that first album has gotten me through so many bad times

I love how The Velvet Underground are shaping 2024 for me personally

“The first Velvet Underground album sold only 10,000 copies, but everyone who bought it formed a band.” Music is an extremely subjective medium, allowing room for a heap full of disagreements and criticisms to take place. With this in mind the most reliable measurement for artistic criticism is influence. love it or hate it, it is undeniable that the VU is one of - if not the most - influential bands of all time.

A very good, accessible, not too heady documentary of the band. Thanks for your effort producing it. Very much enjoyed.

I've owned a copy of 'Andy Warhol' since the early 90's, back when I was at Uni. I got it at a used record store & when I first pulled the sleeve out, I was amazed to find a load of newspaper clippings about the 'Exploding Plastic Inevitable' & live reviews from US papers from the time. I've played that album so many times now that when the crackles start as it leads in to Sunday Morning, it's like welcoming an old friend. Personally, I think it's more ground breaking than Sgt Pepper.

Excellent video! A lot of new info discovered here.

a great job of research! thank you!

David Bowie: 'To me, the sound of the band was John Cale. That was confirmed a few years later when I worked with Lou on Transformer. John was the subversive element of the band, one of the most underrated musicians in rock history. That guy is a danger, a true character.' Thanks for an objective and balanced review of the Velvets, not falling for the usual superficial and badly researched ones, claiming Lou Reed was the only relevant force within the band. Warhol and Nico would get a little attention, but the rest would be diliginty overlooked, especially John Cale, who should have been co-credited for the music on those two seminal lps! But unfortunately Reed's enormous ego would stand in the way.

thank you for this one🙏

Great video and very thorough! Kudos to you you know your stuff! I think that Lou was always jealous of John but I read in John Cales biography that Lou made a pass at him and that's when the tensions started between them because John wasn't interested in that kind of relationship with Lou. And when John married Betsey Johnson and that's when the fireworks really started between them 👍

I'm 62, grew up in the far south of the South island of New Zealand. Middle of nowhere. Can't remember now where or when I first heard the Velvet's first album, but I know "my life was changed by rock and roll". Cheers Lou.

No. The thing you fall in love with is the sound of the room it was recorded in.

Very good, bother!. Learned some new things about the individual members of the VU.

Loved your Minutemen episode, back for the velvets.

Great work! You summed up their career perfectly. Lou Reed was talented and influential, but I have a hard time getting passed his prickly attitude.

Great show thank you! Don't worry about the pronunciation of Paffgen it's virtually unpronounceable in english due to the double accents or dots over the a, called Umlaut in German. It modifies the vowel sound. Some German users of an english keyboard add an e after the a and other vowels to get a near similar sound - try saying Paeffgen and you'll be close!!

Good video on a great band. One thing I thought. Lou got Hepatitis at college and that maybe played a part in his liver problems later in life (not just the liquor).

Man you’re doing really strong work and I appreciate it,

excellent band history story telling with lots of interesting details

great video, this could be the best yet (although I still really like the Devo one!)

awesome video, thank you! you should consider making a video over the strokes… which was heavily inspired by the vu :)

Well done, great

The Velvets have long been one of my favourite band, took some getting used to initially but I have an affinity for TVU that will last my whole life

At time 14:58 that is Eastman School of Music in Rochester NY, not Massachusetts. Excellent overview of the Velvets overall!

love your videos, can you make one on The Smashing Pumpkins???? 🤩

As a native Pittsburgher, the Warhol connection meant I always knew about this band - Lou and Nico of course - but never took the time to dig. Thanks for making this, awesome watch.

I discovered the VU back in 1983 when a co-worker gave me a mix cassette with "All Tomorrow's Parties" on it

"He didn't know Lou Reed from Doug Yule"

Pretty good documentary! Needs more footage of the band and less footage of the narrator 😉

YESSSSSS

Rather bold statement

Love the velvets dearly, and Lou too, but man Reed hating on the Dead is a big L for him. Guess psychedelic music doesn’t work with speedballs

also, you mentioned how the musical sound of the group changed from time to time. I think it would be helpful if you played excerpts from some of those songs so we could see how the changes happened.

