Up-Tight: The Velvet Underground Story

by Victor Bockris

  TUCKER: “It was rather flat, and I think the problem was it hadn’t been advertised very much, and it hadn’t been distributed properly.”

  BOCKRIS: “Why did MGM sign you up, do such an expensive production job on the package, and then cool off so completely to the product?”

  TUCKER: “I don’t know what the hell their problem was. I think someone had said let’s go psychedelic. So they signed us and The Mothers, then they went after the Boston groups. But I think they just didn’t know what the hell to do with us.”

  Despite the attempts of Tom Wilson to render ‘Sunday Morning’ a hit single (in a longer, poppier version released before the album), it too flopped and the album peaked in the Cashbox charts at 103.

  Cashbox December 17, 1966 – Newcomer Picks – ‘Sunday Morning’/‘Femme Fatale’: “The Velvet Underground and Nico have been zooming the length and breadth of the land making a name for themselves and now follow the personal stuff with a potential filled deck. The top side, ‘Sunday Morning’, is a haunting, lyrical, emotion stirring chant. Listen very closely. Eerie, unusual number back here.”

  To add to their problems Eric Emerson, whose face was on the back cover in a still from Chelsea Girls upside-down just above Lou’s face, refused to sign a release for MGM unless they paid him and further delays in the distribution were caused as Eric had to be airbrushed off and the cover had to be reprinted.

  MORRISON: “The whole Eric business was a tragic fiasco for us, and proves what idiots there were at MGM. Photos by Billy (Linich), Stephen Shore, Nat and others were used in an ‘art’ montage in a show that took place in an art museum (Chrysler). This montage was photographed by Hugo, who sold it to us, who consigned it to MGM. Who even knows who took the original photo of Eric, but MGM was far removed from any liability. They responded by pulling the album off the shelves immediately, and kept it off the shelves for a couple of months while they fooled around with stickers over Eric’s picture, and then finally the airbrush. The album thus vanished from the charts almost immediately in June 1967, just when it was about to enter the ‘Top 100’. It never returned to the charts. We never had a ‘Top 100′ album. As for Eric, he never got any money as far as I know. I don’t think that anyone even bothered to complain about the destructive audacity of his action. He was, shall we say, too far out.”

  Some originals did reach the public. A copy of the original cover with Eric’s face and the banana unpeeled, is worth $25 to $30 today.

  Considering MGM’s inability, or lack of willingness, to handle the product, one has to wonder why they released it in such an expensive package. The only explanation would be an attempt to emphasize the Warhol connection, which a rare advertisement they used certainly does, in the hope that it would sell more copies. Most magazines even banned the ad on account of the record’s content. There were few reviews, and no radio spots. It’s not hard to imagine how The Velvets, who were fully aware of the relevance and significance of their music, must have felt to have their product treated so negligently by MGM while the very West Coast bands they despised – Jefferson Airplane, Mothers, Grateful Dead – were beginning to receive national promotion.

  The album is still selling today. It is doubtful that it will ever stop selling as long as people listen to records. There are unfortunately no Velvet Underground videos although there are four films (apart from Warhol’s) that are known to exist, though shown rarely, if at all: Rosalind Stevenson filmed some simple footage of them in her apartment in 1965. Jonas Mekas filmed the Psychiatrists’ Convention, the first show they played with Andy Warhol’s choreography, January 8, 1966 at Delmonico’s Hotel in New York. A team filmed at the Balloon Farm, October 1966, and Ron Nemeth filmed at Poor Richard’s in Chicago, June 1966.

  Apart from standing out over time and being recognized as an influence on countless other musicians, The Velvet Underground and Nico fulfilled the ambitions with which the band had approached the concept of playing together, creating a symphonic rock format in which they would never have to repeat themselves.

