By 1965, the group was a quartet called the Velvet Underground, including Reed, Cale, guitarist Sterling Morrison (an old friend of Reed's), and drummer Angus MacLise.
#The velvet underground the velvet underground full
Reed and Cale (who would play bass, viola, and organ) would need to assemble a full band, making tentative steps along this direction by performing together in the Primitives (which also included experimental filmmaker Tony Conrad and avant-garde sculptor Walter DeMaria) to promote a bizarre Reed-penned Pickwick single ("The Ostrich"). Reed and Cale were both interested in fusing the avant-garde with rock & roll, and had found the ideal partners for making the vision (a very radical one for the mid-'60s) work their synergy would be the crucial axis of the Velvet Underground's early work. Cale, who had performed with John Cage and LaMonte Young, found himself increasingly attracted to rock & roll Reed, for his part, was interested in the avant-garde as well as pop. Reed did learn some useful things about production at Pickwick, and it was while working there that he met John Cale, a classically trained Welshman who had moved to America to study and perform "serious" music. After graduation, he set his sights considerably lower, churning out tunes for exploitation rock albums as a staff songwriter for Pickwick Records in New York City.
By the early '60s, he was also getting into avant-garde jazz and serious poetry, coming under the influence of author Delmore Schwartz while studying at Syracuse University. Reed loved rock & roll from an early age, and even recorded a doo wop-type single as a Long Island teenager in the late '50s (as a member of the Shades).
The member most responsible for these qualities was guitarist, singer, and songwriter Lou Reed, whose sing-speak vocals and gripping narratives came to define street-savvy rock & roll. But the band's colorful and oft-grim soundscapes were firmly grounded in strong, well-constructed songs that could be as humanistic and compassionate as they were outrageous and confrontational. The group was uncompromising in its music and lyrics, to be sure, sometimes espousing a bleakness and primitivism that would inspire alienated singers and songwriters of future generations. Historians often hail the group for their incalculable influence upon the punk and new wave of subsequent years, and while the Velvets were undoubtedly a key touchstone of the movements, to focus upon these elements of their vision is to only get part of the story. Their four studio albums - 1967's The Velvet Underground & Nico, 1968's White Light/White Heat, 1969's The Velvet Underground, and 1970's Loaded - are all essential documents, and 2015's The Complete Matrix Tapes is superb evidence of their power as a live act. Too far ahead of their time for pop music's mainstream, the VU made a profound impression on thoughtful listeners, many of whom would go on to make groundbreaking music of their own, and they would belatedly be acknowledged as one of rock's most important groups. Playing music that was boldly uncompromising both sonically and lyrically, the Velvet Underground infused rock & roll with the daring of the avant-garde and the poetic realism of post-beat literature. The Velvet Underground were largely ignored during heir original run from the mid-'60s into the early '70s, but few bands would cast as long a shadow in terms of innovation and influence.
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