The Velvet Underground
The Velvet Underground & Nico

THE REVIEW

Rock, or rather, hard rock, has been here.

The Velvet Underground (Lou Reed, John Cale, Sterling Morrison, Maureen Tucker) and the eclectic singer Nico, with the artistic protection of Andy Warhol (also appearing as the producer, but it's a hoax), created what is undoubtedly the most important and influential album of all modern and luciferian rock.

A distant comparison with the Beatles, who that very year were releasing "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band," another monument of modern rock. The challenge between the Velvet and the Beatles resolves, as expected, in a luxurious draw: the Velvet appeals to the protestors and the pioneering punks, the Beatles are idolized by those former kids who, five years ago, were humming "She loves you." "The Velvet Underground & Nico," produced by the glorious Verve, is a lethal and sensational album, psychedelic and fascinating. In the full hippie era, among joints and flower children, the Velvet destabilizes the basic rules of rock and decency from within: they speak unreservedly about drugs, sex, adolescent fears, war, and death.

They play hard and win the pot: musically sharp, they attempt, and succeed, to merge pop and rock, dark and punk (which perhaps didn't even exist), hard and house (which certainly didn't exist) in a single guitar stroke. And the fears of the Velvet, in the end, are the fears of half of America, uncertain whether to side with the mad Vietnamese expedition or to support, not just in words, the honest and excellent cause of Martin Luther King. Lou Reed is an undisputed leader, John Cale complies dutifully (he will start having disagreements with Reed only from 1968 onwards).
A handful of memorable songs, and some flashes of genius and clarity: "Sunday morning" and "I'm waiting for my man" are typically Lou Reed tracks (i.e., attributable to Lou Reed's flair); "I'll be your mirror" and "Femme fatale" carry the unmistakable vocal stamp of Nico; "The black angel's death song" is a long musical noise experiment typical of the creative flair of Andy Warhol's Factory; "Europen song" is a delightful and touching piece dedicated to the mythical and revolutionary figure of Delmore Schwarz, a friend and mentor of Lou Reed during his university days; "Heroin" is the most famous track of the entire album, and it shockingly recounts the horrors (and errors) of drug use, specifically heroin.

For those, like myself, who don't know English well, there's no hesitation for even a second: go and read the translation in Italian. The Velvet Underground hit hard on the long wave of psychedelia, but they don't just copy its moods or sensations. Theirs is a hard and pure experiment: to overthrow rock and create a new genre, hard rock. And the Deep Purple, in 1970, with "In rock," in reality, invented nothing: they took the hard rock of the Velvet, loaded it with notes and squeals, turned it into a genre of great popular impact and speculated, albeit with great professionalism, at the expense and on the shoulders of the Velvet Underground.
Yet, despite the undoubted beauty of Rod Evans' voice, the husky and incredibly sensual voice of Mr. Nico is, today as it was then, inimitable and extremely powerful. The cover design is famous (and, to be honest, truly exceptional), naturally, by Andy Warhol. A banana, perhaps a box of chocolates would have been more appropriate.

And to think, this wonderful masterpiece, in 1967 sold so little that it didn't even make it into the top 100 albums chart (it stabilized at the 200th place). It was sensationally, and rightly, reevaluated in the full epoch, let's say from Patti Smith onwards. It was reissued by Polydor in 2002 on a double CD with the addition of two pioneering 45s and five songs hijacked from Nico's very first album, among which stands out the mighty "Chelsea Girl." Naturally, the reissue does not match the original, as always.