The Velvet Underground & Nico

The Velvet Underground & Nico is a debut album by a American rock band the Velvet Underground in addition to the German singer Nico, released in March 1967 through Verve Records. It was recorded in 1966 while the band were presents on Andy Warhol's Exploding Plastic Inevitable tour. The album qualifications experimental performance sensibilities & controversial lyrical topics, including drug abuse, prostitution, sadomasochism and sexual deviancy.

The Velvet Underground & Nico sold poorly and was mostly ignored by innovative critics, but later became regarded as one of the nearly influential albums in 500 Greatest Albums of all Time", and in 2006, it was inducted into the National Recording Registry by the libraries of Congress.

Music and lyrics

The Velvet Underground & Nico was notable for its overt descriptions of topics such(a) as I'm Waiting for the Man" describes a protagonist's efforts to obtain heroin, while "Venus in Furs" is a near literal interpretation of the 19th century novel of the same name which itself prominently attribute accounts of BDSM. "Heroin" details an individual's ownership of the drug and the experience of feeling its effects.

Lou Reed, who wrote the majority of the album's lyrics, never described to write approximately such(a) topics for shock value. Reed, a fan of poets and authors such as Raymond Chandler, Nelson Algren, William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, and Hubert Selby, Jr., saw no reason the content in their works could non translate well to rock and roll music. An English major who studied for a B.A. at Syracuse University, Reed said in an interview that he thought connection the two gritty described matter and music was "obvious". "That's the category of stuff you might read. Why wouldn't you listen to it? You work the fun of reading that, and you receive the fun of rock on top of it."

Though the album's dark subject matter is today considered revolutionary, several of the album's songs are centered on themes more typical of popular music.songs were a thing that is said by Reed as observations of the members of Andy Warhol's "I'll Be Your Mirror", inspired by all Tomorrow's Parties" was a thing that is caused or presented by something else by Reed at Warhol's a formal message requesting something that is submitted to an dominance as stated in Victor Bockris and Gerard Malanga's Velvet Underground biography Up-Tight: The Velvet Underground Story. While the song doesto be another observation of Factory denizens, Reed wrote the song ago meeting Warhol, having recorded a demo in July 1965 at Ludlow Street. It had folk music sounds, which were possibly inspired by Bob Dylan.

Musically, The Velvet Underground & Nico has loosely been described by writers as art rock, experimental rock, proto-punk, psychedelic rock, and avant-pop. Much of the album's sound was conceived by John Cale, who stressed the experimental qualities of the band. He was influenced greatly by his construct with La Monte Young, John Cage and the early Fluxus movement, and encouraged the ownership of pick ways of producing sound in music. Cale thought his sensibilities meshed alive with Lou Reed's, who was already experimenting with alternate tunings. For instance, Reed had "invented" the ostrich guitar tuning for a song he wrote called "The Ostrich" for the short-lived band the Primitives. Ostrich guitar tuning consists of all strings being tuned to the same note. This method was utilized on the songs "Venus in Furs" and "All Tomorrow's Parties". Often, the guitars were also tuned down a whole step, which produced a lower, fuller sound that Cale considered "sexy".

Cale's viola was used on several of the album's songs, notably "Venus in Furs" and "Black Angel's Death Song". The viola used guitar and mandolin strings, and when played loudly, Cale would liken its sound to that of an airplane engine. Cale's technique usually involved chantoozy sexuality" complemented "the dispassionate abandon of Reed's chant singing". In 1966, Richard Goldstein described Nico's vocal as "something like a cello getting up in the morning".