In the historic ferment of Sixties rock, the Velvet Underground were the perfect band in the right city, New York, at a crucial time.
For five years (1965 to 1970) singer-songwriter and guitarist Lou Reed, bassist and viola player John Cale, guitarist Sterling Morrison and drummer Maureen Tucker, with the German vocalist Nico and bassist Doug Yule (who replaced Cale in 1968), broadcast the real life of their home town the sex, drugs and art; the furious street energies, hidden pleasures and desperate romance in an unprecedented pop music of vivid storytelling and transgressive excitement.
On stage and on their four influential studio albums, the Velvets invented the many futures of rock punk, drone, free improvisation, lyric candor in songs and performances that made the group notorious, with the pivotal help of their early manager and mentor, Andy Warhol. Legendary status came later, after the group broke up and Reed and Cale went on to bold prolific solo careers.
Today, the Velvet Underground are the stars they always deserved to be, with a rich and still mysterious story that continues to unfold: in the new visual collection, The Velvet Underground: New York Art, and tonight, in this unprecedented reunion of Reed, Tucker and Yule-the words, music and rhythm of The Velvet Underground.
Bio
David Fricke
David Fricke is a senior editor at Rolling Stone magazine.
Lou Reed
Guitarist Lou Reed co-founded and wrote most of the songs for the New York rock group The Velvet Underground (1965-70), the influential band which recorded such cult favorites as "Heroin," "Sweet Jane," and "Sister Ray." The Velvet Underground, at first associated with Andy Warhol and the singer Nico, was never a huge popular success, but it has been credited with influencing a generation of punk and post-punk rockers in the 1970s and '80s.
During the '70s Reed and David Bowie were among the top acts in "glam rock," a theatrical style of gender-bending rock and roll. Reed's solo hits from the '70s include "Walk On The Wild Side" and "Street Hassle," as well as re-vamped versions of several of his Velvet Underground songs. By the end of the 1990s, Reed was an elder statesman of rock and roll, a mature songwriter with a reputation for thoughtful urban ballads. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1997.
Maureen Tucker
Maureen Ann "Moe" Tucker is a musician best known for having been the drummer for the rock group The Velvet Underground.
Tucker first began playing the drums at age 19. When she was asked to join the Velvet Underground, Tucker was working for IBM as a keypunch operator. The band's original percussionist, Angus Maclise, had left in November 1965 because he felt the band sold out when it took a paying gig. Tucker was drafted because Velvets guitarist Sterling Morrison remembered her as the younger sister of one of his college friends who played the drums.
Tucker's style of playing was unconventional. She played standing up rather than seated (for easier access to the bass drum, using a simplified drum kit of tom toms, a snare drum and an upturned bass drum, playing with mallets rather than drumsticks. She rarely used cymbals; she claimed that since she felt the purpose of a drummer was simply to "keep time," cymbals were unnecessary for this purpose and drowned out the other instruments.
Doug Yule
Douglas Alan Yule is an American musician and singer, most notable for being a member of The Velvet Underground from 1968 to 1973.
When Lou Reed fired bassist John Cale from The Velvet Underground in 1968, Yule (who had befriended the band in 1967) joined as Cale's replacement. He made his first studio appearance on their third album, The Velvet Underground (1969), playing bass and organ, as well as singing lead vocals on the ballad "Candy Says". Yule's contribution to the LP was considerable, and his vocals would later come in handy on the road. When Reed's voice became strained from touring, Yule would sing lead on several songs. While Cale had been a more experimental bass player, Yule was more technically proficient on the bass than Cale and his distinct melodic style suited Reed's desire to move into a more mainstream direction. On the band's fourth album, "Loaded" (1970), his role became even more prominent, singing lead vocals on several songs on the LP ("Who Loves The Sun", "New Age", and "Oh! Sweet Nuthin'"), and playing six instruments (including keyboard and drums). Yule's brother, Billy, also joined in on the sessions as a drummer, as Maureen Tucker was pregnant and, therefore, absent for most of the recording.
Lou Reed left The Velvet Underground in 1970. Yule, Tucker and Sterling Morrison decided to continue performing as the Velvet Underground. Yule took over lead vocals and switched main instrument from bass to guitar, and Walter Powers was recruited as the band's new bass guitarist.
Remaining members of The Velvet Underground Lou Reed, Moe Tucker, and Doug Yule remember the pivotal role that producer Andy Warhol played in their success.
Guitarist, vocalist, and principal songwriter Reed describes Warhol as a "big protector" of the band's originality.
Aggressive form of rock music that coalesced into an international (though predominantly Anglo-American) movement in 1975–80. Originating in the countercultural rock of artists such as the Velvet Underground and Iggy (Pop) and the Stooges, punk rock evolved in New York City in the mid-1970s with artists such as Patti Smith and the Ramones. It soon took root in London—where distinctly “punk” fashions, including spiked hair and ripped clothing, were popularized—with bands such as the Sex Pistols and the Clash, and later in California, with X, Black Flag, and the Dead Kennedys. It is often marked by a fast, aggressive beat, loud guitar with abrupt chord changes, and nihilistic lyrics. Variants include new wave (more pop-oriented and accessible) and hardcore (characterized by brief, harsh songs played at breakneck speed); the latter continued to thrive through the 1990s.
(born Aug. 6, 1928?, Pittsburgh?, Pa., U.S.—died Feb. 22, 1987, New York, N.Y.) U.S. artist and filmmaker. The son of Czech immigrants, Warhol graduated from the Carnegie Institute of Technology, Pittsburgh, in 1949. He then went to New York City, where he worked as a commercial illustrator. Warhol began painting in the late 1950s and received sudden notoriety in 1962, when he exhibited paintings of Campbell's soup cans, Coca-Cola bottles, and wooden replicas of Brillo soap-pad boxes. By 1963 he was mass-producing these purposely banal images of consumer goods by means of photographic silk screen prints; he then began printing endless variations of portraits of celebrities in garish colours. The silk screen technique was ideally suited to Warhol, for the repeated image was reduced to a dehumanized cultural icon that reflected both the supposed emptiness of American material culture and the artist's emotional distance from the practice of his art. Warhol's work placed him in the forefront of the emerging Pop art movement in the United States. As the 1960s progressed, Warhol devoted more of his energy to filmmaking. His “underground” films are known for their inventive eroticism, plotless boredom, and inordinate length (up to 25 hours). Throughout the 1970s and until his death he continued to produce prints depicting political and Hollywood celebrities, and he involved himself in a wide range of advertising illustrations and other commercial art projects. He was one of the most famous and important American cultural figures of the late 20th century, and the effects of his conceptions of art and celebrity continue to be felt.
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