Up-Tight: The Velvet Underground Story

by Victor Bockris

  4 September 1966

  Lou went to bed with “X”. This morning I made it with Elena under the sheets in the living room, and for the second time. I don’t know whether George was uptight, but everybody who was awake must have known what we were doing. Eric is living with Nico and her son Ari. Eric resembles Ari as a big brother and people who see them walking on the street with Ari on Eric’s shoulders probably think that Eric is Ari’s father. Ronnie made a full-colour magic-marker-and-ink portrait of me for my trip book. It’s the first time I ever really paid any attention to Ronnie. Maybe it’s because we’re both very shy of one another. And I hope it will become a genuine relationship, although I’m never really certain of myself and my attitudes when it comes to getting involved with other people. Andy went to a small gathering with Nico and Paul. Andy told me earlier that he liked my trip book very much because of the way I record events and news of the day, which, in a sense, is a taking in or a review of the day’s happenings. I don’t remember what I wrote in my book earlier in the day and I hope I haven’t said anything that would make Andy uptight.

  George gets uptight because I tell him I’ll be back in half an hour but I return a half hour late.

  The last show of The Exploding Plastic Inevitable Eric proves to be a visual-physical freak-out, Susan refuses to dance on the panel board in front of the projectors. During the ‘Heroin’ number in the last show I get on the dance floor to go thru my mime motions and Eric gets on my platform and his friends come on stage and start dancing around me. I begin to feel both internal and external suffocation and really wonder if I am not just hallucinating on my own circumstance which is unknown. Susan blocks the spotlight and Alan and Roger pick up the strobes and aim them not at me but at Susan. I’m in almost total darkness. Mary is also in total darkness, except for occasional sequences where I am able to aim my own flashlight on her or project one of the hand-strobes behind me. Andy seems oblivious to the situation and to my personal feelings, I wonder if he realizes that my status as a spotlight star in The Exploding Plastic Inevitable has been reduced considerably by the intrusion of too many people and the lighting assistants who can’t follow directions. I think I’ll write a letter to Andy for him to read, but I’ll write it in my book.

  Dear Andy:

  It seems I’m always writing you letters to explain myself, my feelings, what’s bothering me as you find it easy to say nothing, sometimes, when you know what you’re thinking you shouldn’t say or it is explained without words or without vibrations.

  I thought the Provincetown show got off to a rough but very good start, until you were so kind enough as to let Susan and everyone else not directly connected with the show get involved with Mary and I on stage. Also, it was unfortunate that Mary had to be dancing above me and not with me.

  I want to make it clear to you that (1) I was dancing with The Velvets long before you signed them into a corporation empire, and even before you knew them; (2) that my dancing is an integral part of the music and the show as is your movies; (3) I do not represent a “go go” dancer in the show but an interpretative-visual happening. You are slowly taking this away from me by allowing outside elements to interfere with my dance routines. Also Larry was supposed to have the spotlight on me when not projected on The Velvets. Instead, that spotlight wandered away from what was supposed to be seen happening on stage. On more than one occasion I found my flashlight missing and then discovered that Roger was dancing with it somewhere near the end of the show.

  On more than one occasion I also discovered other people handling the strobes which were inconveniently placed on the stage. All this led up to Mary and me dancing in total darkness, at times. The only way this can be rectified for future shows is not to have troupe dancing but two people at a time. I am willing to take turns. From my vantage point on stage to have more than two dancers the show becomes a Mothers of Invention freak-out. I feel that you will do nothing in your almost absolute power to correct the mess you are responsible for, in which case I will if you won’t.

  Faithfully, Gerard

  Everybody was going out of their minds trying to find a place to stay and looking for amphetamine. The pale bodies of The EPI dressed in silver and black leather didn’t jell too well with the healthy tans of the Boston Irish natives. There was also some trouble in a leather store when the proprietor discovered a number of belts and whips missing which resulted in the police interrupting that night’s performance and untying Eric from a post, where he was strapped in preparation for being whipped by Mary, so they could retrieve the stolen goods. There was trouble with the landlord when the toilets in the house Andy’s entourage rented stopped up and they solved the problem by chucking handfuls of shit out the window. And there was trouble again when Eric Emerson stole a priceless work of art from the Museum just to see if he could get away with it. Paul Morrissey had to act as a liaison between Eric and the Museum, restoring the painting in order to avoid having charges pressed.

