Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
Jon, I agree that Reed's state of mind was so agitated by pressures
relating to the band and other things when he left the Velvets that he
wouldn't approach reorganization of the band in a methodical way. He
said in some interviews that he was just desperate to get out of there.
I think he must have been, considering that an album he'd worked very
hard on to be commercial was just a month away from release, and
leaving at that moment was terrible commercial timing.

But it still seems odd that, within days (according to Sterling
Morrison's later recollections) after leaving, he would have approached
Morrison to propose forming a band. Morrison was already *in* his
band. So why not just reorganize the Velvet Underground, which would
probably still include Maureen Tucker, who was ready to start playing
again after giving birth to her first child, and who had never fallen
out with Reed? One speculation is that Reed would have been unable to
do so and use the Velvet Underground name for legal/managerial reasons.
Perhaps Steve Sesnick could have clarified this, but he declined my
interview request through an intermediary.

It could be that shortly after leaving the group, Reed might have
realized it was too hasty a decision and had regrets, and so was
approaching Morrison to mend fences. It's also odd that Morrison
declined the offer, as he must have known the VU had no real future
without Reed. Lou and Sterling were close friends, but maybe Morrison
had enough of working with the brilliant but mercurial Reed after five
very intense years.
  

    
It's also possible that Sesnick had the legal entity "The Velvet
Underground" in a stranglehold, and Reed/Morrison couldn't have done
anything really creative with him lurking around and didn't have the
resources or knowledge to find someone who could actually manage such a
weird band at that time. Getting out of the contract might have been
the very hardest thing to do, so it was easiest for Lou to just go
solo. 

Pure speculation, of course. 
  

    
I think that's reasonable speculation, actually, though without access
to the legal documents, it's hard to say for certain. Sesnick did own
the Velvet Underground name for at least a while in the early 1970s  as
a result of an out-of-court settlement in which Reed won back sole
songwriting credits for the Loaded material (which were initially
credited to the band as a whole).

I think they could have found a manager, though. One strong candidate
would have been Richard Robinson, who was heavily involved in getting
Reed's solo career off the ground. I don't know if Danny Fields (later
manager of the Ramones) would have been interested, but he was on the
VU's scene and might have made a reasonable choice.
  

    

        I should look in the book for this, but: When Reed left the VU, did
he express an intention to return to music, or did he act/speak like he was
out of the business for good?
  

    
I knew Richard at that time, and his choice was between actually
managing Lou or working for RCA and getting him (and others) signed.
Given that choice, I think I'd have done what he did. 

Danny Fields is an interesting pick, though. Maybe if he ever finishes
his memoirs we'll find out. Big maybe...
  

    
Ed, I'm going to have to interview you if the book goes into a second
edition! And just so Inkwell readers know, Ed was one of the first
high-profile critics to give the VU and their members a lot of positive
press attention. He gave John Cale's 1970 solo debut "Vintage
Violence" a rave review in Rolling Stone that year, and also reviewed
Nico's "Desertshore" in Rolling Stone that year, at a time when those
solo records were even more obscure to the pop mainstream than the VU's
albums. Which gives me a chance to note that the book does also cover
Cale and Nico's pre-1971 solo efforts in great detail, as well as their
work with the Velvets.

Danny Fields had some interesting interactions with the VU, the most
notable of which was confirming that Brigid Berlin had taped their last
show with Reed at Max's on August 23, 1970. This was the material
later issued on the 1972 "Live at Max's" album (more from the tape
eventually came out on the two-CD expanded edition). According to
Fields, Atlantic bought the tape for a $10,000 fee that he and Berlin
split.
  

    
Speaking of strange contractual situations, by the way, one of the
most interesting and surprising things that came out of my interview
with Paul Morrissey was his recollection of how the VU ended their
management deal with him and Andy Warhol around mid-1967. According to
Morrissey, Reed essentially claimed the VU were breaking up, and so
asked for a release from the contract. Then he got them back together
-- actually, if this contract-breaking action occurred, my guess is
Reed probably never disbanded the band in the first place.

Morrissey: "Lou wanted to end the management contract before any
hoped-for record royalties came in. Lou immediately did so by
disbanding the group. [He] told us they weren't going to play any more,
and he asked for a release from their contract. But Andy especially,
as well as myself...[we] were glad to get rid of them. Then I sort of
inherited Nico, who had nowhere to go, because Lou got rid of Nico as
well when he regrouped [the band] later. Nico was the last thing he
wanrted. I realized he had had that idea in his head from the beginning
in order to get out of the contract he had signed with us. Once they
were released he re-formed the group without Nico and soon after he
managed to get rid of John Cale as well. I often wondered after that
what kind of royalties were collected and who received them."