  EVERYBODY BECOMES PART OF THE EPI EXIT NICO

  CUTRONE: “The last time we played as The EPI (without Nico, who had returned to Ibiza) was in May 1967 at Steve Paul’s Scene where Tiny Tim used to hang out and Jim Morrison played. Before this people came to watch The EPI dance and play, they were entertained, and got a show. But when we played at the Scene I remember Gerard, Mary and I were dancing and the audience came on stage with us and totally took over. Mary and I looked at each other and had this look on our faces. It was half desperation-half relief that finally everybody was part of it. I looked at her as if to say, ‘Okay, Mary, looks like this is it.’ And she looked at me like, ‘Yeah, this is it.’ Everybody became part of The EPI. It was a bit sad, because we couldn’t keep our glory on stage, but we were happy because what The EPI intended to do had worked – everybody was liberated to be as sick as we were acting! From that standpoint it was interesting socially that it happened that way. All of a sudden there were no dancers, there was no show; the music had just taken everybody at that point. That was the last time I danced, and I think the last time Mary and Gerard danced. I mean maybe they tried futilely after that, but it didn’t work.”

  After the failed attempt to find a home at the Gymnasium, and the couple of performances already mentioned, The Velvets didn’t play much around the release of their album, confounding the accepted laws of the situation and doing the exact opposite of what was expected. It seems a tremendous loss that they played to so few audiences and didn’t record their shows.

  MORRISON: “The unanimous opinion was that we were ten times better live than on records. We never played a song the same way twice – never wanted to, maybe never could. And Lou changed lyrics all the time. One of his great talents is that he can spontaneously generate lyrics on stage – just like the old blues singers, Lou can go on forever rhyming.”

  Their decision not to promote the record may also have been partially due to the changes everybody was going through. In May Andy, Paul, Gerard and Eric Emerson went to Cannes to show Chelsea Girls. They were out of town for a month. Steve Sesnick asked The Velvets if they’d play at the Boston Tea Party (on the weekend of May 26-27) which, unbeknownst to everybody, he owned. It was a ballroom with high ceilings and a very high stage that could easily accommodate a couple of thousand people and boasted a very large dance floor. The Velvets, who were glad to be offered a forum at the time, accepted.

  They informed Nico of the upcoming date and she was faced with a dilemma. She still had some time to go on her latest Dom engagement and she needed the money. On the other hand what would her not going to Boston with The Velvets portend? Nico considered the problem and decided to stay in New York. The Velvets took this in their stride and moved on without her, but then Nico changed her mind and turned up at the Tea Party on the second night, timing her entrance perfectly to coincide with the beginning of their last song. When they refused to let her come up on stage with them, Nico was miffed and returned to New York, causing a series of uptight vibrations to pass through the organisation that had been known as The Exploding Plastic Inevitable.

  MORRISON: “It was all very informal. We stopped working for a while. We used to do that periodically – just refused to do anything. Nico needed money so she went out on her own. She was working downstairs at the Dom (Stanley’s) and we said, ‘Sure, do anything you want,’ and so she was doing that. We’d take turns backing her up. I’d do it for one week, then John Cale, Lou, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Jackson Browne – everyone was showing up as Nico’s accompanist. When we decided to start work again we told her about it and she said, ‘Oh, I have three more weeks here.’ So we told her to decide what she wanted to do and she decided that perhaps she should go on her own and be a big star, and we said okay.”

  CUTRONE: “You have to remember that there were at least five extremely strong egos involved in this group. There were drugs. And consequently there were egos. Everybody wanted to be the
star. And you can’t have everybody being the star. Lou kept a very low profile. John did. Nico’s ego was way out of proportion. I mean, so was mine, so was everybody else’s that I ever came into contact with from that era. One common cause couldn’t support all those egos. It had to fracture, it hadda break.”

  BOCKRIS: “So when you went up to the Boston Tea Party did Andy go?”

  MORRISON: “No, he didn’t.”

  BOCKRIS: “So at that point you were playing on your own without EPI?”

  MORRISON: “Right. We couldn’t put on The EPI thing because the room was too small. Eventually Nico showed up, on the second night. We declined to have her play with us. She came in late. I think we were on the last song. There was always a problem of what to do with Nico when there was a song that wasn’t one of her songs. She wasn’t playing an instrument. She wanted to sing all the songs. It was really awkward about what to do. It wasn’t that we wanted to get her out of the group …”

  BOCKRIS: “Did Lou have a very strong ego at the time? Was he vying for leadership of the group?”

