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33⅓ Main Series #11
The Velvet Underground and Nico
The Velvet Underground and Nico has influenced the sound of more bands than any other album. And remarkably, it still sounds as fresh and challenging today as it did upon its release in 1967. In this book, Joe Harvard covers everything from Lou Reed's lyrical genius to John Cale's groundbreaking instrumentation, and from the creative input of Andy Warhol to the fine details of the recording process. With input from co-producer Norman Dolph and Velvets fan Jonathan Richman, Harvard documents the creation of a record which - in the eyes of many - has never been matched.
EXCERPT
In 1966, some studios, like Abbey Road, had technicians in white lab coats, and even the less formal studios usually had actual engineering graduates behind the consoles. Studios were still more about science than art. Clients who dared make technical suggestions were treated with bemusement, derision, or hostility. The Velvets were a young band under constant critical attack, and the pressure to conform in order to gain acceptance must have been tremendous. Most bands of that era compromised with their record companies, through wholesale revamping of their image from wardrobe to musical style, changing or omitting lyrics, creating drastically edited versions for radio airplay, or eliminating songs entirely from their sets and records. With Andy Warhol in the band's corner, such threats were minimized.
EXCERPT
In 1966, some studios, like Abbey Road, had technicians in white lab coats, and even the less formal studios usually had actual engineering graduates behind the consoles. Studios were still more about science than art. Clients who dared make technical suggestions were treated with bemusement, derision, or hostility. The Velvets were a young band under constant critical attack, and the pressure to conform in order to gain acceptance must have been tremendous. Most bands of that era compromised with their record companies, through wholesale revamping of their image from wardrobe to musical style, changing or omitting lyrics, creating drastically edited versions for radio airplay, or eliminating songs entirely from their sets and records. With Andy Warhol in the band's corner, such threats were minimized.
168 pages, Paperback
First published March 31, 2004
About the author
Joe Harvard
3 books3 followersJoe Harvard raised as Joseph Alia Incagnoli, Jr. in working class Jeffries Point, East Boston and has lived in Asbury Park, NJ since 2001. As he was becoming an indie rock pioneer, Joe was also learning the craft of an Ivy-trained archaeologist, working briefly in the field before settling into a long career as a musician, producer-engineer, songwriter and promoter. His studies, work and travels brought him into close contact with the art and architecture of the ancient world, with an emphasis on the history and culture of the Islamic world. This influence can be heard in his music, and seen more clearly in his work as a visual artist.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 107 reviews
August 23, 2010
Joe Harvard:
The miniscule tattoo I got in 1979 caused a family furor, with dark rumblings about bikers and convicts; when my niece recently acquired skin art that would impress most Yakuza and bring a smile to the lips of a Maori headhunter, nary a peep was uttered. American culture moves so fast it's more a verb than a noun.
Well, that's good stuff and this cute li'l book makes a pretty good job of accounting for one of the great albums of our time, released in the year of the summer of love and how appropriate - these tales of junkies, masochists and all the rest of Lou Reed's charm school graduates are a pleasing corrective to the chanting god-botherers in the people's parks. I only found out about this record because critics, derided aesthetes though they may be, insisted that this was one of the all time great records. So I picked a copy up for a quid and I didn't like it. Very harsh, very nasty, and that Lou Reed, he can't sing worth shit. I can sing better than this fool. So after a year I liked two tracks and after a year another two and now I understand how great this album is. Critics are routinely derided and spat upon (as if we can't figure this stuff out ourselves - be off with you!) but often they have showed me the way through the maze. Lou Reed loved rock and roll and he loved James Joyce and he didn't see why you couldn't have both together at the same time. He didn't quite manage that feat but he came close.
The miniscule tattoo I got in 1979 caused a family furor, with dark rumblings about bikers and convicts; when my niece recently acquired skin art that would impress most Yakuza and bring a smile to the lips of a Maori headhunter, nary a peep was uttered. American culture moves so fast it's more a verb than a noun.