  CUTRONE: “Everybody was feeling very cocky and they didn’t like anybody. The general attitude was fuck you which was very punk but nobody knew what punk was. The Velvets hated everything. The whole idea was to take a stab at everything. Before The Velvet Underground almost without exception all groups came out and said, ‘Hey, we’re gonna have a good time, let’s get involved!’, faced the audience, said, ‘This is a time of love, peace, happiness and sexual liberation and we’re gonna have a great wonderful time.’ The Velvets on the other hand came out and turned their backs to the audience. I remember one review said this is musical masturbation. Who do they think they are? They’re jerking off on stage.

  “Now, many years later we found out with the revolution of punk, new wave and permanent wave this was accurate. They were that far ahead of their time. And to some extent that couldn’t capture the entire nation. For the performances they wore all black. Everybody was wearing like balloon-sleeve Tom Jones shirts, necklaces, high boots. The Velvets were into amphetamine. They wore total black, white face. They were totally electric, extremely loud. They got run out of Provincetown on a rail.”

  THE BALLOON FARM

  They had played Chicago with different personnel. In Provincetown new personnel seem to have caused some tension, at least in the dancing department. Tension was beginning to build overall as the terrific impetus The Velvet Underground had picked up from their collaboration with Warhol began to wane. Release of the record was delayed. They went back to pick up the threads at the Dom and found that the owners had reneged on their agreement and rented it to A.P. Grossman and Oliver Coquelin instead.

  MORRISSEY: “While we were gone Charlie Rothchild had arranged for the lease to be picked up from the owners of the Polish National Home by Mr Grossman and Mr Grossman then had the lease and after the summer opened it the same way that we had, only called it the Balloon Farm, and then Rothchild had the nerve because we had nowhere else to go and The Velvets weren’t making any money to say, ‘Would The Velvets like to open the Balloon Farm, Mr Grossman’s club?’ And since they had nowhere else to play, they went back to this thing called the Balloon Farm.”

  The organization cried out for a hard-headed businessman who could have gotten down there in the mud with rock’n’roll executives and sorted out a good deal. But in those days so much was happening so fast and everybody was so purely and intensely interested in what they were doing nobody was interested in spending all their time doing business! Steve Sesnick kept importuning them to allow him to manage the group, but The Velvets were devoted to Andy Warhol and could not see, with the hindsight we have now, that the collaboration had really achieved all it had set out to do.

  INTERVIEWER: “Do you see yourself as a creator, or more as a magnet who attracts other talents?”

  WARHOL: “More like a pencil sharpener.”

  Richard Goldstein described an EPI performance at the Balloon Farm in the New York World Journal Tribune that October:

  “On one huge screen, a lady who turns out to b
e a man is eating a ripe banana, her head encased in a snow white bonnet. On another screen a smiling man is eating peanuts – cracking the shells, gnawing the insides, spitting out the husks. And on the centre screen, they have tied someone to a chair and are putting cigarettes out in his nose, winding belts around his neck and fitting a tight leather mask onto his face.

  “That film is called Vinyl. Its creator, one Andrew Warhol, is sitting quietly in the balcony which overhangs the dance floor. He is working the projector, pensive and quiet in his black-chino-polo-shirt-leather-jacket outfit. Mirror sunglasses make his eyes totally inaccessible. His hair is straight, bright silver. ‘Hi,’ he says. ‘You have come to ask about the films. The one on the left,’ he says, ‘is Harlot. On the right is Eat, with Henry Geldzahler as the peanut man. On the big screen is Vinyl.’

  “He turns back to the projector, his fingers busily shuffling tins of film. He makes a pillow of his arms. He cushions his head. On stage, poet Gerard Malanga is dancing with a swaying girl. He grabs a roll of phosphorescent tape and wraps it around his partner and himself. Handed a whip, he snaps it against the stage. As a finale, he smothers his body in yellow paint and grabs a purple spotlight, which makes him glow and deepens the shadow around his eyes and teeth. Bad trip make-up. He untangles two blinking strobe lights and swings them around his hips, sending violent, stabbing rays into the audience.

