Up-Tight: The Velvet Underground Story

by Victor Bockris

  However, as August plodded into September Lou, who suddenly found himself at a loose end, went into a post-tour nose-dive, and launched a fax war with Cale that would shortly bring the whole operation once again to a thundering halt. Reed laid out in some detail why he never wanted to perform on stage with Cale again under any circumstances. Cale, as hurt and dismayed as he had been over the disappointed-with-John comments Lou had passed after completing Songs For Drella, had learned by now that the way to respond to Reed’s attack was by deflecting it with quiet understanding. This did little to soothe Reed’s seething paranoia, however, and he immediately embarked upon another line of attack. He refused to sign any contracts or proceed with any further VU business until it had been agreed upon in writing that he would have total control over the production of the MTV Unplugged album as well as any other future VU product. Cale, who pointed out that the band had always worked as a team, was justifiably horrified, and replied in a flat negative.

  The battle continued through September into October, but by the time the Live album and video were released, Lisa Robinson had already announced in her New York Post column – carrying detailed explanations from Reed and Cale as well as some concluding remarks from Maureen which harked back to the Reed-Cale split of 1968 – that The Velvet Underground reunion, if it had actually ever happened, was now undoubtedly over. Sire Records executives were extremely disappointed and the live album, The Velvet Underground Live 1993, which could have, along with the band’s entire back catalogue, benefited greatly from a US tour, made little commercial impression. It was a sad fall in more ways than one for the band, its audience and its history. Rather than growing up and bringing rock into its maturity, which Reed had been claiming was his goal since the early Eighties, Lou had reacted like the fifteen-year-old he was at times so proud to remain. It was his ball, and if they wouldn’t play by his rules there would be no game.

  Both The New York Times and Rolling Stone awarded The Velvet Underground first place in the comeback of the year category that December, but the album received reviews ranging from over the top positive to over the top negative with comparisons between Cale and Reed that were bound to rankle.

  KENNY MATHIESON: “John Cale’s subverted anthem ‘All Tomorrow’s Parties’ is the first highlight on disc one (Reed’s ‘Venus In Furs’ dirge is on the dull side).”

  AMY LINDEN: “What’s most striking in 1993 is how immediate the band and their songs sound, particularly John Cale on the haunting ‘All Tomorrow’s Parties’. Reed’s scattershot guitar shines on the cacophonous ‘Hey Mr Rain’, though his terse monotone often swells into excessive singing that undercuts the brutal simplicity of the material.”

  KEITH CAMERON: “Anyone who saw The Velvets this summer and thought they were great will hear this mammoth 23-track set and swiftly realise that the emotional impact of actually seeing them – The Velvet Underground playing those songs competently – overrode the fact that much of this was a travesty. Reed’s vocal readings of ‘Venus In Furs’ and ‘Beginning To See The Light’ have begun to overstep the line dividing artistic licence from wilful pisstake. ‘Rock & Roll’ is hammered to oblivion; ‘I’ll Be Your Mirror’, though badly bruised, just about survives; but ‘Pale Blue Eyes’ is tossed to the floor and stomped on as if to prove that, hell, Lou wrote it and he can murder it if he wants to. No, it’s the contributions of John Cale that time and time again boot Live MCMXCIII out of karaoke-land and into the realms of respectability.”

  DAVE MORRISON: “Plus points are John Cale’s cadaverous cool, Moe Tucker’s minimal pounding and some great versions, full of spiky improvisation. Negative point is Lou Reed cramming ad-libbed rubbish into the vocals. ‘Wooh yeah oooh’ doesn’t sound right in ‘Venus In Furs’. Put a sock in it, Lou.”

  The fallout came in a series of interviews published in late 1993 and early 1994.

  MOE TUCKER: “Lou made it clear that all other (band) activities hinged on his being able to produce the MTV project. It’s just so infuriating, because we had such a good time together on the tour last summer.”