  NICO: “Lou likes to manipulate women, you know, like program them. He wanted to do that with me.”

  JIM CONDON: “He wanted to manipulate you when you were with The Velvets?”

  NICO: “He told me so. Like, computerize me.”

  CONDON: “Would you say that he was the leader of the group?”

  NICO: “He always will be …”

  REED: “Nico’s the kind of person that you meet, and you’re not quite the same afterwards. She has an amazing mind. She isn’t the type of person who stays very long in any one country. Nico’s fantastic. She always understood immediately what I was after with a song.”

  FINKELSTEIN: “I felt that there was an underlying current of competitive hostility between John and Lou.”

  BOCKRIS: “Was that a constructive creative tension?”

  FINKELSTEIN: “Artistically, certainly on a personality basis though, unless there were super egos involved, which there were, it would have destroyed everybody.”

  BOCKRIS: “Did you think The Velvets were very important music-wise?”

  FINKELSTEIN: “From the first time I saw them I said, ‘Wow! Wow! Wow! They’re going to kick these guys out on their ass for the next ten years!’ Everybody hated them. That whole macho East Village group really hated The Velvets – just put-down after put-down – the hatred had nothing to do with their music; a lot of it had to do with the gay image. One of the reasons I got tossed out of that whole Lower East Side group was the fact that I was working with The Velvets. Also Lou and John were really good musicians, whereas Ed Sanders and Tuli Kupferberg wouldn’t have known music if it’d bit them on the ass.”

  BOCKRIS: “Were they confident at the time?”

  FINKELSTEIN: “Lou was very confident.”

  BOCKRIS: “Would he react to criticism?”

  FINKELSTEIN: “He was about as fragile as a piece of stainless steel. As far as Lou was concerned, you got the idea that no matter what, this guy was going to survive, this guy was going to make it. You also felt he was following a historical trail that other people in his situation followed.”

  BOCKRIS: “Was he more outstanding than John?”

  FINKELSTEIN: “In the sense that he was much more open than John. Lou never stopped learning, Lou never stopped developing.”

  CUTRONE: “I have the feeling that Lou always felt he was the leader of the group, and didn’t have to prove it. I think John contributed to the group immensely. You couldn’t duplicate the group without John, even without Mo and her garbage cans, you just couldn’t. They were willing to experiment in a time when everybody was getting very studio-produced. The Beatles had stopped touring and they were the only group that I know of who were out there trying new things and making mistakes that actually sounded great – all that feedback was hit-and-miss. There was no way you could really plan feedback, but it was working in the music and everybody was contributing to the basic sound.”

  BOCKRIS: “How did Nico come to not be with the group anymore?”

  CUTRONE: “In those days I don’t think anybody ever had the balls or the honesty to say I think you’re through. Maybe that did happen and I’m not aware of the politics, but everything was run by guilt or by elimination then. Like somebody was designated to say to somebody else, ‘We can’t use you tonight,’ leave it at that and let the paranoia rear its ugly head, make the person feel all shitty inside and inferior. I have a feeling that that’s what happened. Breaks are never that clean-cut. Think in terms of romance. People see their Xs for years after. If there’s strong bitterness you avoid each other, or you talk behind each others’ backs, and if there’s not extreme bitterness then it just goes on. Instinctively you know when it’s over. That’s the point I’m trying to make. Like at the last gig at the Scene, instinctively we knew that was the end. I think The Velvets as a music group knew that they had other things to do. And Andy, of course, had other things to do. Andy’s not primarily a rock’n’roll producer – he does many different things and The Velvets were primarily a rock’n’roll group.”

