Monday 28th October

I was sixteen years old, the year was 1992 and I was a student at Boston College. My sociology tutor Peter and I were talking about Frank Zappa. That’s the kind of tutor he was, the sort of tutor you could talk about Frank Zappa with instead of working. Zappa led to King Crimson, which (and I wish I could remember the six-degrees-of-separation way in which this happened) led onto the subject of Andy Warhol. Back then I was, in hindsight, a bit lofty and pretentious, we all were when we started college; a brand new start in life, free from the shackles of school and treated like grownups for the first time in our lives. I already considered myself something of an authority on the pop art movement, having failed GCSE art thanks to my insistence on doing a project involving my own take on the genre, which basically meant doing lots of things with soup cans and trademarks (although I did do a brilliant ‘Monroe’ style painting of Warhol himself that I wish I still had). Rather than disappointment, I felt that my failure to pass GCSE art proved my point; that I was right and everyone else was wrong and that I wouldn’t be appreciated during my lifetime. I was a bit of a twat in those days.

This discussion with Peter eventually wound its way round to a band he seemed determined to press onto me called The Velvet Underground. Back in 1992 with no Internet and therefore no Google, YouTube, or iTunes (not that I would ever use iTunes even now but you get my point), I had to take his word for it. The next day I didn’t have sociology, but Peter found me in the smoking room (indoors – it was a different time) and handed me a load of home recorded cassettes with hand written inlay cards. Either he had spent the evening making tapes for me, or he kept an emergency supply handy to inform and educate. Among some of Zappa’s earlier albums; We’re Only In It For The Money and Absolutely Free, and In The Court Of The Crimson King, the debut album by King Crimson and very much a ‘beginner’s guide’ album, was The Velvet Underground and Nico.

The word ‘iconic’ is thrown around with careless abandon these days, but I feel as if I’m on fairly safe ground using it in the context of this particular LP. As the famous sound bite will attest; it only sold ten thousand copies, but everyone who bought it formed a band. It would be lovely to think that this is a true statement, although it is probably the result of a very clever public relations person. Maybe someone should test this and track down every one of the ten thousand bands and get them to reform for a massive series of live gigs called ‘We Formed A Band Because Of The Velvet Underground’.

When I first heard the album I didn’t really know what was going on, it didn’t sound like anything I had ever heard before. I listened to it last night once again when I returned from radio duties, and it still sounds every bit as fresh as it did the first time I heard it and no doubt the first time it was heard in 1967. It aroused my interest in music as an art form and I especially fell in love with Lou Reed’s attitude of not really giving a shit what people think of his work. Neither in The Velvet Underground nor as a solo artist did Reed ever achieve the commercial heights of many of the people he influenced. Commercial success wasn’t really the point, the philosophy was to produce something that you’re happy with and if anyone else likes it then it is a bonus. After the success and acclaim of Transformer came Berlin which is now seen as one of the greatest albums ever but at the time was met with apathy. The 1975 album Metal Machine Music was seen as taking the piss, described by one critic as “four sides of whines, whistles, feedback and screams” it was deleted for a period by RCA. In 1977 he was barred from performing at the London Palladium when they took exception at his ‘punk image’, which gained him credibility from the punk set and later still with the post-punk crowd.

I have kind of lost touch with Lou Reed’s output in the last few years, the last album of his I bought was Magic And Loss, but he remains a major influence and was shocked to find out that he had died. The news hit me yesterday evening when I got out of the shower and was getting ready for The Sunday Alternative. Twitter and Facebook suddenly started to fill up with tributes, including my contribution of a YouTube link to that debut album that turned me on to The Velvet Underground in the first place. Sadly I didn’t have time to dig through my record collection to find something to take in, but I knew I wanted to pay suitable tribute on my show. The studio appeared to be locked when I turned up so I had to phone the studio boss to let me in. We haven’t seen each other since before the whole argument over the use of my archive material on Trent Sound, so anyone who has ever met him will know how delighted he was to drive to Trent Towers (not an actual tower) and open the door straight away because it wasn’t locked. To make matters worse, I was desperate for the toilet and wasn’t in the building until the seven o’clock news came on. Clenching every muscle below my waist, I typed Lou Reed into the search facility for songs in the system and my worst fears suddenly came true; The Trent Sound library is what I can politely describe as ‘obvious’. With this in mind I had no choice but to play ‘Walk on the Wild Side’, ‘White Light/White Heat’, ‘Sweet Jane’, and finish the tribute montage with “Rock ‘n’ Roll’. Not that I have anything against any of these songs, but I would have liked to have gone off-road a little, in keeping with the ethos of the show’s “music you don’t hear on the radio, on the radio” slogan. ‘Perfect Day’ was where I drew the line; although I didn’t check I imagine that that particular song received a great deal of airplay yesterday evening.

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