Well, that's good stuff and this cute li'l book makes a pretty good job of accounting for one of the great albums of our time, released in the year of the summer of love and how appropriate - these tales of junkies, masochists and all the rest of Lou Reed's charm school graduates are a pleasing corrective to the chanting god-botherers in the people's parks. I only found out about this record because critics, derided aesthetes though they may be, insisted that this was one of the all time great records. So I picked a copy up for a quid and I didn't like it. Very harsh, very nasty, and that Lou Reed, he can't sing worth shit. I can sing better than this fool. So after a year I liked two tracks and after a year another two and now I understand how great this album is. Critics are routinely derided and spat upon (as if we can't figure this stuff out ourselves - be off with you!) but often they have showed me the way through the maze. Lou Reed loved rock and roll and he loved James Joyce and he didn't see why you couldn't have both together at the same time. He didn't quite manage that feat but he came close.
June 16, 2019
O “disco da banana” foi um dos que mais ouvi na minha juventude, uma das imagens mais nítidas dos meus vinte e poucos anos é estar louca de pó e álcool ouvindo Venus in Furs eternamente em looping, naquele estágio que você está acordada há dias – eu particularmente não o ouvia porque supostamente ele é extremamente influente para a história do rock e da música em geral, mas porque eu gostava da melodia e das letras, por isso me espanta saber que muita gente detestou o album quando saiu pelos mesmos motivos que tanto gosto dele.
A grande sacada dessa edição da coleção 33 1/3 ou O Livro do Disco foi ter trazido um músico e não um crítico ou historiador de música para contabilizar os meandros históricos e artísticos desse disco tão maravilhoso, além do mais, o autor Jon Harvard faz questão de só compartilhar de fontes atestadas e coerentes, sempre mantendo a informação longe dos disse-me-disses de que a indústria fonográfica está cheia.
É o primeiro volume que leio da coleção Livro do Disco, apesar de já possuir outros volumes, e foi uma grata surpresa pela qualidade das inserções críticas do autor, sem poupar nem as egotrips de Reed ou o talento dos demais integrantes da banda.
https://www.letras.mus.br/velvet-unde...
A grande sacada dessa edição da coleção 33 1/3 ou O Livro do Disco foi ter trazido um músico e não um crítico ou historiador de música para contabilizar os meandros históricos e artísticos desse disco tão maravilhoso, além do mais, o autor Jon Harvard faz questão de só compartilhar de fontes atestadas e coerentes, sempre mantendo a informação longe dos disse-me-disses de que a indústria fonográfica está cheia.
É o primeiro volume que leio da coleção Livro do Disco, apesar de já possuir outros volumes, e foi uma grata surpresa pela qualidade das inserções críticas do autor, sem poupar nem as egotrips de Reed ou o talento dos demais integrantes da banda.
https://www.letras.mus.br/velvet-unde...
August 15, 2022
Bought this book at Jo's favorite book store in Brooklyn and read most of it on the long train rides from Crown Heights to Manhattan. Oral history is so interesting, especially when the subjects are egotistical drug addicts! It's like "were they lying, just confused, or a mix of both?" I learned that Nico was a total freak and no one in the band really liked her but Andy Warhol insisted they let her sing like 3 songs on the album, Lou Reed was an english/creative writing major at Syracuse, and surprisingly the first Velvet Underground LP wasn't a big success! But makes sense considering it was the late 60s and all their songs were about sex and drugs. Basically this book re-enforced that drugs are the most powerful influence in music. Musicians are so fascinating
Read
June 12, 2008This could have been better, but it was still interesting. i feel I could have written a more nuanced analysis of the album than this dude did, but there were a lot of little factoids that I'm glad to know. Like you know in "Femme Fatale" when the guys sing "She's a femme fataaaale" and they pronounce the "a" really flat and nasally? Apparently that infuriated Nico, and she wanted them to pronounce it in the correct French way, but Lou Reed insisted that they pronounce it that way. And she didn't like pronouncing it "fem" instead of "Fom" but she acquiesced on that, but she wouldn't pronounce "fatale" incorrectly. So read it just for those tidbits.
August 21, 2024
I didn't think I could learn something new about the album "The Velvet Underground & Nico," especially from such a short book. I was wrong. Author Joe Harvard presents a behind-the-scenes look at the making of the album that debunks the story that Andy Warhol was producer in name (and money) only. No, Warhol did not sit in the studio. He was more of an executive producer, giving support and encouragement, even suggesting lyrics and arrangements. More depth is even given to the relationship between Nico and Lou Reed. It turns out there is always something new to learn about one of the most influential albums of the 1960s.