  JOHN CALE: “Lou likes to obsess over things. I have different production values than Lou does in that Lou will go for the audiophile situation and I will go for the excitement. I have a lot of respect for the way he produces his own albums, but when it comes to The Velvet Underground’s music, that’s a different matter altogether. The idea of handing the reins of The Velvet Underground sound to Lou was like putting the fox in to guard the chicken house, which became a problem when I realized the partnership idea was no longer in existence.”

  LOU REED: “I said I could no longer continue doing it unless I did the production for any records that were going to come out of it. John Cale didn’t want to do that, so that was the end of it. I’ve told them, I told John I cannot and will not be involved unless I’m in charge of the production, because everything has to sound up to a certain level and there’s only one way that’s going to happen. I want to get off. And if I can’t then it’s not fun, so that’s the end of it. And there were things coming up where John wanted to write songs, wanted to do this, wanted to do that. There were opportunities to make albums and everything, and I said, ‘I can’t do any writing at all for any future records unless I do the production, because that’s the way it has to be.’”

  On January 19, 1994, Dennis Barrie, Director of The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Museum, was quoted in the New York Times: “Someone said that we would run out of great people to induct. I think that’s nonsense. You haven’t seen anything yet. When I think about the people who didn’t get in this year, people like Frank Zappa, The Velvet Underground, all these amazing people who just became eligible and will surface again in years to come. There’s a wonderful breadth and depth of people to choose from.”

  UPDATE 1983

  The day we finished writing the first edition of this book (February 18, 1983) the following article appeared in the New York Times.

  Rock: Dream Syndicate Band

  Just about every new-wave band shows the influence of the Velvet Underground. But the Dream Syndicate, which played Monday at the Mudd Club, is utterly, single-mindedly devoted to the Velvets for both sound and sense.

  Although Dream Syndicate is young and hails from Los Angeles, it gives an almost uncanny simulation of late-1960’s New York rock. Like the Velvets, the band plays disillusioned songs that contrast repeating bass lines with screaming, anarchic guitars. And its lead singer, Steve Wynn, recreates Lou Reed’s phrasing down to the last nasal quaver. Even those ideas not directly traceable to the Velvets, like some raga-inflected guitar lines, evoked the psychedelic era.

  The old dynamics still pack a punch, however. Mr. Wynn’s songs are as skillful as they are derivative, and Dream Syndicate reveled in the tension between its rock-solid rhythm section and Karl Precoda’s noisy, haywire guitar. With its basic vocabulary in place, Dream Syndicate is ready to move on. The band will perform Friday at the Peppermint Lounge and next Wednesday at Folk city.

  Jon Pareles

  The American Heritage Dictionary defines a precursor to be: “One that precedes and indicates or announces someone or something to come; forerunner; harbinger.” In that sense, then, the rock group known as The Velvet Underground was precursor of an entire generation of music to follow. In itself the group did not endure into the Seventies, but rather its members were dispersed, going their separate ways.

  We forget sometimes that no matter what the changes we are the same in our intimacies and with our pasts. The measure. Who shall reap the harvest? To whom shall the praise be given? The Velvet Underground was a very important part of the cultural explosion of the Sixties. They were a group beneath whose force the melody soared – a certainty of music.

  The Velvets were, at the same time, besides being the product of a new kind of music, children of a new era in the world, the era which was to discover among other things the relativity of all knowledge. The generation of the Eighties are the inheritors of an artis
tic legacy the likes of which perhaps will not occur again – what tradition is all about, finally.

  The Velvets’ music now thrives through an ever-continuing emergence of new music groups. The seeds have been planted and the new music has added its wonder.

  The Velvet Underground is the break-up and the beginning. There it is and we’d better acknowledge it and write it down. It cannot be otherwise.

  “The Velvet Underground were the first avant-garde rock band, and the greatest. They were avant-garde in the true sense of exploring uncharted territory. Their songs not only sounded different but they expressed certain feelings, attitudes and kinds of experience that had never been heard in rock music before.

  “They took music as far out as it is possible to go without losing consciousness (which is what separates them from their Sixties contemporaries, who did) and made so many new connections – combining poetry with trash, primitiveness with sophistication, delicacy with violence – that they virtually laid the foundations for a new age in rock.

