The Velvet Underground & Nico Turns 50!

The Velvet Underground & Nico Turns 50!

By: Ghost Writer

Hard for me to tell which of the first three records by the Velvet Underground is my all-time favorite, I can't tell you how much I love the brutal unparalleled noise attack of White Light/White Heat, the prophetic "alternative" sound of their eponymous third record (someone said jangle rock?), but as I have said before, three records changed my life forever, Pet Sounds by the Beach Boys, Never Mind the Bollocks by the Sex Pistols and the timeless debut by the VU & Nico, one of the first abstract underground records and one that is reaching its first 50 years of existence these days, not bad for a record not so many people bought when it came out.

There is something on that first VU & Nico album that you can't find on its successors, and that is the astonishing combination, not only of rock and roll and Avant Garde music, not only of popular music and serious art, but a colossal paradox of the sophisticated and the primitive, a language that spoke to both those who were not traditionally formed on rock and roll and wanted to use it as a platform for more adventurous music forms, the frontal collision of Ornette Coleman and Phil Spector, if such thing could be imagined, VU & Nico set off to become the antithesis of the Summer of Love kick started by The Beatles' Sgt Peppers and the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds, but consider here that the VU & Nico was a debut record, not the natural evolving work of a seasoned veteran band, like in the Beatles or the Beach Boys case, in that matter the only possible comparison I would dare to make is Jimi Hendrix's Are You Experienced?, another monumental piece of music taking into totally uncharted territory.

In VU & Nico we are brutally confronted by a new musical universe featuring Lou Reed´s Chuck Berry like guitars (Run, Run, Run) and Bob Dylan inspired vocals (perfectly put in display on I'm Waiting for the Man), but we also get John Cale´s powerfully mean bass and abrasive viola playing, also is important to notice Sterling Morrison and Maureen Tucker out of this world playing, totally uncommon in the rock world those days, with Maureen's African inspired drumming and Morrison's prophetic krautrock guitars, giving us an impressive glimpse of the future to come, call it glam rock, proto punk, garage rock, grunge, punk, art punk, gothic, indie rock, shoegaze, krautrock, electronica, alternative music, new wave and indie rock, and many other fringe musical movements inspired by Lou and company, I remember thinking after listening to The Strokes, "That's Lou sound! After more than two decades it is clear he was right from the start", and then again, when a record was being recorded with Metal legends Metallica, I thought again, "Yes, Lou was a prophet of Thrash!".

Unforgettable underground groundbreaking songs like the noise rock prophecies called Heroin (with its obsessive minimalism), with Lou Reed bringing a William S. Burroughs outsider sensitivity (and cool topics like drug abuse, sexual deviancy, sadomasochism) and danger previously unseen in the rock n roll world, and European Son, which brings again literature marrying it with what could be a precursor to Sonic Youth sonic wanderings of the late 80s, while Black Angel's Death Songs brings a powerful rock n roll riff translated through the raspy John Cale almighty viola, almost none of the songs on this collection is disposable, with each one becoming a legend on its own, the gloom and doom psychedelia of All Tomorrow's Parties which predates Jane's Addiction most ethereal sound, or the Euro cool sounding Femme Fatale with the mighty Nico on vocals, another element that adds so much to the whole vibe of the recording.

The VU & Nico is a musical milestone that helped us transcend to other dimensions of sound, taking the young and still naive rock and roll into pretty dark alleys, taking rock n roll from its youthful adolescence and into full scary adulthood, adding generous doses of art and abstractions to create something that sounded out of this planet, a record that despite its 50th year anniversary, still sound daring and prophetic, like few records can claim.