August 14, 2023
wish there was more!!
May 25, 2008
So hey, this book was really good. It has thus far been my opinion that the books in this series that stay away from straightforward writing about the album they're dealing with are more memorable and enjoyable, but this book turns that opinion on its head. And by the way, that's not to say that I haven't enjoyed the more straightforward installments that I've read--in fact, I thought Andrew Hultkrans's take on Love's "Forever Changes" was damned good. But Harvard's "Velvet Underground And Nico" is the first time I've read one of these books and felt like I've really learned something. Maybe it's because a lot of the writing about The Velvet Underground is more focused on mythology than actual history, or maybe it's because Joe Harvard focused on Lou Reed's literary influences (Raymond Chandler! Hubert Selby Jr!), which no other Velvet Underground-focused account that I've read ever has, but I felt like there was a lot of new information here. It really enriched my enjoyment of this album, and it probably helps that I agree with Mr. Harvard that this is the VU's true masterpiece and the only place where they fully got it right. I have friends who feel like Nico drags the whole thing down, and other friends who don't get the drone-noise chaos of "European Son" or "Black Angel's Death Song", and I don't know if said friends would turn up their nose at this book, since it doesn't fit with their own analysis of this album. But since it fits with mine, I didn't have any trouble with that part of the book. And since Harvard did a great job of collecting a lot of stray bits of information from dozens of accounts and personally conducted interviews into an account that probably contained a good bit more factual information than has been present in any previous Velvet Underground discussion, I feel that his book is an important addition to the canon of VU-centric discussion, regardless of whether you're someone who agrees with the author and myself that "Velvet Underground and Nico" is their best album.
And by the way, if you don't, you need to listen to it again. And again and again and again. Maybe you should do that anyway--you know, just in case.
And by the way, if you don't, you need to listen to it again. And again and again and again. Maybe you should do that anyway--you know, just in case.
April 7, 2008
Author Joe Harvard is a musician himself; he’s also perfected his studio tan by spending the better part of three decades producing and engineering at various recording studios, including Boston’s storied Fort Apache, which he founded. Prominent on Harvard’s website is a photo of him at some bar gig or other, buck naked except for a Flying V guitar. Is this really the kind of person you want penning a Velvet Underground book, given the Velvets erudition — a band influenced more by John Cage and the Fluxus gang, and poets such as Lou Reed’s own mentor Delmore Schwartz, than the rock music of their day?
Well… yeah. It’s exactly who you want writing it. The band has been chronicled endlessly, and if there’s going to be yet another VU book — in this case, on their first album specifically — I’d rather read a take on it by a rock and roller who had his musical boundaries shaken up by hearing this album than a take by some scholar who finds the Velvets intriguing despite being a rock band. Harvard talks about how his own band began playing Velvet Underground covers and soon realized how uncomfortably they sat with the Who and Stones jams filling out the remainder of the setlist.
The Velvet Underground is a band that’s constantly in the “influenced by” list when bands describe themselves, and this first album — the only one featuring the original Reed, Cale, Morrison, Tucker and Nico lineup — is usually the sound those bands are referring to. It was the Velvets before they started reading their own press, and duly ramped up the dark underbelly quotient to theatrical excess, ensuring they’d continued to “shock.” It was also the album that included not only sinister drones and scrapes (”The Black Angel’s Death Song,” “Venus In Furs”) but also some startlingly fragile quiet songs (”I’ll Be Your Mirror,” “Sunday Morning” — although the latter was recorded only when the label sent the band back to the studio to record a song they felt could be a single.)
As an album, The Velvet Underground and Nico is chemistry personified. Recorded in four days, one day, or twelve hours, depending on who’s account you’re reading, it was Lou Reed’s vision of taking the literary sensibilities of Hubert Selby and Delmore Schwartz and nailing them to a rock beat. But it’s hard to imagine the end result would be anywhere near as sonically compelling without the classically trained (but “rules”-averse) John Cale aboard with his viola and arrangement ideas. The same could be said of Moe Tucker, who played a bass drum on its side with mallets so simply it became a hypnotic pulse the others could wrap themselves around. And the icy Nico — I’ve heard lots of folks do a comic impression of her singing “Femme Fatale,” but regardless of how you hear it, it’s something you don’t forget. And we’re not even getting into the influence of album “producer” Andy Warhol, who urged the group not to sacrifice the rawness and squall of their live shows in favor of cleaning it up for the studio. (His famous quote of the time, so very Warhol: “Don’t take the dirty words out!”)