  “The third thing the Balloon Farm has going for it is light. Definitely light. An ‘electrician’ in black ear muffs works one spotlight from the stage, shifting colour and design. Bulbs blink patterns onto the ceiling and the mirrored walls. Coloured sparks twinkle ominously and those two portable strobe lights make the entire room sway in slow motion. It is all very much like sitting stoned in the middle of a tinselled Christmas Tree.

  “Which brings us to The Velvet Underground, Andy’s group. Sometimes they sing, sometimes they stroke their instruments into a single one-hour number.

  “Andy Warhol says he is through with phosphorescent flowers and cryptic soup cans. Now it is all rock’n’roll. Andy may finally conquer the world through its soft teenage underbelly.

  “‘It’s ugly,’ he says. ‘It’s a very ugly effect, when you put it altogether. But it’s beautiful. You know, you just look at the whole thing. The Velvets playing, and Gerard dancing, and all the film and light, and it’s a beautiful thing. Very vinyl. Beautiful.’

  “‘Beautiful. There are beautiful sounds in rock’n’roll. Very lazy, dreamlike noises. You can forget about the lyrics in most songs. Just take the noise and you’ve got our sound,’ says John Cale. ‘We’re putting everything together – lights and film and music – and we’re reducing it to its lowest common denominator. We’re musical primitives.’

  “‘Now it seems we have time to catch our breath,’ says Sterling Morrison. ‘We have more direction – that’s where Andy comes in. We eat better, we work less, and we’ve found a new medium for our music. It’s one thing to hustle around for odd jobs. But now we’re not just another band. We’re an act. When a band becomes an act, you get billing, you get days off. You don’t work anymore – you’re engaged.’

  “Nightly at the Balloon Farm, The Velvet Underground illustrates what distinguishes an act from a band. Blonde-haired Nico bellows flaxen sexiness into an electric harmonica while Andy projects her image on the split screens which surround the stage. All traces of melody depart early in the song. The music courses into staccato beats and then slows into syrupy feedback refrains. All this goes on until everyone is satisfied that the point has got across.

  “No one at the Balloon Farm seems anxious to comment on the relation of the drug experience to the creation of the new music. Sterling says, ‘The whole thing is probably easier to understand under LSD because you lose your inhibitions. You stop thinking of this as a series of lights and movies and music and you start seeing it as one abstract whole. The whole thing is twice as heady when you can really let yourself go, but I’m not sure you have to use LSD to let yourself go.’

  “Lou is more frenetic. ‘The whole LSD scene on campus is foreign to our sound. The universities are dead; the live music is coming out of people like us. And it’s not because we’re on the Lower East Side, and it’s not because of junk. It’s because we’re us.’

  “John Cale, who sits dreamily eyeing a glass of Coca Cola, pushes his hair back from his face exposing a bony nose, and says, ‘You can’t pin it down. It’s a conglomeration of the senses. What we try to get here is a sense of total involvement. Maybe the hip scene is drugs and discotheques but that doesn’t go for the music. Coming here on a trip is bound to make a fantastic difference, but we’re here to stimulate a different kind of intoxication. The sounds, the visual stuff – all the bombarding of the senses – it can be very heady by itself. If you’re geared to it. No one understands about Andy. It’s a totally non-ego thing with him. People say we look like marionettes standing up on that stage surrounded by all those lights and Andy’s movies. But it’s not true. Maybe Andy has given us a sense of direction, but the sound, the words I mean, the whole scene – that’s pure us.’

  “Now The Velvet Underground is popping eardrums and brandishing horsewhips with the expertise of pros. Their new single on Verve-Folkways is a rather restrained performance (‘All Tomorrow’s Parties’/‘I’ll Be Your Mirror’) in the vein of English groups like The Yardbirds and The Who but is still the sound. And the boys are brimming with the glow of innovation.

