Throwback Thursday: The Velvet Underground & Nico

Forgive Us For We Have Not Sinned: A Look Back At The Velvet Underground & Nico

Original Release date: 12th March 1967

Thanks to Jon Hall for another splendid Throwback Thursday.

The X-Factor is the ultimate symbol of Postmodernism. A meaningless process which produces meaningless products. To consume. To consume. To be consumed. It’s the biggest scam the world has ever seen and it’s not a clever one. The masses are dumb and the televisions are expanding faster than the universe.

If Simon Cowell was alive during the French Revolution he would have televised the executions. Thumbs down from the Judgment Table and it’s head in a basket time for Fat Woman Number One or Generic Twink Number Three. One Direction are designed to drain teenage girls of money and the Pop industry no longer disguises it's intentions. Yet, paradoxically, as our children are exploited by entertainment, humanity appears to be becoming frightened of its own flesh, once again. The hard work of the 1960’s seems to be unravelling under Conservatism. Fear the human body. Feel the shame of the human body.  

The Sexual Revolution had appeared to have dusted away the conventions left behind by Christian dogma but decades later and the political machine is once again pointing its accusing finger at the homosexuals, the drug takers and the artists. We’ve all started to believe it again, that sodomy and cocaine will bring Hell to Earth.

Produced by Andy Warhol who warned us about the perils of fame and fortune and the dilution of substance by style, ‘The Velvet Underground and Nico’ was a complete failure commercially and critically. In hindsight it is revered as a landmark in modern culture. Allmusic, the Encyclopaedia of Popular Music, the Rolling Stone album guide and other publications have all rated the debut VU album 5 out of 5. It’s the greatest piece of counter-culture ever conceived. With a suggestive piece of Pop Art as its cover, the album unpeeled reveals a drug-fuelled Bohemia brimming with sadomasochism, prostitution and drug abuse. The prudes (though themselves have done drugs and each other) gasped then and they gasp now.

Reed who wrote the majority of the album's lyrics had not intended to shock. After graduating with a major in English it seemed right for Reed to honour his literary heroes with Rock and Roll. The Welsh born John Cale had his own influences, La Monte Young and John Cage, experimental composers bordering on noise artists. The Ostrich tuned guitars and viola drones which gives the VU their distinctive and abrasive sound combine with Reeds dark sexual mythology and Nico’s banshee vocals to produce an album as raw as and edgy as swinger’s party. 


VU & Nico is a full sensory attack on the nuclear family and the Disneyfied culture it consumes. Rock and Roll prevents the Fordism of humanity and no Rock and Roll album leaves you quite as bare as this one.