With Understanding Comes Appreciation
Once upon a time there was the story of the greatest irony of all-time in music, known as The Velvet Underground. A bohemian group of avant-garde artists and thinkers that no one calculated at the time, really no one. Over time, they went from being a group of enlightened artists to one of the most important and influential bands in the history of music, not by a simple change of heart or by a click, they always had it in them but nobody was ready to understand it. Today the eponymous album with the banana is surely one of the best albums of all times, without forgetting the rest of their repertoire that people have learned to discover only in a retrospective way. In short, of course The Velvet Underground are not the only example of a group or artists who only knew the success of esteem and/or commercial in a retrospective way, but it is indisputable to say that it is surely the absolute example. The Velvet Underground are above all a group of visionary and that remains one of the most significant symbols of both counter-culture and pop culture, helped by their mentor and manager Andy Warhol in person. Like The Beatles but much more underground, The Velvet Underground were one of the first bands to venture into full-scale Pop/Rock experimentation and also to merge art and music as a single entity. Whether it was the musical aspect, the attitude or the writing, The Velvet Underground also brought a higher dimension to the poetic aspect, breaking barriers and territories never explored. That's why their sounds, their innovations and their writing were absolutely unique at the time and still sound like an unequalled signature. If we take into account the first and real line-up, The Velvet Underground is of course a group composed of talents going up to the genius, we think of course of Lou Reed and John Cale who knew in solo an absolutely fabulous career, or the atypical Sterling Morrison and Moe Tucker (a female drummer and singer, an exception for the time). Not to mention the participation of the controversial German singer and model Nico. It is impossible to estimate the total influence of the band on the history of music, since not only does it occupy an incredible place in an indirect way, but it is still palpable today. All we can say is that The Velvet Underground have transformed the history of rock, as a spiritual father of experimentation, creativity, and casualness that will be felt from the beginning of the 70s to accentuate at the end of this decade.
The history of the Velvet is explained by several essential elements, but first of all by the chemistry between Lou Reed and John Cale, who shared the same vision and obsessive experimental creativity. Although they came from two different worlds, they met in 1964, with Lou Reed on the one hand, an underground Pop/Rock guitarist and songwriter under the tutelage of Pickwick Records, and Cale on the other, a multi-instrumentalist graduate intellectual who was part of the Theatre of Eternal Music, known for its classical and avant-garde music. However, the meeting of two initially opposing geniuses turned into an uncommon force. Behind his dark and nihilistic persona, Lou Reed is a young writing prodigy, having offered his first song at the age of 16 before writing for insignificant bands during the 60s. Of course he is also an excellent musician, who already had his own signature ahead of time, but he is of course one of the keys to the upheaval of the Velvet in terms of the themes, the writing and the innovative poetry that we find. On the other hand, the Welshman John Cale, who initially came to study in New York, is a complement in the musical and avant-garde experience, as a great musician that very few bands had at that time.