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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