The Velvet Underground And Nico - Produced By Andy Warhol (Vinyl)

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'The Velvet Underground and Nico' is the debut album by the legendary American rock band and vocal collaborator, Nico. Recorded in 1966 during Andy Warhol's Exploding Plastic Inevitable multimedia event tour, the album would gain attention for its experimental performance sensibilities, as well as the focus on controversial subject matter expressed in many of its songs including drug abuse, prostitution, sadism and masochism and sexual deviancy. Though it was a commercial failure upon release and was almost completely ignored by critics at the time, the record has since become one of the most influential and acclaimed rock albums in history. This 45th anniversary version comes in a gatefold sleeve that recreates the original cover design down to the "peelable" banana on the front.





 

One of the best albums of the 1960s, the best indie-rock album of all time (it invented the whole category pretty much), and really the iconoclastic bible for anyone interested in how to break the mold in popular music. To the newcomer it can seem like the band are doing this for shock value. I mean this is 1967 and they are writing about S&M sex, injecting heroin and scoring drugs in back alleys. But after innumerable listens, I don't think they are. Lou Reed is just writing about the world he knows about. What really makes this valuable and beautiful are the songs themselves. A song like Heroin works on so many levels. It is emotionally much more complex than it looks (is it a lament or an ode?). The whole thing is so full of interesting sounds and textures, and then there is the urgency of the drumming, and the deadpan expressiveness of the vocal. Yet whilst songs like this veer towards chaos and the abyss, Sunday Morning is rapt and joyous. And while their might be a song out there somewhere with a better arrangement than All Tomorrow's Parties, thinking of what it might be sounds like too much hard work.
 


A1 Sunday Morning
A2 I'm Waiting For The Man
A3 Femme Fatale
A4 Venus In Furs
A5 Run Run Run
A6 All Tomorrow's Parties
B1 Heroin
B2 There She Goes Again
B3 I'll Be Your Mirror
B4 The Black Angel's Death Song
B5 European Son



Catalogue No: 371 710-8

Record Label: Verve