For the “I was there” content, Harvard leans on the recollections of two folks in particular: album engineer Norman Dolph and Harvard’s longtime friend Jonathan Richman (who’s own Modern Lovers album would make a great 33 1/3 book as well, by the way). By the time the album became as celebrated and influential as it is, the VU members all carried pretty significant baggage as to where credit was due, resulting in some obvious agendas; this makes it all the more terrific that Harvard located Dolph. Norman Dolph doesn’t have any axes to grind, deflects credit to others at every turn, and basically provides recollection as to what the actual process was. It’s a fascinating read; the album is so much a part of lore now that when a fan at a record fair recently stumbled upon one of Dolph’s first acetates, it made news that the original leadoff track was meant to be the eight minute grinder “European Son” rather than a more listener friendly track. It also made news that this acetate — bought for 75 cents — sold on eBay for twenty five grand.
It’s a fair bet to say many of today’s bands that claim to be influenced by the Velvets don’t really listen to the Velvets; they listen to other contemporary bands who do. I’ve run across one band who say their sound is “Velvets-inspired”, but when asked, the CD they actually talk about is by The Black Angels. Hey, fair enough — it only goes to show how powerful the legacy of the VU is, and how saying “Velvets-like” has become a part of our pop-culture vocabulary. When you invoke the Velvets, people know exactly what vibe you’re trying to conjure up: the darkness, the drones and the danger, the minimalist psychedelia.
Joe Harvard writes as a fan and doesn’t claim to be an expert. Freed from having to critically redefine the album (it’s been done ad nauseam), he can write with unbridled enthusiasm, pose a few theories, and generally enjoy himself as he digs into the past and present of The Velvet Underground and Nico. His enthusiasm is contagious.
Well… yeah. It’s exactly who you want writing it. The band has been chronicled endlessly, and if there’s going to be yet another VU book — in this case, on their first album specifically — I’d rather read a take on it by a rock and roller who had his musical boundaries shaken up by hearing this album than a take by some scholar who finds the Velvets intriguing despite being a rock band. Harvard talks about how his own band began playing Velvet Underground covers and soon realized how uncomfortably they sat with the Who and Stones jams filling out the remainder of the setlist.
The Velvet Underground is a band that’s constantly in the “influenced by” list when bands describe themselves, and this first album — the only one featuring the original Reed, Cale, Morrison, Tucker and Nico lineup — is usually the sound those bands are referring to. It was the Velvets before they started reading their own press, and duly ramped up the dark underbelly quotient to theatrical excess, ensuring they’d continued to “shock.” It was also the album that included not only sinister drones and scrapes (”The Black Angel’s Death Song,” “Venus In Furs”) but also some startlingly fragile quiet songs (”I’ll Be Your Mirror,” “Sunday Morning” — although the latter was recorded only when the label sent the band back to the studio to record a song they felt could be a single.)
As an album, The Velvet Underground and Nico is chemistry personified. Recorded in four days, one day, or twelve hours, depending on who’s account you’re reading, it was Lou Reed’s vision of taking the literary sensibilities of Hubert Selby and Delmore Schwartz and nailing them to a rock beat. But it’s hard to imagine the end result would be anywhere near as sonically compelling without the classically trained (but “rules”-averse) John Cale aboard with his viola and arrangement ideas. The same could be said of Moe Tucker, who played a bass drum on its side with mallets so simply it became a hypnotic pulse the others could wrap themselves around. And the icy Nico — I’ve heard lots of folks do a comic impression of her singing “Femme Fatale,” but regardless of how you hear it, it’s something you don’t forget. And we’re not even getting into the influence of album “producer” Andy Warhol, who urged the group not to sacrifice the rawness and squall of their live shows in favor of cleaning it up for the studio. (His famous quote of the time, so very Warhol: “Don’t take the dirty words out!”)
