The Velvet Underground and Nico

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

''The Velvet Underground & Nico'' initially sold poorly, but later became regarded as one of the most influential albums in rock and pop music. Described as "the original art-rock record", it was a major influence on many subgenres of rock music and alternative music, including punk, garage, krautrock, post-punk, shoegaze, goth, and indie. In 1982, the English musician Brian Eno said that while the album only sold approximately 30,000 copies in its first five years, "everyone who bought one of those 30,000 copies started a band".Sources discussing the quote:

*
*
The quote referenced:

* In 2003, it ranked 13th on ''Rolling Stone'' magazine's list of the " 500 Greatest Albums of All Time", and in 2006, it was inducted into the National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress.

Recording

''The Velvet Underground & Nico'' was recorded with the first professional line-up of the Velvet Underground: Lou Reed, John Cale, Sterling Morrison and Maureen Tucker. At the instigation of their mentor and manager Andy Warhol, and his collaborator Paul Morrissey, German singer Nico was also featured; she had occasionally performed lead vocals for the band. She sang lead on three of the album's tracks—" Femme Fatale", "All Tomorrow's Parties" and "I'll Be Your Mirror"—and back-up on " Sunday Morning". In 1966, as the album was being recorded, this was also the line-up for their live performances as a part of Warhol's Exploding Plastic Inevitable.

The bulk of the songs that would become ''The Velvet Underground & Nico'' were recorded in four days in mid-April 1966 at Scepter Studios, a run-down recording studio in Manhattan. This was financed by Warhol and Columbia Records' sales executive Norman Dolph, who also acted as an engineer with John Licata. The cost of the project is unknown. Estimates vary from $1,500 (US$ in dollars) to $3,000 (US$ in dollars).

Soon after, Dolph sent an acetate disc of the recordings to Columbia Records in an attempt to interest them in distributing the album, but they declined, as did Atlantic Records and Elektra Records—according to Morrison, Atlantic objected to the references to drugs in Reed's songs, while Elektra disliked Cale's viola. Finally, the MGM Records-owned Verve Records accepted the recordings, with the help of Verve staff producer Tom Wilson who had recently moved from a job at Columbia.

With the backing of a label, one month later in May 1966 three of the songs, " I'm Waiting for the Man", "Venus in Furs" and " Heroin", were re-recorded in two days at TTG Studios during a stay in Hollywood. When the record's release date was postponed, Wilson brought the band into Mayfair Recording Studios in Manhattan in November 1966, to add a final song to the album: the single " Sunday Morning".

Production

Although Andy Warhol is the only formally credited producer, he had little influence beyond paying for the recording sessions. Several others who worked on the album are often mentioned as the technical producer.

Norman Dolph and John Licata are sometimes attributed to producing the Scepter Studios sessions, as they were responsible for recording and engineering, though neither is credited. Dolph said Cale was the creative producer, as he handled the majority of the arrangements. However Cale recalled that Tom Wilson produced nearly all the tracks, and said that Warhol "didn't do anything". Reed also said the "real producer" of the album was Wilson. Reed claimed it was MGM who decided to bring in Wilson, and credited him for producing songs such as "Sunday Morning": "Andy absorbed all the flak. Then MGM said they wanted to bring in a real producer, Tom Wilson. So that’s how you got 'Sunday Morning', with all those overdubs – the viola in the back, Nico chanting. But he couldn’t undo what had already been done."

However Sterling Morrison and Lou Reed both cited Warhol's lack of manipulation as a legitimate method of production. Morrison described Warhol as the producer "in the sense of producing a film". Reed said:

Music and lyrics

Themes

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

Lou Reed, who wrote the majority of the album's lyrics, never intended to write about such 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 not 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 joining the two (gritty subject matter and music) was "obvious". "That's the kind of stuff you might read. Why wouldn't you listen to it? You have the fun of reading that, and you get 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. Certain songs were written by Reed as observations of the members of Andy Warhol's "Factory superstars". " Femme Fatale" in particular was written about Edie Sedgwick at Warhol's request. "I'll Be Your Mirror", inspired by Nico, is a tender and affectionate song; in stark contrast to a song like "Heroin". A common misperception is that "All Tomorrow's Parties" was written by Reed at Warhol's request (as stated in Victor Bockris and Gerard Malanga's Velvet Underground biography ''Up-Tight: The Velvet Underground Story''). While the song does seem to be another observation of Factory denizens, Reed wrote the song before meeting Warhol, having recorded a demo in July 1965 at Ludlow Street. It had folk music sounds, which were possibly inspired by Bob Dylan.

Instrumentation and performance

Musically, ''The Velvet Underground & Nico'' has generally 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 work with La Monte Young, John Cage and the early Fluxus movement, and encouraged the use of alternative ways of producing sound in music. Cale thought his sensibilities meshed well 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 drones, detuning and distortion. According to Robert Christgau, the "narcotic drone" not only sustains the sadomasochism-themed "Venus in Furs", but it also "identifies and unifies the lbummusically". Of the vocal performances, he believed "Nico's contained 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".

