![]() ![]() ![]() "And I suddenly discovered that there was a whole waste of talent behind those records in Pickwick that was going to be ignored and they were not interested in recording 'Waiting For The Man' and 'Heroin.'"īut they were interested in recording something Cale and Reed wrote shortly after they met, a song called "Why Don't You Smile" that pointed the way to The Velvet Underground sound. Reed also showed him lyrics to some songs that Pickwick Records wouldn't let Reed record. John Cale says when he first met the guitarist, Reed was playing an instrument with all six strings tuned to the same note, to B, an innovation that seemed brilliant to Cale. It was a novelty dance number co-written by Lou Reed. Not long after it was recorded, an executive for a small label, Pickwick Records, approached Cale and some other members of Lamont Young's ensemble and asked them if they'd play some concerts to promote a new record. They recorded a 24-hour-long drone that included John Cale. He explored micro-tonal music and droning, the power that musicians could generate by playing just a couple of notes for a very long time. "The idea in 1963 was to go to New York and really be around the atmosphere of the Beat poets and where the avant-garde was."Ĭale fell in with a circle that centered on minimalist composer Lamont Young. So not long after getting to Massachusetts, John Cale went on the road. But I was really interested in unstructured situations and not what Tanglewood represented, anyway." "Tanglewood was interesting because it was an amalgam of all the foreign artists that were really rising at the time. In 1958, he released "Leave Her to Me" with his band The Jades.Ī few years later in London, composition student John Cale won a scholarship to study at Tanglewood, the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. The oldest is by Louis Reed of Freeport, Long Island. In Jay Reege's collection, there are some rare 45s by future Velvets. The key elements of The Velvet Underground's sound were in place at Summit High: Tucker's minimal drumming, the screeching guitars of Reed and Sterling Morrison and the bass and electric viola of Welshman John Davis Cale. "Heroin" would become one of the most influential songs on the band's debut album. In fact, probably half the kids didn't even come into the auditorium till the other band came on."īut the ones who ventured in to see The Velvet Underground heard Louis Reed, the front man, literally singing the praises of heroin. And there was no booing as I recall, but there was no cheering, either. "So the kids wanted to see them, of course. She and her three band mates, all dressed in black, had driven from New York City to the New Jersey suburbs to play on a bill with a local band, the Myddle Class. "Yeah, they didn't like us too much," remembers Maureen Tucker, better known as Moe, was playing her first gig as The Velvet Underground's drummer on the night of November 11th, 1965. ![]() Like a lot of people seeing The Velvet Underground for the first time, the kids at Summit High School basically had no idea what hit them. ![]()
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