The Velvet Underground and Nico

I'm not a HUGE fan of the Velvets but I think this is a very good read. I really like some of the songs on this album (the opener is great - I never knew Nico sang that live!) So my favorite band is Love, but I like the Velvets It was rather an engrossing book despite my lack of being a VU fan. The author trying to pin down a date for the album sessions and talking about an acetate of the sessions I think its a good book if you wanna find out about the album. Its a lot of fun when people are going after Lou, calling him a little jerk, being upset about him insisting on singing a track on the album Especially good on talking about Andy Warhol's role in the band, and him being the producer for the album, and him insisting they not clean up the songs for the album, and keeping them nasty! Highly recommended. Well worth a read, like most of the books in this series (give a miss to the ones on Love's Forever Changes and one on the Band - appalling those)

Joe Harvard's entry in the 33 1/3 series is an immensely enjoyable read. I like the Velvet Underground's music, but wouldn't consider myself a huge fan. This book provides interesting insight into the band's origins and the sessions for the album. It's tough to understand how revolutionary the album was for its time, but Mr. Harvard does an excellent job of setting the 60's NYC scene in Andy Warhol's world.

Fascinating tome by Joe Harvard (of Fort Apache/Pixies fame) about the making behind not only the Velvet's, but also their first LP. Lovingly researched, Harvard attempts to find the fact buried beneath years of myth as we go from the early founding of the band through Warhol/Morrissey's management. Unlike other books in the 33 1/3 series, little is said about the production of the album itself, save for the question of whether or not the songs were recorded completely live or not. Harvard's prose shows the love he has for his subject, and makes learning about this seminal album a treat.

A few pages into The Velvet Underground and Nico you already sense that Joe Harvard clearly enjoys the heck out of his work. Conversational at times, more formal where fact-gathering is concerned, Harvard's tone moves seemlessly from hilarious indie-rock-vibe riffing to an almost poetic admiration when describing the songs themselves. The result amply justifies Continuum's choice of musician/fans - instead of career critics - to write the 33-1/3 series. At times reading this book was like watching a band on stage, and you can't ask much more than that from a book on rock. This book is really well-researched, as I guess you'd expect from an arachaeologist-turned-musician-turned -writer; with the backround story assembled as it is from liner jackets, magazine articles, websites and interviews (plus key passages from the other major Velvets works) it makes a perfect introduction for potential VU fans, while the detective work Harvard does on this definitive work by a great band will answer some long-standing questions for VU veterans. Curiously, since the author's style is often irreverent, he still conveys his considerable respect for the achievement that this album was. Some of the funnier parts of this book involve the writer's admitted Boston-centric stance, and the way he weaves in elements of his own background veers from artful to self-admittedly ham-fisted. When checking out the writer's background, I found it interesting that one of the articles he wrote for a local NJ music 'zine, Upstage, was an appreciation/obit for Hunter S. Thompson ... with a similar embrace of subjectivity and such a melding of personal background with the book's subject, I wonder if this is akin to the "New Journalism" of rock writing? Whether it is or not, this is definitely a book worth reading.

How to do true justice to an LP that was not a commercial success on release in March 1967 after a delay of almost a year from its recording, yet features regularly in most "all time" Important/Influential Rock LPs listings? Plus as Sid Griffin stated in his liner notes to a 1997 re-release in comparing this VU LP with the similarly ignored first Flying Burrito Bros. LP, it seems many of the copies that were since sold made the listener go out and form a band inspired by what they'd heard, given how many musicians cite the LP as an influence. The author (a musician and producer in Boston, a favourite venue for the VU at the time in the USA) given his age was not around when the LP first came out and has instead "tracked back" based on seeing the pervasive influence it had on may later rock acts who he admired. In doing so, he has benefitted from being "guided" by Jonathan Richman (a longstanding and close VU fan plus influenced musician) in not being fooled by the many false statements and conflicting claims that exist by many of the participants. What this book does beautifully is with great scrupulousness, nail the facts down and reassess what all the different participants contributed (or maybe didn't in some cases!) to the final end result. Compared with all the many prior books on the VU I have read (and there are indeed many for a group that during its existence had very limited commercial success or critical appreciation) this is easily the most honest and thorough on the subject I have read to date. Key achievements under this approach are to provide appropriate credit to the un-mentioned "other" NY production team of Norman Dolph and John Licata who laid down the original tracks (and in so doing helped a very ill prepared group who had little recording experience but were challenging in their approach many exisiting concepts of how records should be made) which in turn helps explain exactly what Tom Wilson and his production team brought to the initial tapes and few replacement recordings needed to produce the final LP issued. The other key contributors are also placed in context - while Warhol as is well known provided the distinctive cover artwork but never "produced the LP" (despite what the initial cover notes stated), he did with Paul Morrissey clearly provide the support and encouragement which gave the group the freedom they needed to get what they wanted recorded, though their rock group managerial skills may have been lacking in then promoting the group's best interests. Most importantly the other group members (Cale, Morrison, Tucker and Nico) musical contributions are re-evaluated largely at the cost of Reed's subsequent rewriting of history though his own personal contribution as lyricist remains large under this evaluation. For my money the best all round and "new" critical evaluation essay to date in this series of excellent titles .