Artwork

The album cover for ''The Velvet Underground & Nico'' is recognizable for featuring a Warhol print of a banana. Early copies of the album invited the owner to "Peel slowly and see", and peeling back the banana skin revealed a flesh-colored banana underneath. A special machine was needed to manufacture these covers (one of the causes of the album's delayed release), but MGM paid for costs figuring that any ties to Warhol would boost sales of the album. Most reissued vinyl editions of the album do not feature the peel-off sticker; original copies of the album with the peel-sticker feature are now rare collector's items. A Japanese re-issue LP in the early 1980s was the only re-issue version to include the banana sticker for many years. On the 1996 CD reissue, the banana image is on the front cover while the image of the peeled banana is on the inside of the jewel case, beneath the CD itself. The album was re-pressed onto heavyweight vinyl in 2008, featuring a banana sticker.

Back cover lawsuit

When the album was first issued, the main back cover photo (taken at a performance of Warhol's event Exploding Plastic Inevitable) contained an image of actor Eric Emerson projected upside-down on the wall behind the band. Having recently been arrested for drug possession and desperate for money, Emerson threatened to sue over this unauthorized use of his image, unless he was paid. Rather than complying, MGM recalled copies of the album and halted its distribution until Emerson's image could be airbrushed from the photo on subsequent pressings. Copies that had already been printed were sold with a large black sticker covering the actor's image.

Front cover lawsuit

In January 2012, the "Velvet Underground" business partnership (of which John Cale and Lou Reed were general partners) sued The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York after the Foundation licensed the cover's banana design to Incase Designs for use on a line of iPhone and iPad cases. The complaint involved copyright infringement, trademark infringement and unfair competition.

Alleging that the Foundation had earlier claimed it "may" own the design's copyright, the partnership asked the court for a declaratory judgment that the Foundation did not have such rights. In response, the Foundation gave the partnership a "Covenant Not to Sue"—a written and binding promise that, even if the partnership and certain other parties continued to use the design commercially, the Foundation would never invoke its professed copyright ownership against them in court.

On the Foundation's motion, Judge Alison J. Nathan severed and dismissed from the lawsuit the partnership's copyright claim. According to Judge Nathan, the Constitution allows federal courts to decide only "Cases" or "Controversies", which means ongoing or imminent disputes over legal rights, involving concrete facts and specific acts, that require court intervention in order to shield the plaintiff from harm or interference with its rights. The judge held that the partnership's complaint fell short of that standard because even if the Foundation continued to claim ownership of the design's copyright—and even if its claim was invalid—that claim would not legally harm the partnership or prevent it from making its own lawful uses of the design. The partnership did not claim that ''it'' owned the design's copyright, only that the Foundation did ''not''. Since, according to the court, the Foundation promised not to sue the partnership for any "potentially copyright-infringing uses of the Banana Design", the partnership could continue using the design and there would be no legal action that the Foundation could take (under ''copyright'' law) to stop it. And if, the court concluded, the partnership could continue with business as usual (as far as ''copyright'' was concerned) regardless of whether the Foundation actually owned the design's copyright, a court decision would have no practical consequences for the partnership; it would be a purely academic (or " advisory") opinion, which federal courts may not issue. The court therefore "dismissed without prejudice" the partnership's request that it resolve whether the Foundation owned the design's copyright. The remaining trademark claims were settled out of court with a confidential agreement, and the partnership's suit was dismissed in late May 2013.

Reception and sales

Chart history and sales figures

Upon release, ''The Velvet Underground & Nico'' was largely unsuccessful and a financial failure. The album's controversial content led to its almost instantaneous ban from various record stores, many radio stations refused to play it, and magazines refused to carry advertisements for it. Its lack of success can also be attributed to Verve, who failed to promote or distribute the album with anything but modest attention. However, Richie Unterberger of AllMusic also notes that:

The album first entered the ''Billboard'' album charts on May 13, 1967, at number 199 and left the charts on June 10, 1967, at number 195. When Verve recalled the album in June due to Eric Emerson's lawsuit, it disappeared from the charts for five months. It then re-entered the charts on November 18, 1967, at number 182, peaked at number 171 on December 16, 1967, and finally left the charts on January 6, 1968, at number 193.

Musician Brian Eno famously stated in 1982 that while the album only sold approximately 30,000 copies in its first five years, "everyone who bought one of those 30,000 copies started a band!" Writers often use this quotation as a definitive figure for how many copies of ''The Velvet Underground & Nico'' were sold in the first several years. While it indeed sold less than Warhol and the band had hoped, according to a MGM royalty statement gifted to Jeff Gold, a former Warner Bros. Records executive, 58,476 copies of the album sold through February 1969—a decent figure for a late-1960s LP.

Contemporary reception

A capsule review from '' Billboard'' published ahead of the album's release praised the "haunting" vocals of Nico and the "powerful" lyrics of the band, calling it a collection of "sophisticated folk-rock" and a "left-fielder which could click in a big way." ''Vibrations'', a small rock music magazine, gave the album a mostly positive review in their second issue, describing the music as "a full-fledged attack on the ears and on the brain" while noting the dark lyrics. Wayne Harada of the ''Honolulu Advertiser'' and Dave Donelly of the '' Honolulu Star-Bulletin'' both praised the album's banana-sticker cover; the former terming it "the wildest" front cover of any album yet and the latter calling it a conversation piece

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