GOING BANANAS

There has never been a record whose cultural influence has outstripped its commercial impact more than the 1967 debut by New York’s Velvet Underground.

The Velvet Underground & Nico – in that infamously phallic banana cover by the band’s champion and nominal “producer”, Andy Warhol – arrived with ads in New York’s Village Voice announcing, “So far underground you get the bends!”

That proved prophetic for an album that initially sold only a few thousand copies, peaking at charts.