I do love the Velvets. Over 40 years ago, I saw Lou, Nico and John live (seperately). Cale even three times. They were extremely influentual. Massively underrated, all true. Yet, to this day, they're only known to a small minority of the people in the western world (14% of the world population) and virtually unknown in the rest of the world. The Velvet Underground did not change the world. The Beatles, however, did. kzfaq.info/get/bejne/sJp1d5tyup-8qIU.html Your statement "The Velvet Underground became the most influential band in history" is more informative about the limitations of your perspective, than about any kind of reality. Duke Ellington's band was more influentual. Miles Davis LP Kind of Blue was more influentual. The Motown house band was more influentual. Franco from Zaire, his band was more influentual, all over sub-Saharan Africa, an area much larger than the combined western world, with about half a billion more people living there. Are any of these at all on your radar?

YES

after decades of absorbing VU, i realize now that its absolutely about the experience , rather than the form...

I wish you would spend a few minutes showing us the lineup of songs on each of their albums. You’re assuming we’re more familiar with their music then we really are.

You missed one very important detail on why the first album flopped. It wasn't the lyrics or the loudness, what killed the sales momentum was a legal delay. The album came out in mid-March, but had to be pulled out of stores after a few days because some actor named Eric Emerson sued the band and label for using his image without permission. Apparently his face appeared projected on the lightshow on the back cover. The album was pulled from circulation, and they had to airbrush the image out of the back cover. This delayed the album by 3 months, and by then the hype of Sgt. Pepper & the summer of love totally overshadowed them, and the album bombed commercially. It still wouldn't have been a smash hit, but if its release hadn't been delayed because of the lawsuit, it may have at least made the top 100, maybe even scraped the top 40. Unfortunately the publicity had slowed down by the time V.U. & Nico returned to the stores. The lyrics didn't help by then, but 3 months earlier would've made a big difference, by June the whole scene had shifted to the west coast and San Francisco, and their commercial downward spiral began....

Not trying to be argumentative but saying they are the MOST influential band in history is rather bold. It's just such a definitive statement. I won't disagree that they can be considered very influential but it can easily be argued that The Beatles or Kraftwerk deserve this designation.

28:34- Colombia hired Norman Dolph (in the caption is read he was born in Oklahoma, in 1939). Norman is the town I was born in, in the state of Oklahoma, 1978. What town was Norman Dolph born in?

Do one of these on Mclusky. Or Billy Childish.

Got it right with the 2nd pronunciation at 25:00 -- it's pronounced PEFF-gen, harg 'g' :) That said though; I've never heard anyone say "Phagen" :P :P :P :P

yes

The VU were cool...but more influential than the Beatles???

Can we get a video on Deep Purple ane the early 1970s hard rock scene prior to the Punk/Metal movement. I think bands like Deep Purple, Uriah Heep, and Black Sabbath all completely changed music forever because of the progressive rock movement. Thanks!

Don't get me wrong...I love Lou Reed and The Velvet Underground,but most influential band ever!? Like moreso than The Beatles!? A band that Lou Reed famously hated as it happens,though that's quite beside the point.

I believe that it was Edie Sedgwick who recorded "Live at Max's"--confirm, someone, if you would.

Lou was right. Niko sucked. They sound way better with just Lou singing

Janes Addiction and Perry Farrel even more so.

Oh please…stop gushing. They were a good band, sure. As for subtleties and nuances, give us a break. It’s rock music and attempts to hipstfy and intellectualize it are pretty silly.

I love the Velvet Underground but your title: " How The Velvet Underground became the most influential band in history" is too much! Not true at all!

I love this band! I didn’t know they where immigrants. Interesting how much immigrants can influence music, my favorite new genre ironically comes from Miami, and is a Cuban immigrant, hope you enjoy kzfaq.info/get/bejne/kKh7fLialsurYXU.htmlsi=MQvz9jXcVG5XsGCP CC is English, and thanks for putting this together, super informative! I had no idea about a lot of this!