The Velvet Underground & Nico 45th Anniversary (Super Deluxe Version).

In the history of rock & roll, the only artists to rival the influence of the Velvet Underground are the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan. On The Velvet Underground and Nico, the group - Lou Reed, John Cale, Sterling Morrison and Maureen Tucker, with German model Nico singing on three tracks - essentially invented underground rock. Establishing himself as one of rock's greatest songwriters, Reed portrays the lives of junkies ("Heroin" and "I'm Waiting for the Man"), masochists ("Venus in Furs") and desperately lonely scene makers ("All Tomorrow's Parties") in songs that seethe with subversive energy. The Velvets' revolutionary sound - now so routinely imitated that its originality is nearly impossible to convey - emerges from the war between Reed's knowledge of pop song craft and Cale's avant-garde training.

- The Rolling Stones magazine 200 definitive list of the essential rock CDs.

 

This is the 45th anniversary super deluxe edition of the 1967 debut album by the New York City's highly influential, ground-breaking band. It consists of six CDs - the original in stereo remastered with alternate takes, the original in mono remastered with alternate takes, Nico's Chelsea Girl, the Scepter Studio sessions and few rehearsal outtakes from The Factory and finally, two very early live recordings from Valleydale Ballroom, Columbus, Ohio in 1966. Packaged as a coffee table book, it contains an insightful accounts of how this debut album (and the band) came to be, intertwined with burgeoning Pop Art movement, multimedia experiments and the sub-culture of NYC sleazy, drug-fuelled underbelly, all held together by a manager who is more popular than the band, Andy Warhol who designed the by-now instantly recognisable "peel slowly and see" banana album cover, how and why it was doomed to fail from the very beginning, leading to the band perpetual lack of recognition, which would eventually, four albums down the road, if we were to take out the last controversial one, lead to the band's collapse, unaware of the redemption that history would provide, as Brian Eno in a 1982 interview once put it "everyone who bought one of those 30,000 copies started a band". My personal take is this - either you love it or hate it. Look wise, the Velvet Underground is the ancestor of those skinny jeans, shade covered eyes, floppy haired, dressed in black/vintage clothing "Oh, I don't care" hipsters. Honestly, when I first saw The Strokes, the first thing which came to my mind was, "Hhmm, looks like Lou and the Gang". The droning, off-kilter sounds, violent clashes of the violin with jangling guitar, unconventional drumming and bass, and more importantly, perhaps the first band whose lyrics, ironically drawn/inspired by the happenings around The Factory written by their gifted singer/guitarist, Lou Reed, dealt with such frankness on decadent subjects of sexuality, drugs etc. which are considered taboo for its time. I remembered a line from Q Magazine list of albums which change the world, in their humorous way, saying something along the line, "Gears are something which the band lugs around. After the Velvet Underground debut, gears are something which you inject into your arms."