By the mid-1960s American rock music had become increasingly influenced by the British invasion rock groups and the blooming hippie movement. While the west coast bands like Jefferson Airplane, The Beach Boys and The Doors became associated with the peace movement, Lou Reed and John Cale of The Velvet Underground were cooking up a depraved antidote in the gloomy streets of New York City.
Initially jamming under the name The Warlocks, Reed and Cale found stability with the addition of Maureen ‘Moe’ Tucker on drums and Sterling Morrison on guitar. This early lineup of The Velvet Underground began frequenting small backstreet venues in 1965, bringing their unprecedented avant-garde shows to the bohemian New York scene.
Thanks to Cale’s eccentricity, the band were unique. Few rock bands would think it wise to let loose on a viola for a few shrieks in the middle of a wall-of-sound rock show, but for Cale, this was bread and butter. It wasn’t long before they appeared on the radar of pop artist Andy Warhol.
By 1966, Warhol had become the band’s manager and inducted them into his new multi-media art troupe, ‘The Factory’. At Warhol’s insistence, The Velvet Underground were joined by German singer Nico who joined Reed on vocal duties.
While under the mentorship of Warhol, the band released their debut album, The Velvet Underground and Nico. The iconic album didn’t perform particularly well upon its 1967 release, but it became a guiding light of 20th-century music over the decades that followed. You don’t have to amble too far these days to find someone wearing a t-shirt sporting Warhol’s famous banana album cover print.
Undeterred by their poor sales figures, The Velvet Underground began working on material for their second album White Light/White Heat. The album took a further step into the abyss of salacious and hedonistic depravity in the debut LP, most memorably with its 17-minute closer ‘Sister Ray’.
The video below shows archival footage of The Velvet Underground hanging around at Warhol’s Factory with overlaid audio taken from an early 1967 jam of ‘Sister Ray’.
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