For the “I was there” content, Harvard leans on the recollections of two folks in particular: album engineer Norman Dolph and Harvard’s longtime friend Jonathan Richman (who’s own Modern Lovers album would make a great 33 1/3 book as well, by the way). By the time the album became as celebrated and influential as it is, the VU members all carried pretty significant baggage as to where credit was due, resulting in some obvious agendas; this makes it all the more terrific that Harvard located Dolph. Norman Dolph doesn’t have any axes to grind, deflects credit to others at every turn, and basically provides recollection as to what the actual process was. It’s a fascinating read; the album is so much a part of lore now that when a fan at a record fair recently stumbled upon one of Dolph’s first acetates, it made news that the original leadoff track was meant to be the eight minute grinder “European Son” rather than a more listener friendly track. It also made news that this acetate — bought for 75 cents — sold on eBay for twenty five grand.
It’s a fair bet to say many of today’s bands that claim to be influenced by the Velvets don’t really listen to the Velvets; they listen to other contemporary bands who do. I’ve run across one band who say their sound is “Velvets-inspired”, but when asked, the CD they actually talk about is by The Black Angels. Hey, fair enough — it only goes to show how powerful the legacy of the VU is, and how saying “Velvets-like” has become a part of our pop-culture vocabulary. When you invoke the Velvets, people know exactly what vibe you’re trying to conjure up: the darkness, the drones and the danger, the minimalist psychedelia.
Joe Harvard writes as a fan and doesn’t claim to be an expert. Freed from having to critically redefine the album (it’s been done ad nauseam), he can write with unbridled enthusiasm, pose a few theories, and generally enjoy himself as he digs into the past and present of The Velvet Underground and Nico. His enthusiasm is contagious.
March 27, 2024
Honestly this book just wasn't for me because I have no personal connection to the people or music.
October 22, 2021
I just re-listened to this book after binge watching Gilmore Girls so I really enjoyed listening to some of the history of The Velvets, and how they influenced a lot of other bands in history. I love Lou Reed's voice and his style of music. I wish they would have played some of the songs, but it was still great hearing about the history of the band and their most influential album.
February 22, 2014
Excellent.
September 10, 2020
One of the greatest albums, not one of the greatest 33 1/3s.
Read
January 8, 2024This was a decent read. Two things I thought were interesting: The Velvet Underground & Nico was actually recorded in the spring of 1966, almost a year before its release (which makes it that much more impressive as a work of avant-pop), and Boston was The Velvet Underground’s favorite city to play (common New England W).
November 11, 2020
Eh, not to much meat on the bone. But, reading this did get me to listen to The Velvets’ music more attentively, so maybe it was all a means to an end.
August 28, 2022
This book was definitely educational, I almost wish it was longer though!
July 25, 2024
Great, very informative. I wish they went a little more in depth about the actual members of the band, but for a book about a particular album and the circumstances surrounding it, it was totally awesome and i learned a lot. Long live VU
September 30, 2024
I finished a book
May 9, 2010
I do like The Velvet Underground. But this is the first book I've read about them and I thought it a nice place to start. I'm fairly familiar with the band's history and thought this book did a good job talking about the historical context of the album and all those popular stories surrounding the band and this album, while also giving some good thoughts, insights, and analysis that made the band and the album seem that much more interesting.
This was an easy, quick read that I breezed through in a day. Entertaining stuff that also helped me understand The Velvets and this disc better than I did before. For people who haven't read widely about The Velvet Underground, this might be a nice place to start learning some things, even though it focuses on VU's first (and perhaps best) album.
I also like Joe Harvard's enthusiasm for the album. You can tell he likes it, maybe even worships it, but his reasons for doing so seem fair and good. Harvard's enthusiasm feels more like that of a musician than a critic and that can be really cool to read. Sometimes our reasons for liking the music we do has less to do with our enlightened, critical ear, and more to do with our emotional gut reaction to what we're listening to. A combination of both the critical and the emotional seems healthy, and Harvard seems to have managed to capture that balance pretty well in this book. He made me excited to listen to the album again (which I did), and for me that's a good enough sign that this book was a worthwhile read.
