The Velvet Underground & Nico

The Velvet Underground & Nico is a very interesting band to sit down and listen to. At first, like myself, you might say, “Wow, these guys are all on drugs and have no idea that they are so out of tune,” but then you realize why they do that.

The Velvet Underground didn’t really care what their sound was that they were playing. It was more about the message of the words. Like the podcast was talking about, the songs were an extremely easy chord progression. They would have three chords for the whole song sometimes. While they were on drugs a lot of the time, they concentrated on having fun and not carrying wither or not people liked them.

John Cale was one of the main songwriters for the band. He was originally from Wales but then came over to America to pursue a scholarship he received. He started in orchestras and that’s where his influence of the viola came from, which later became modified into more of drone instrument.

Lou Reed was the other primary songwriter of the group. He spent a lot of his time talking about sexuality and drug use. One of his most popular songs, heroine is a great example of this. He was very open about his drug use. This was very different than other mainstream bands of that era. Andy Warhol saw this in the band and decided to take this band under his wing and help them create the music they wanted.

Andy was the artist that used the banana as the cover art for one of The Velvet Underground’s albums. They tied art and music together very tightly. The production quality in the recordings of the albums wasn’t the greatest. There would be songs they would just do a take of and call it good. There was also a lot of feedback in the recordings and they didn’t really seem to car. They didn’t really use the traditional way of recording for their albums and this gave them another big difference in their music.

The Velvet Underground & Nico is a very unique band to listen to. When I first heard them, I couldn’t believe that this was really going to be a band that I would study. Honestly, I still don’t really enjoy their music but I definitely have more respect for what they did. They were innovators of the rock era. They wanted to be different, even if people didn’t like what they were playing. They just wanted to write songs that they enjoyed. I respect them as a band but probably won’t listen to them again in my life unless I need some “different inspiration.”