Unfortunately I didn't come across this contract or contract-breaking
agreement when I did research at the Andy Warhol Museum archives in
Pittsburgh. During that research I *was* especially glad to be able to
view a copy of their May 2, 1966 recording contract with MGM in its
entirety (another copy is on partial display in the museum). The
advance, for this legendary group co-managed by one of the most famous
artists in the world? $3,000 -- not very impressive even by 1966
standards.
  

    
Angus, it's hard to determine whether Reed was thinking of leaving the
music business for good when he left the Velvets. He did keep an
extremely low profile for the next six months or so. To the shock of
many who knew him and his generally rebellious nature, he moved back to
Long Island to live with his parents, even working as a typist in his
father's accounting business for $40 a week for a while. Whether or not
he ever seriously considered leaving the music business, he definitely
did seem to want/need a total break from it for a while.
Interestingly, his first post-VU public appearance wasn't a music gig,
bugt a poetry reading on March 10, 1971 at St. Mark's, with Jim Carroll
(who, coincidentally, can be heard in the audience on the "Live at
Max's" album) also on the bill.

But in a March 1971 article in ZigZag magazine, Reed played tapes of
some of his new songs to writer Geoffrey Cannon, indicating that even
by then he was getting ready to start a career as a solo act. In his
first lengthy post-VU interview (June 1971 in Metropolitan Review), he
still seems to be vacillating, saying that his plans are "I'm gonna
think a lot." He also says he's currently working as a bookkeeper,
confirming he's still working for his father when the interview takes
place. But he doesn't rule out the chance of working again with Nico
and John Cale (which he did, briefly, at a good January 29, 1972 Paris
concert that's now on CD), and talks about possibly doing a score for a
Broadway adaptation of Nelson Algren's "A Walk on the Wild Side,"
which of course likely inspired his most famous song. On November 29,
1971, it was announced he's signed a solo deal with RCA, so his hiatus
from active involvement with the record business only lasted a year or
so.
  

    
In "Songs for Drella," Reed describes the break with Warhol as his
decision to "fire" Warhol.
  

    
Yes, and in 1989 around the time of "Drella," Lou Reed elaborated in
Rolling Stone: "[Warhol] sat down and had a meeting with me.[He told
me], ‘You gotta decide what you want to do. Do you want to keep just
playing museums from now on and the art festivals? Or do you want to
start moving into other areas? Don’t you think you should think about
it?’ So I thought about it, and I fired him. Because I thought that
was one of the things to do if we were going to move away from that.
He was furious. I’d never seen Andy angry, but I did that day. He was
really mad. Called me a rat. That was the worst thing he could think
of.”

While Steve Sesnick has often been criticized for his handling of the
Velvets, it is true that over the next three years, the Velvets *did*
break into the standard rock concert circuit, with more success than is
generally realized. They played quite a few major venues throughout
the US, like the Avalon, the Whisky in LA, the Boston Tea Party, and
the Electric Factory in Philadelphia.
  

    
They broke into it because there was more demand than supply, though.
Sesnick actually had a fairly easy job: band with records, notoriety
through Warhol. 

I think (based on no Reed-based evidence, but informal conversations
with Cale) that the real problem was they'd had Nico imposed on them,
and when the famous "I do not wish to sleep with any more...Jews..."
incident happened, Reed just knew he had to assume control. 
  

    
That incident between Reed and Nico seems to have happened pretty soon
after she joined the group, however. That was more than a year before
Warhol was fired as manager.

Reed was, it's not always realized, certainly the business leader of
the band as well as the artistic one. Back on July 19, 1966, about a
year before the split from Warhol, all five members (including Nico)
signed a memo for MGM Records stipulating that all royalties be paid to
Reed.

There's interesting ambivalence on the part of the group members as to
whether Nico was worth having around. In subsequent interviews they've
praised her work on the songs she was given to sing, but kind of
stated they didn't think she was a true full member of the group, and
didn't especially miss her when she was gone. In an obscure interview I
found (in a Vancouver paper) from late 1968, Reed was quite
unsentimental, saying that all the songs she sang were dropped from
their live repertoire "just like that" after she left, snapping his
fingers for emphasis.

Yet Reed, Cale, and Morrison all helped a lot with Nico's debut album
"Chelsea Girl" (recorded shortly before she left the group), writing
half the songs and playing on much of the record. Cale helped a great
deal with Nico's solo career, producing, arranging, and playing on
several of her albums.

It's true Nico was installed into the lineup at Warhol and Morrissey's
behest. It's too bad Tom Wilson (who died in the late 1970s) wasn't
interviewed about this, but Paul Morrissey told me Wilson signed the VU
to Verve mostly because of Nico. Since three of the four songs on the
two 1966 singles Verve issued were sung by Nico (and the fourth,
"Sunday Morning," was originally intended by Wilson to be sung by
Nico), she might initially have been seen as the focal point of the
band by Wilson and Verve, which the other Velvets might not have
appreciated.