  “‘We want to try attaching two guitars and playing them as a single instrument,’ says John. ‘We’re working on an electronic drum which would produce sub-sonic sounds. That is, you can feel it but can’t hear it. We’d be able to add it to a piece of music and it’d be like underlining the beat.’

  “On stage Gerard Malanga motions wildly; they have run out of records. John drains his glass and puts a black corduroy jacket over his black turtleneck. He slides his hair over his face, covering his nose again. Lou tucks his shirt in.

  “‘Young people know where everything is at,’ he says. ‘Let them sing about going steady on the radio. Let the campus types run hootenannies. But it’s in holes like this – places on the West Coast without cover charges – that the real stuff is being born. The University and the radio kill everything, but around here, it’s alive. The kids know that.’

  “On the floor, everything stops in anticipation. The electrician flips the switches and turns knobs. The stage throbs under a carpet of tangled wires. Gerard plays with a pile of limp fluorescent tape. The group walks on stage – all four of them – together, live, and the projector begins to whir.

  “With a single humming chord, which seems to hang in the air, the group launches into a set. John squints against a purple spotlight. Lou shouts against a groaning amplifier. Gerard writhes languidly to one side. Sterling turns his head to sneeze. The noise, the lights, the flickering images happen. Everybody listens.

  “And from the balcony, Andy Warhol watches it all. ‘Beautiful,’ he says. Sterling sneezes audibly, but it all seems to fit in. ‘Beautiful,’ Gerard hands his partner a bullwhip. ‘Just beautiful.’”

  It was not “beautiful” for the band. Morrison says they found it “repellent” and quit shortly after this account.

  MORRISON: “What we found ‘repellent’ was not the ‘show’, but rather the fact that we were back in what we considered to be ‘our’ ballroom, and even worse, were working for the very people who had taken it from us. Given a choice between working for them or nothing, we chose nothing. Like so many other decisions, flukes, or whatever in our history, one can hardly speculate about the course of events had this incident not occurred. Perhaps we would have sold the lease and become real estate tycoon/slumlords.”

  Morrissey says that his perception was that The Velvets just didn’t want to do anything any more. They thought they would be famous as soon as their record came out and decided to wait until that happened.

  MORRISSEY: “With The Velvets not wanting to play,
the guy who had the downstairs-part of the Dom, Stanley, wanted to bring a white crowd to the bar and he thought the best way was if Nico would sing. Nobody from The Velvets would play guitar behind her, neither Lou or Sterling, anybody. Nico had to open. The ‘gracious’ Lou offered to play her guitar solos on a tape recorder and she had to sit there and push a tape recorder button and sing to a tape recorder, which was horrible, and that went on for a week or two. If Sterling filled in one night it was maybe only as a great favour and it would probably have gotten Lou mad. On the second or third week I said, ‘Well, we need somebody else there beside Nico,’ and I hired Tim Buckley to play with her. Then it was Nico and Tim Buckley who was not known at all at the time, and he played his own guitar. Sitting in front of the bar every night was this little boy looking up at Tim Buckley. I spoke with him. His name was Jackson Browne and he said, ‘I’m a fan of his. He’s from Orange County. He’s my hero. I came east just to see him. I follow his career.’ He’s 16 years old. He says, ‘I write songs, I play the guitar.’ I said, ‘You play the guitar!?’ Then I heard him play his songs and I thought his songs were great. And I said, ‘You know, these songs are great. Nico should sing them but you play the guitar in the back of Nico.’ He did, and then he learned the guitar parts for her other songs from The Velvets, and that was the first job he ever had and the first time his songs were performed for anybody I think. So he got up in back of the bar with Nico while Ari was running in front of the bar waiting for her to go home. And he played the guitar in back of her to get rid of this terrible tape recorder that she had been left with, which was so humiliating, and she sang those songs. Tom Wilson, who was great, thought Nico was wonderful and said he wanted to make an album with her too because she was getting a lot of publicity. And Jackson Browne played the guitar for most of the songs on that album, because he had been playing in back of her at the Dom and it was recorded with her and Jackson on the solo guitar and then Wilson went off and put all those other instruments which I think were great, behind it.”