This was an easy, quick read that I breezed through in a day. Entertaining stuff that also helped me understand The Velvets and this disc better than I did before. For people who haven't read widely about The Velvet Underground, this might be a nice place to start learning some things, even though it focuses on VU's first (and perhaps best) album.
I also like Joe Harvard's enthusiasm for the album. You can tell he likes it, maybe even worships it, but his reasons for doing so seem fair and good. Harvard's enthusiasm feels more like that of a musician than a critic and that can be really cool to read. Sometimes our reasons for liking the music we do has less to do with our enlightened, critical ear, and more to do with our emotional gut reaction to what we're listening to. A combination of both the critical and the emotional seems healthy, and Harvard seems to have managed to capture that balance pretty well in this book. He made me excited to listen to the album again (which I did), and for me that's a good enough sign that this book was a worthwhile read.
September 28, 2011
The Velvet Underground and Nico edition of Continuum’s 33 1/3 series of books on record albums by Joe Harvard has some good information about the album, it seems pieced together from several other sources and doesn’t have the authority of some of the other selections I have read. It has been suggested that booklet that came with the Peel Slowly 5 disc VU Box set has as much information and while that is not true, it is not as comprehensive as Frank Bruno’s impressive book on Elvis Costello’s Armed Forces. I think it would have benefited from direct quotes from Lou Reed. However, it is significant to note how ahead of their time the Velvets were. They were writing about stuff that nobody had written about before; masochism, heroin, etc… I can remember when my high school friend who influenced my musical tastes with his extensive record collection threw on “Venus In Furs” and “Heroin” at the end of a tape he had recorded for me and it blew me away in 1986. I had never heard anything quite like it, but found it oddly compelling. I got further reinforcement from REM who covered “Pale Blue Eyes”, “Femme Fatale”, and “There She Goes Again” on their Dead Letter Office. Then I heard Jane’s Addiction’s cover of “Rock-N-Roll," but I was sold when I got this Velvets album. It was interesting to learn that Nico was essentially brought in to replace Lou Reed and as singer. Harvard rightly points out that Reed has influenced so many modern rock singers and perhaps the whole punk movement by showing that you don’t have to have a conventionally good voice to make good music.
August 3, 2015
This book manages to capture the best thing about 33 1/3 series - inspiring reader to listen the album again exposing other interesting music and facts along the way. It also brought back memories of my high school and the very first time I heard the Velvet Underground and Nico.
I liked the style - it has that raw edge that corresponds well with the actual music. However, the form (settings around the record first and description of the songs later) dulls it a bit. It would be much more effective if songs were described along the way.
I simply loved (for me it's the best part in the book) the fictional dialogue author leads with himself that concludes with Whether I'm right or I'm right. It gave me quite a laugh.
In spite of declaring in the very beginning that he will avoid talking about Reed only, there is a bit too much talk just about him and the lyrics. Another thing that actually bothered on annoying is repeated dwelling on the actual cost of the recording. While it is an insightful fact (comparing it to some other albums of the time) it does not deserve to be mentioned numerous times.
Still, it was an enjoyable read that left me singing: Shiny, shiny...
I liked the style - it has that raw edge that corresponds well with the actual music. However, the form (settings around the record first and description of the songs later) dulls it a bit. It would be much more effective if songs were described along the way.
I simply loved (for me it's the best part in the book) the fictional dialogue author leads with himself that concludes with Whether I'm right or I'm right. It gave me quite a laugh.
In spite of declaring in the very beginning that he will avoid talking about Reed only, there is a bit too much talk just about him and the lyrics. Another thing that actually bothered on annoying is repeated dwelling on the actual cost of the recording. While it is an insightful fact (comparing it to some other albums of the time) it does not deserve to be mentioned numerous times.
Still, it was an enjoyable read that left me singing: Shiny, shiny...
September 6, 2015
The back cover states "In this book, Joe Harvard covers everything from Lou Reed's lyrical genius to John Cale's groundbreaking instrumentation, and from the creative input of Andy Warhol to the fine details of the recording process." That's a perfectly apt description of what this solid if unspectacular entry in the 33-1/3 canon does. Harvard gives a detailed and comprehensive "making of" the album in a short but rich 145 pages. However, despite the fact that he admittedly finds it to be one of the greatest albums ever made, one which stands the test of time, he approaches the material unemotionally. The book is devoid of the passion you'd expect from a music enthusiast. I appreciate his objectivity and his reporter-like way of writing, but while I may in be in the minority I'd like to see a little less respect and a little more pure joy/love. Nevertheless, I'm glad I read the book and I appreciate each member of the Velvets more for having read it.