But I do think that ultimately Nico added a good deal to the group.
All three of the songs on which she sings lead ("All Tomorrow's
Parties," "Femme Fatale," and "I'll Be Your Mirror") are among their
best. And her early solo albums, in which the Velvets and especially
Cale had some role, are both worthwhile and not too similar to the VU's
own work, with Nico establishing herself (with "The Marble Index" and
"Desertshore") as a singer-songwriter in her own right.
  

    
Going back to surprising information I found out about certain Velvet
Underground songs, an obscure August 1969 article in a Philadelphia
underground paper reported the group were planning to issue "We're
Gonna Have a Real Good Time Together" as a single. They never even
released the song while Reed was in the band, and for that matter they
didn't release *any* singles for about the last year-and-a-half Reed
was in the group.

Nonetheless, according to that article, Reed and Doug Yule told the
reporter that they were "totally disassocaited with the 'underground,'
from FM radio to drugs. They don't even like record albums...Reed says
he can't listen to FM for long before he either fals asleep or gets
sick...So the Velvet Underground is moving into singles." A plan that
obviously never took off.

In that article, Reed said that a fourth VU album had been recorded,
but wouldn't be released for some time yet, as "It would be totally
senseless. In a few years it will be ahead of its time, but now it just
won't sell and will go unknown. We've had enough of that." Doug Yule
told me, however, that to his memory it wasn't shelved for being ahead
of its time, and that Reed was probably just coming up with a snappy
soundbite answer that sounded good, possibly prompted by manager Steve
Sesnick.
  

    
The "totally disassociated with the underground" thing certainly
sounds like a Warhol idea, if not directly, at first remove.
  

    
Do you mean that would have been a Warhol idea to disown associations
with the "underground," or that the Velvets wanted to distance
themselves from the kind of "underground" they'd been associated with
when they first emerged in 1966 as part of Warhol's Exploding Plastic
Inevitable? Warhol hadn't been their manager for two years by the time
of this quote.

Though the VU's official relationship with Warhol ended around
mid-1967, looking through press clips from the time, it's interesting
how some writers continued to assume that Warhol was involved with or
even masterminding the band for quite some time afterward. Even a June
1969 review, and a quite misinformed one, of a Philadelphia concert
describes Warhol as "the spiritual force behind the Velvet Underground"
and viciously slags the band and the concert as a sort of Warhol pop
art put-on or gimmick.
  

    

>And her early solo albums, in which the Velvets and especially
>Cale had some role, are both worthwhile and not too similar to the
VU's
>own work, with Nico establishing herself (with "The Marble Index" and
>"Desertshore") as a singer-songwriter in her own right.

Those 2 LPs were very imaginative, I can't imagine Cale and Nico doing
anything quite as unusual as what they did on those 2 LPs inside the
framework of VU. In a way its good they left VU, seems 
a win/win situation to my ears.
  

    
Plus, of course, John's solo stuff during that same period. He was
doing A&R at Warner's, and that led to the Island albums like Fear (the
title track of which, he told me, was "based on working at Warners.").
  

    
Yes Darrell, "The Marble Index" and "Desertshore" gave both Nico and
Cale opportunities they wouldn't have had within the Velvet
Underground. It's doubtful Reed would have made space for many if any
songs that Nico wrote on VU albums, and in any case Nico might never
have been spurred to become a songwriter had she not gone out on her
own as a solo artist. As arranger and producer for Nico, Cale was able
to put some avant-garde/experimental/classical ideas into practice that
wouldn't have fit so easily into VU albums.

Cale's contribution in these areas to Nico's albums is immense. When
you compare Nico's sparse demos of some of these songs (now available
on the double CD "The Frozen Borderline") to the finished versions, the
differences can be mammoth. The demos tend, in my view, to be too
similar too each other and rely too heavily on just Nico's voice and
harmonium, becoming wearying in some respects when heard bunched
together. Cale fleshed the songs and arrangements out with a lot of
imagination and variety.

Also Cale's 1970 solo album "Vintage Violence," though sometimes
overlooked though it's very good, gave *him* the opportunity to do
something that he probably couldn't have done within the VU. Becoming a
solo artist gave *him* the impetus to start writing actual complete
pop-rock songs, which he really hadn't done before then, though he gets
some co-credits on a few early VU tunes. I also think "Vintage
Violence" is admirable because Cale was doing something wholly
unexpected, given his background with the VU, La Monte Young, and
Nico/Stooges production/arrangement projects. He didn't go all out on
an experimental/dissonant limb, as many would have expected; he went
into gentle if enigmatic singer-songwriting with almost Band-like
arrangements and considerable skill. My book covers "Vintage Violence"
pretty extensively as it falls within the pre-1971 era that's the
volume's main concentration, including information taken from Columbia
Records session sheets and a first-hand interview with the album's
co-producer, Lewis Merenstein.

