the creative input of Andy Warhol to the fine details of the recording process. With input from co-producer Norman Dolph and Velvets fan Jonathan Richman, Harvard documents the creation of a record which - in the eyes of many - has never been matched.

With exclusive new interviews from the band, this is a captivating account of one of the most influential groups in rock history. Brian Eno famously said "the first Velvet Underground album only sold 10,000 copies, but everyone who bought it formed a band." Perhaps no other musicians can claim such limited chart success and so enduring a musical legacy as The Velvet Underground. Artists including David Bowie, The Sex Pistols, Joy Division, Roxy Music, Nirvana, U2, R.E.M., and even dissident Czech playwright and eventual president Václav Havel have cited the Velvets as a major influence. Seeing the Light presents the untold story of the band. Formed by the mercurial Lou Reed and classically trained Welshman John Cale in the mid-1960s, the band first gained notoriety after being adopted by Andy Warhol. Warhol's patronage allowed the group to chart unexplored regions of rock 'n' roll, producing unforgettable and unsettling music that veered from droning, avant-garde experimentalism to folk-infused pop, offering taboo-busting tales of drug addiction, prostitution, and sexual deviance. Creative tensions and frustrated ambition eventually saw both Cale and Reed leave the band, to its ignominious end. In the decades since, The Velvet Underground's music has attained classic status, revered alongside The Beatles and The Beach Boys as one of the sources of modern pop. With exclusive new interviews from members Moe Tucker and Doug Yule, as well as the widow of their bandmate Sterling Morrison, journalist Rob Jovanovic peels back the mystique of one of the most important bands in rock history.

Compiled from archival ephemera, unpublished photographs, films, album covers, posters, fanzines, letters, testimonies, and poems, this monograph gathers anew the Velvet Underground Experience exhibition that opened in Paris in 2016 for a US audience, recreating the sound, visual, and emotional experiences of the underground scenes in New York, where extravagances were always allowed.

A comprehensive history of the influential cult band draws on dozens of new interviews and previously undiscovered archive sources, tracing their initial lack of success before they inspired and were championed by such artists as David Bowie. Original.

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The best-selling definitive history of The Velvet Underground. Widely acclaimed as one of the greatest rock books ever published, it first appeared in 1983 and has remained in print in several languages ever since. Written and compiled by Victor Bockris and Gerard Malanga, Up-Tight is based on interviews with all four members of the Velvets, as well as others who became part of Andy Warhol’s circle of artistic collaborators.

Swingers and swappers, strippers and streetwalkers, sadists, masochists, and sexual mavericks of every persuasion; all are documented in The Velvet Underground, a legendary exposé of the diseased underbelly of ’60s American society. The book that lent its name to the seminal New York rock’n’roll group, whose songs were to mirror its themes of depravity and social malaise. Welcome to the sexual twilight zone...