  “They would influence later generations, but not their own. During The Velvets’ own lifetime, from 1965 to 1970, they were simply notorious as the group who sang about heroin and transvestites and sado-masochism.” Mary Harron. (N.M.E.)

  “I belong to the generation for whom The Velvet Underground was our Beatles and Dylan combined. I don’t care who did feedback first, or if Lou Reed ‘sang like Dylan’ – modern music begins with The Velvets, and the implications and influence of what they did seem to go on forever. ‘Black Angel’s Death Song’ alone is still ahead of its time, and of course all the other stuff sounds right up to date over a decade later. Who else has created a body of work of which this can be said? The only thing I think would be a mistake in thanking them for this precious gift would be romanticising them too much.” Lester Bangs (New York Rocker)

  We have attempted to present some information and viewpoints which may stand as a record of The Velvets courageous career and a celebration of the characters who played roles of varying importance in its trajectory. A look at what they are all doing today will end our account.

  The Naked And The Dead …

  JACKSON BROWNE enjoys a successful career as a singer and songwriter.

  TIM BUCKLEY died from an overdose of heroin on June 29, 1975.

  JOHN CAGE died and went to musical heaven where he is now conducting rigorous rehearsals in silence with the archangels.

  JOHN CALE, bless his good heart, has one child and tours the world with his beautifully lyrical, emotional, solo work.

  FELIX CAVALEIRI is an old Rascal.

  JIM CONDON was a major contributor to the now defunct What Goes On. He lives in Cambridge, Mass.

  TONY CONRAD teaches video at the Center for Media Studies at SUNY-Buffalo.

  MIKE CURB always wears a nice pair of shoes.

  RONNIE CUTRONE remains among the most brilliant painters of comic book dreams in America.

  SEVERN DARDEN, who owned The Castle in Los Angeles, is an actor and lives in California.

  CANDY DARLING died from complications involving cancer and pneumonia in New York City in 1974.

  DENNIS DEEGAN is a landscape gardener living in Paris.

  WALTER DE MARIA made the right choice in leaving the VU. He is now among the biggest men in the art world.

  BOB DYLAN: In the Eighties Lou finally started saying that he dug Dylan and Dylan started saying that he dug Lou, and Lou actually appeared at a number of Bob events, culminating in his incendiary rendition of Foot Of Pride at Bob’s big Madison Square Garden 50th anniversary project.

  ERIC EMERSON died form a heroin overdose in 1976.

  BRIAN EPSTEIN died from barbiturate and alcohol poisoning in London in 1967.

  AHMET ERTEGUN is the President of Atlantic Records. He recently published his autobiography.

  DAVID FAISON’S whereabouts are unknown.

  FEDERICO FELLINI passed on in a big coffin on the grand canal in Venice where he was undoubtedly filming a movie in his coffin.

  HENRY GELDZAHLER died in the mid-Nineties but continues to be among the most intelligent influences on Lou Reed.

  ALLEN GINSBERG photographed Reed in 1982 and said that Lou, along with William Burroughs, had been a major influence on punk rock. He died in 1997.

  BILL GRAHAM died in a fiery helicopter crash off the coast of nowhere, prompting Keith Richards to exclaim, “That’s the end of night helicopter flights for me, baby,” and he was probably right. The Velvets hated Graham but Graham was as great as the Velvets.

  ALBERT GROSSMAN died in 1986. He is fondly remembered for his influence on rock management.

  PEIRO HELCZER died, not coincidentally, in an automobile accident in France in 1993. God rest his tormented singing soul.

  GARLAND JEFFREYS is a singer and songwriter. He lives in New York City.

  BETSEY JOHNSON has become one of the world’s most successful fashion designers.

  BRIAN JONES died in his swimming pool in England in 1969 but his music lives on eternally blonde.

  CAROLE KING produced The Myddle Class’s first single and later married their bass player. He eventually committed suicide. Her iconic status as a singer songwriter is etched in stone.

  WAYNE KRAMER continues to release fine solo albums. He lives with his wife in Los Angeles.