Also, a word about Nico's first album, "Chelsea Girl." This sometimes
gets dismissed by critics and historians, I think in part because Nico
herself didn't like the album (especially the orchestral production)
and put it down in several interviews. But I like it very much. It has
some real interesting songs that Reed, Cale, and Morrison wrote or
co-wrote that the VU never put on their records, as well as some
obscure material by Tim Hardin, Jackson Browne (Nico's boyfriend at the
time), and Bob Dylan.
  

    
To add a little more about John Cale as he was making the transition
from the VU to a solo career, one of the most amusing obscure reviews I
dug up was one of the third album that appeared in a July 1969 edition
of a leftist Danish newspaper. The reviewer was mystified why Cale had
been pushed "too far into the background," somehow remaining entirely
aware that Cale wasn't even on the LP. He singles out "The Murder
Mystery" -- really the album's only avant-garde track -- as the
strongest cut, crediting Cale with the arrangement. He's puzzled by the
group's change in direction, especially the total lack of irony in
songs like "Jesus" and "After Hours." Where, he asks, is the spleen,
the morbidity, the satanic mood of the first two albums?

Furthermore, he reviews "The Marble Index" as if it's a Cale record
rather than a Nico one, declaring that "in the final instance, the
music is down to Cale's contribution in all essential respects." Yes,
Cale was extremely important. But Nico did sing and write all of the
songs, as well as play harmonium.

While this was beyond the means of 1968 marketing, it might have been
interesting for the Velvets to record two versions of the third album,
one with the Cale lineup and one with the Yule lineup -- kind of how
today's way of making music available for release can put out two
versions of an album simultaneously, as in situations where one is
electric and one is acoustic/"unplugged." Maureen Tucker once
specifically regretted that the VU never got the chance to record even
just one more album with Cale, and Cale said in a 1974 interview that  
his exit "was sad in a way because there were still some great songs
to be recorded like 'Here Come the Waves,' which later became 'Ocean'
on [Reed's] first album, and a bunch of others." Also, while Doug Yule
plays great organ on "What Goes On" (especially the "Velvet Underground
1969 Live" version), Sterling Morrison said that the song sounded best
in 1968 when Cale was playing organ on the song in concert.
  

    
Lou Reed talks in detail about the writing of "Walk on the Wild Side"  
during the live rendition captured on "Take No Prisoners."

Nico played her first concert in the U.S. since the 60's the month before 
the performance captured on the What Goes On EP "Four Songs Recorded Live 
at CBGB, March 8, 1979." She played two sets at CBGB's on February 19, 
2009. For those sets she was accompanied by John Cale on viola on a few 
songs as well as Lutz Ulbrich on guitar. She also played a set opening for 
John Cale at a club called Alexander's in Browns Mills, NJ on March 2, 
1979.

Squeeze has another connection to the Velvet Underground besides being 
named after one of their albums. Squeeze's EP "Packet of Three" and their 
self-titled first LP were produced by Cale. 
  

    
While my book doesn't deal with Nico's post-1970 solo career except
noting some instances in which there were direct VU connections, she
did  play live in the US in the '70s earlier than 1979 on at least one
occasion. She played at the Mabuhay Gardens in San Francisco on
December 17, 1977.
  

    
(Lutz Ulbricht, aka Lüül, is the official caretaker of Nico's grave,
and issued a public appeal last year for funds to keep it from being
dug up and eliminated. Only needed to raise a few hundred euros, and
succeeded way beyond his expectations. He's a good man.)
  

    
wow, i had no idea that squeeze was named after the VU album or that their
early EP and LP were produced by Cale.  I never would have guessed at a
direct relationship between the two groups!
  

    
Thanks for the info on the Mabuhay Gardens show. I didn't know about it or 
see it on any of the lists of her performances.
  

    
A live recording of Nico's December 1977 Mabuhay Gardens show is
listed at http://smironne.free.fr/NICO/tapes.html, though I haven't
heard it. Interestingly, it doesn't include any Velvet Underground
songs. From 1979 through the end of her life about ten years later,
however, she often sang "All Tomorrow's Parties" and "Femme Fatale"
live, though curiously didn't often play "I'll Be Your Mirror." She
also did "I'm Waiting for the Man" (which of course Reed sang with the
Velvets) on her 1981 album "Drama in Exile."

With the early Velvets, Nico wanted to sing some other Reed songs
(like "I'm Waiting for the Man" and "Heroin") than the three she given
to do on the banana album. She wasn't allowed to do this, however, and
I think that was the right decision.