February 18, 2021
One of the stronger entries in the 33 1/3 series. The Velvet Underground and Nico is a classic album, and given the musical importance of the piece as well as the interesting cast of characters involved in its production (not least Andy Warhol), it's difficult to see how a decent writer could get this one wrong. Then again, 33 1/3 have been known to do less with more...
Harvard (who sadly died far too young last year) fortunately makes a decent fist of this. An interesting mix of historical anecdotes, personal recollections, disputed story-telling and local colour, this would work very well as a template for how to do this kind of thing as well as an entertaining read in its own right.
Harvard (who sadly died far too young last year) fortunately makes a decent fist of this. An interesting mix of historical anecdotes, personal recollections, disputed story-telling and local colour, this would work very well as a template for how to do this kind of thing as well as an entertaining read in its own right.
March 26, 2008
A so-so book on one of the great albums. I am proud to say that I discovered this particular album not by myself or via a friend at school or even through the rock media of the time. It was through my Dad who had a copy of the album in his collection. In fact it took me awhile to get to even listen to this album. Maybe a year??? Nevertheless it is one of those great recordings where sounds equals great songwriting equals great performance. It's magic. It really is. This book on the other hand is not magic. But still worth reading for the die hard fans of this album.
June 6, 2011
A really fun book! Granted, it contains a lot of references to demos and alternate takes that, without access to them, make it hard to fully comprehend. But the background material - especially regarding Andy Warhol's relationship to the band as "producer" and how Nico came to join the group - is especially engrossing. I also liked the mini-essays about each song from the final cut of the record.
I highly recommend that anyone reading this book be very familiar with the album before even trying to tackle it.
I highly recommend that anyone reading this book be very familiar with the album before even trying to tackle it.
October 18, 2007
Just discovered the "33 1/3" series of books, where each volume takes one noteworthy & influential album and delves into it in excruciating detail - the band members, their history, the making of the album, thoughts & explanations on all of the songs, etc. It's not perfect - at times, the author's prose gets a little too full of its own cleverness - but for music geeks like myself, this is a fantastic discovery. (And I can't help but note they have a volume on Aqualung...!)
September 19, 2014
Certainly one of the best books in this series and highly recommended, whether or not you are a fan of the Velvet Underground.
Written as an appreciation and highly successful in that regard. The author concentrates on the album and the making of it (primarily) and avoids the pointless trivia that surrounds that band in particular and these books in general.
Certainly has given me cause to go back to some music I haven't heard in some time.
Written as an appreciation and highly successful in that regard. The author concentrates on the album and the making of it (primarily) and avoids the pointless trivia that surrounds that band in particular and these books in general.
Certainly has given me cause to go back to some music I haven't heard in some time.
February 16, 2015
When we married my ex-husband and I merged our record collections, and agreed to pass duplicates on to siblings. Turns out the only duplicates were a few Beatles albums and maybe a Dylan or two. Our musical tastes were wildly divergent. But over the years I grew to appreciate many of the albums in his collection. This was one of them. This book has more detail about tunings than I'm able to appreciate, but a chance to revisit a favorite album was much appreciated.
January 9, 2009
My first 33 1/3. It was good and had a lot of stuff I didn't know, which is always great. It also had (I thought) a pretty good approach to the often dodgy rock non-fiction genre. Making sense of (often verbal) legends and rumors isn't easy and Joe Harvard did a good job of putting things in perspective.
September 16, 2011
A really interesting little book that tells you pretty much everything you'd want to know about THE VELVET UNDERGROUND & NICO, one of the greatest rock albums ever made. It's as much about Lou Reed as it is about Andy Warhol and the whole Factory subculture of the '60s, and that's fine with me. A good read.
February 8, 2014
Joe Harvard does an incredible job of piecing together years of information about this album and the people who created it ~ his notes on the individual tracks will make old fans want to revisit the album in order to better appreciate the subtle details in each song. Can't believe I waited so long to read this gem.
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