Newsgroup: it.arti.musica.rock
Titolo: per Poyet

In terms of how many copies any of those records actually sold, The Velvet
Underground don’t even come close to the genuine stars of the decade like
The Four Seasons or The Righteous Brothers. In terms of the numbers of
records that have beeninspiredby their work, The Velvet Underground stand
as perhaps the most influential white American band of the 1960s.
The
band had its roots in a flop single, "(Do) The Ostrich", released by The
Primitives in 1965. Created by Lou Reed, then a staff writer at Pickwick
Records in Long Island, "(Do) The Ostrich" was an attempt to create a dance
hit and aroused sufficient attention to get a TV appearance (Reed likes to
claim it was a parody, but a genre that had given us the Fly, the Snake and
the Swim scarcely needed parody). John Cale, a Welsh expatriate avant-garde
viola player, was drafted into the fictitious band, and the two decided
that – despite the failure of the single – their artistic visions were
sufficiently attuned to make a group a real possibility. Drafting in
Sterling Morrison, (a college friend of Reed’s, on guitar, and one of
Cale’s associates, Angus MacLise on drums), the band emerged at the end of
the year as The Velvet Underground.
The blend of Reed’s deadpan delivery
of observational lyrics and Cale’s love of distortion, feedback and aural
onslaught was the core of the band from the outset. Less celebrated, but
equally key, was the replacement of MacLise by Maureen "Mo" Tucker, one of
rock’s great drummers. This was the line-up that built up a local
reputation in New York, developing a confrontational live set and
attracting the attention of the scene centred on Andy Warhol and The
Factory (Warhol’s very own "community arts" centre). Suitably impressed, he
offered to become their manager, as long as his current prodigy, Nico,
could sing with them. As proof of good faith, he got them three days of
studio time in April 1966 to make an album.
Recorded at the same time as
the Beatles were startingRevolver, the record didn’t emerge until March the
following year.The Velvet Underground & Nicohas since become accepted as
the anti-Pepper, the alternative masterpiece that shot the hippy dream down
in flames. Much of the attention at the time concentrated on the drugs
("Heroin") and deviant sex ("Venus In Furs"), but in retrospect the real
joy of the record is the lo-fi hypnotic simplicity of songs like "Sunday
Morning" and the Nico trilogy, "Femme Fatale", "All Tomorrow’s Parties" and
"I’ll Be Your Mirror".
Despite the media attention that Warhol was
capable of generating, the record bombed, only making #197 in America, and
the impetus was lost. Nico left, Warhol drifted onto other projects and a
second album,White Light/White Heat, came out in 1968 without their
assistance. Its sales figures made the debut look like a runaway success,
and the uncompromising harshness of its sound even managed to drive away
some of the fans the band had attracted. Its centre was the elongated
"Sister Ray", which still has some defenders, but – in the nature of music
that sounds heroically abrasive when recorded – now seems simply dated.
The gigs in front of dwindling audiences and the lack of sales, combined
with a copious drug intake, were producing tensions in the band which
resulted in Cale’s ejection by Reed in late 1968 and his replacement by
Doug Yale. With the atonal element removed, the third album,The Velvet
Underground(1969), was a radical departure from its predecessor. Dominated
entirely by Reed, it was a musically coherent work that included some of
the band’s best-loved songs – "Pale Blue Eyes", "Candy Says", "Jesus" – and
developed the quieter, more delicate strands of the first album. Needless
to say, it won no new fans and alienated another chunk of the original
audience.
Even in the indulgent 1960s the failure of the band to sell
any records was too much for their record company, and they were duly
sacked by MGM. Signing to Atlantic, they recorded one last studio
album,Loaded(1970), though Reed left before its release. It suffers from
Tucker’s absence (she was pregnant and was replaced by Billy Yule), but it
was another great record, somewhere between the softly spoken confessionals
of the third album and the straight ahead rock ’n’ & roll of the live act.
The first side, in particular, is perhaps their finest moment, containing
classics like "Sweet Jane", "Rock & Roll" and "New Age", the latter sung by
Doug Yule.
With Reed’s departure, it was Yule who kept the band going. A
final album under the group’s name was released asSqueezein 1972, but –
with Morrison and Tucker both having left by now as well – it’s never
considered part of the canon.
There were then just the four albums,
augmented by a terrific double album,1969 Live, which didn’t come out until
1974, andVU, a collection of studio tracks that finally emerged in 1985 and
bridged the gap between the third and fourth albums. On this slender legacy
is built a reputation unparalleled in white rock. They were a crucial
influence on The Stooges, Jonathan Richman and Patti Smith (Cale produced
debuts for all three), on Bowie, on punk, and on indie music throughout the
1980s and 1990s from Cowboy Junkies to The Jesus & Mary Chain. Back in the
punk days it was the aggression of the first two albums that attracted
support, but as time has worn on the beauty of the quiet songs has
increasingly won through. At times genuinely moving, tracks like "Sunday
Morning", "Pale Blue Eyes" and "New Age" reflected Reed’s adolescent love
of early rock ’n’ roll and doo-wop, whilst translating them into an
achievable medium for the most rudimentary of players.
In 1993, the
classic line-up reunited for a European tour that produced one new song, a
live album and a renewal of the Reed / Cale rivalry. Since then Morrison
has died, the band has inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and
they finally made the British charts – "Venus In Furs" hit the dizzy
heights of #71 in 1994 after its use in a TV advert.
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 rock’s great drummers.
Quanto mi piacciono queste cose!
Per il resto, un ottimo riassunto della VU story.
Grazie.
Ciao
--
Enrico 'magic' - 
mma...@tiscalinet.it
 -
"Between thought and expression
                lies a lifetime"