  TIMOTHY LEARY died in 1996. He continues to drop in.

  BILLY LINICH recently reunited with the VU and continues to take divine photographs.

  DONALD LYONS teaches English Literature at Rutgers University, NJ.

  ANGUS MAC LISE died from hypoglycemia, TB, and drug abuse in Kathmandu in 1979.

  GERARD MALANGA is a poet, photographer, conceptual artist and archivist. He lives in New York City with his wife Asako.

  MARSHALL MC LUHAN died from a heart attack in Toronto in December 1980.

  JONAS MEKAS is the director of the Film Anthology Archives. He lives in New York City where he’s also a fine Lithuanian poet.

  PHILIP MILSTEIN continues to play music in the spirit of the Velvet Underground.

  STERLING MORRISON went back to being a tugboat captain on the Gulf of Mexico after the 1993 reunion. He died from lyphoma, a form of cancer, the day after his 53rd birthday at his home in Poughkeepsie, NY. Everyone who ever knew him wept. His influence as a guitar player lives on and he is fondly remembered by hundreds of thousands of fans.

  PAUL MORRISSEY lives in New York City and continues an illustrious career of brilliance.

  BOBBY NEUWIRTH recently collaborated with John Cale on a series of songs, and continues to make music wherever he goes.

  NICO died from a heart attack after cycling up a steep hill in savage heat on the island of Ibiza in 1988. Her soul lives on among us all.

  ONDINE died in 1989 after a prolonged illness. He gave his life to art. He was the Pope of NY from 1966 until his death. This book and all our books are in reality dedicated to him. Ondine was the spirit of the VU.

  TERRY PHILLIPS is no longer at Pickwick. His whereabouts are unknown.

  BRIGID POLK has been reincarnated as Brigid Berlin. A documentary on her life by Vincent and Shelley Freemont was recently released.

  LOU REED has recently collaborated with Robert Wilson and Edgar Allan Poe on a successful musical. Since getting divorced he has maintained the longest relationship of his life with Laurie Anderson.

  JONATHAN RICHMOND continues to astonish his fans every time he plays in concert.

  ROBBIE ROBERTSON is working in movies and continues to make great music.

  CHARLIE ROTHCHILD works as a booking agent. He lives in New York City.

  BARBARA RUBIN died after giving birth to her fourth child in France in 1978.

  MICKEY RUSKIN died in his sleep in New York City, May 16, 1983.

  ED SANDERS has published many books, among them the best seller The Family about Charles Manson. He is currently the Mayor of Woodstock.

  DELMORE SCHWARTZ died from alcohol poisoning in New York City in 1966.

 
; EDIE SEDGWICK died from barbiturate poisoning in Santa Barbara in 1971.

  STEVE SESNICK lives in Boston.

  STEPHEN SHORE is head of the Photography Department at Bard College, Annandalde-on-Hudson, N.Y.

  CHRIS STEIN is a songwriter, musician and photographer. He continues to work with Debbie Harry in Blondie and on solo projects.

  INGRID SUPERSTAR went out for a pack of cigarettes one day and, like the character in a Raymond Chandler novel, never returned; no, she never returned.

  LYNN TILLMAN is a major novelist of the angst-ridden humour of New York.

  MAUREEN TUCKER tours the world in the Maureen Tucker Band. Her influence on drummers everywhere is inescapable.

  ANDY WARHOL was murdered in a NY hospital. He was a genius and a Saint and a sharp man. Without him, no Velvet Underground as we know it.

  CHUCK WEIN continues to meditate on film scripts.

  NAT WEISS continues to be a lawyer.

  JOHN WILCOCK continues to explore the world of art and culture through various small newspapers and cable-TV shows in New York City.

  DANNY WILLIAMS committed suicide in Cape Cod in 1967.

  TOM WILSON died in Los Angeles in 1978.

  MARY WORONOV is an actress. She starred in Rock & Roll High School and Eating Raoul. In the Nineties she wrote three excellent books, including a memoir of the Warhol Factory. She lives in Los Angeles.