  REED: “When we worked together, we were very close. It was just people working to get onto something. The thing is that Andy works very hard. One of the things you can learn from being at the Factory is if you want to do whatever you do, then you should work very, very hard. If you don’t work very hard all the time, well then nothing will happen. And Andy works as hard as anybody I know. He used to say things to me that were involved around our working. Whenever he’d ask me how many songs I’d written that day, whatever the number was Andy would say, ‘you should do more’. And the thing is that I had to learn certain things the hard way. But one of the things I learned was work is the whole story. Work is literally everything. Work should be taking place 24-hours a day. He just works very hard. I mean, The Velvet Underground really loves him, in any way or any level you want to take it in. Working with him was really fantastic. We worked until the show couldn’t exist anymore because it was just so expensive. They took our club. We tried to open the Gymnasium, but again there was some problem. No one knew the business. People just constantly think he’s strange, he’s this or that. They don’t understand they’re talking about a very, very good person. A very good, honest person who’s enormously talented. Therefore, those who know him really love him.”

  CUTRONE: “Both Lou and Andy, as I recall, thought it would be the healthiest way if the band wasn’t associated with a pop artist, and if Andy wasn’t associated strictly with music. Because by then light shows had become such a cliché that it was over for us. I had to do my art, and Mary was studying to be an actress, and Gerard was writing poetry and making films and so the three of us just continued with our own work. The band became more of a rock band without us, because the impact was over, the shock was over.”

  MILSTEIN: “A quote from Lou Reed: ‘I fired Warhol. He said to me, “Aren’t you tired of playing museums?” I thought about it and fired him. I was just trying to do what Andy suggested.’ Is that more or less the truth of the matter?”

  WARHOL: “It wasn’t that dramatic.”

  CUTRONE: “Lou was just trying to take it out of an art context and Andy said, ‘Fine. That’s perfect.’”

  MILSTEIN: “So was that more or less the end of your formal relationship with the group?”

  WARHOL: “I guess so.”

  MILSTEIN: “They became a band in their own right apart from all the theatrics of The EPI?”

  CUTRONE: “Not just a band, a very special band … In other words, we really sort of innovated something in that year-and-a-half. After that it was like beating a dead horse and people became accustomed to it. It became boring to us. And Lou wanted to make it in the record industry. As it was, we weren’t getting airplay due to the nature of the songs.”

  MORRISON: “By the summer of 1967 John and I had left 10th Street. The tenant underneath us was some old Austrian who had suffered under the Nazis; he kept callin
g the police to complain about noise, but we really never made any. Finally, he took us to court and told the judge that we ‘marched around in jackboots’. The judge looked at us hatefully, and then at this wretched mental defective, and dismissed us with a stern warning. Within a month we were back before the same judge for the same reason. This time I planned to defend us eloquently (we said nothing at the first trial), but as we entered the courtroom John said menacingly, ‘Now don’t say a word! Not one fucking word!’ So I remained silent. The judge delivered an impassioned harangue, the gist of which was that the two of us would go to jail immediately if he ever laid eyes on us again. And so we left 10th Street and lived here and there with other people (Paul Morrissey put us up for a while), settling down for the summer on West 3rd Street, along with Lou.”

  MALANGA: “Another thing is I’m curious about the direction in which your relationship with Lou was going. I know you kept in touch with him and he used to come by late at night just to see you at the Factory.”

  BILLY LINICH: “We would see each other or we would go to a hangout. I remember there was an after-hours place a couple of blocks away on University Place we would go to sometimes. It was just as buddies. We had always struck it off from the beginning. We were empathetic toward each other, we had a common sense, and we sort of appreciated each other or respected each other. I’m going to Dutchess County Community College now and there are kids up here – I’m old enough to be their father – who have Lou Reed on the back of their leather jackets and I swear to God scraped on the men’s room wall this past year was ‘Nico and The Velvet Underground’. Can you imagine?”

  The benefit they did for Merce Cunningham on the same bill as John Cage, whose music was orchestrated by Viola, Gong, Radio and Door Slam plus the windshield wipers and engine-turnover of three cars at architect Philip Johnson’s Glass House in Connecticut in July 1967 was the swan song to the whole sensation. It was outdoors in the afternoon. Lou, John, Sterling and Mo played without lights or films. Gerard danced alone. Steve Sesnick had been continually importuning The Velvets to accept him as their manager, and on the way back to New York after the gig they discussed the matter in some detail.