Blog Archives

Idol thoughts: What links the Velvet Underground and the Beatles?

Regular readers will know that I love music and that two of my favourite bands include the Beatles and the Velvet Underground (both of who I have written blogs about including the VU’s lead singer Lou Reed, as well as blogs here, here, and here). Many would argue that the two bands couldn’t have been further apart musically especially given the Velvet Underground’s reputation as an ‘extreme’ band. However, I thought I would try and gather stories, anecdotes, and make my own observations on where the music and lives of members of the two bands connected in some way. Most of you reading this will know the four members of the Beatles (John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr) but some of you may not know the original Velvet Underground members (Lou Reed, John Cale, Sterling Morrison, and Moe Tucker, plus Nico as vocalist on three songs on their first LP). These are presented in no particular order although towards the end of the list, the associations become more tenuous.

  • Both bands released their seminal LPs in 1967 (Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band by the Beatles and Velvet Underground and Nico by the Velvet Underground). Both of the covers were designed by ‘pop artists’ (Peter Blake and Andy Warhol, the latter being VU’s manager at the time) and both are regarded as iconic LP cover art. The Velvet Underground were in the minority who didn’t like Sgt. Pepper and John Cale dismissed the LP as a “theatrical statement”. Lou Reed went even further and was quoted as saying “I never liked The Beatles. I thought they were garbage”.
  • Gould-Sgt-Pepper1503428917-vu-stereo-fr
  • In 1993, Richard Witts (who before being an academic was the lead singer in one of my favourite 1980s band The Passage, and who I wrote about in a previous blog), published a biography about Velvet Underground vocalist Nico (Nico: The Life & Lies of an Icon). Witts claimed that in 1967 (May 19), Nico attended one of Beatles’ manager Brian Epstein’s private parties where he previewed the Pepper for the British media. Nico said in Witts’ book that: “There is a song I liked on Sgt. Pepper, called ‘A Day in the Life. It has a beautiful song and then this strange sound like John Cale would make (he told me it was an orchestra, actually) and then this stupid little pop song that spoils everything so far. I told this to Paul [McCartney], and I made a mistake, because the beautiful song was written by John Lennon and the stupid song was written by Paul. It can be embarrassing when you speak the truth.” Witts book also claimed that Nico briefly stayed with Paul McCartney at his London home during this particular May visit.
  • In 1968, both the Beatles and the Velvet Underground released eponymous LPs (i.e., The Beatles by the Beatles and The Velvet Underground by the Velvet Underground). The eponymous Beatles LP is usually referred to as the ‘White Album’ and the eponymous Velvet Underground LP is sometimes referred to as the ‘Grey Album’. The other LP that the Velvet Underground released in 1968 (i.e., White Light/White Heat) was an all-black cover apart from the name of the group and the album title in white whereas the Beatles eponymous album was completely white apart from the name of the album in black). This is sometimes refereed to ‘The Black Album’.
  • White-AlbumR-372030-1437605103-2885.jpeg
  • According to a number of Lou Reed’s biographers, the Beatles’ manager Brian Epstein really liked the Velvet Underground’s debut LP and (like David Bowie) was given a promo copy before it had actually been released. Epstein was approached by Steve Sesnick (the Velvet Underground’s manager after Andy Warhol) who contacted him hoping to get a deal for Velvet Underground songs with Epstein’s publishing company. It has also been claimed that Epstein was setting up a European tour for the Velvet Underground but Epstein died just before the contracts were signed (in fact Epstein died on my first birthday, August 27, 1967). According to Richie Unterberger (author of the excellent book White Light, White Heat: The Velvet Underground Day-By-Day), Reed actually met Epstein: “In a semicomic incident, Lou Reed himself met Brian Epstein around spring 1967 when, at publicist Danny Fields’s instigation, Reed finagled a cab ride with the Beatles manager in New York in the hopes that some interest in the VU’s affairs might be ignited. Evidently nothing came of it, however, other than Epstein sharing a joint with Reed and telling Lou how much he liked the banana album”.
  • Lou Reed was a long-term client/patient of German (but New York-based) Dr. Robert Freymann. Freymann (also known as ‘Dr. Feelgood’) was the subject of the 1966 Beatles song ‘Dr. Robert’ on their Revolver.
  • Both bands have individuals that are often claimed to be the ‘fifth member’. There are the ‘fifth Beatles’ (George Martin, Brian Epstein, Mal Evans, Billy Preston) and the ‘fifth VU member’ (Nico, Billy Yule, Andy Warhol).
  • Anthony DeCurtis (author of the 2017 biography Lou Reed: A Life) speculates that Lou Reed’s song ‘The Day John Kennedy Died’ includes lyrics that are conflated with Reed’s memories of the day John Lennon died. More specifically, Reed wrote that he heard about Kennedy’s death while watching an American football match but there was no game on that day (12.30pm on November 22, 1963). However, on the day John Lennon died, sports broadcaster Howard Cosell announced that Lennon had been shot dead during his evening TV programme Monday Night Football.
  • Lou Reed’s 1980 LP Growing Up In Public was recorded in Monserrat at Beatles’ producer George Martin’s studio.
  • The Velvet Underground’s first manager, the rock journalist Al Aronowitz, was the man who first introduced the Beatles to Bob Dylan on August 28, 1964 (and George Harrison became Dylan’s life-long friend and were both in the Traveling Wilburys).
  • Both ‘leaders’ of the Beatles and Velvet Underground wrote songs about heroin use from a personal perspective (‘Cold Turkey’ by Lennon and ‘Heroin’ by Reed). Other members of both bands experienced alcoholism (Ringo Starr and John Cale), and almost all members of both bands dabbled in various drug use (some very heavily) in the 1960s and 1970s.
  • Lou Reed and John Lennon have both collaborated with David Bowie. Bowie produced Reed’s album ‘Transformer‘, sang on the track ‘Hop Frog’ (on The Raven LP), and and sang live on stage together in 1972 and 1997 (at Bowie’s 50th birthday concert at Madison Square Garden). Bowie co-wrote his No.1 US hit ‘Fame‘ with Lennon at the end of the Young Americans LP sessions (and in a previous blog, I looked at other associations between Bowie and the Beatles). John Cale also collaborated on two songs with Bowie (‘Velvet Couch’ and ‘Piano-la’) but these were never officially released and are only found on bootlegs).
  • In the song ‘Rooftop Garden’ (the song that closes Reed’s Legendary Hearts LP), Reed used the line ‘Sitting in my rooftop garden, waiting for the sun’ in which he swapped the word ‘English’ for ‘rooftop’ from the line in ‘I Am The Walrus’.
  • Both Lou Reed and Ringo Starr appeared as guests on the 1985 anti-apartheid protest song ‘Sun City’ single and accompanying video put together by Steven Van Zandt. Reed and Starr were also both inducted into the US ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame’ in 2015.
  • In 2011, Lou Reed and Paul McCartney both appeared on the same tribute album (Rave On) to Buddy Holly. Reed sang ‘Peggy Sue‘ and McCartney sang ‘It’s So Easy‘ (and McCartney earned money from both as he owns Holly’s back catalogue).
  • Both Lou Reed and George Harrison have been heavily influenced in their lives by various aspects of Buddhism.
  • Both John Lennon and Lou Reed spent the last decade of their lives living in New York (although Reed never lived in anywhere but New York) and both released albums with New York in the title (Some Time in New York City by Lennon and New York by Reed).

 

 

 

Dr. Mark Griffiths, Professor of Behavioural Addictions, International Gaming Research Unit, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK

Further reading

Bockris, V. & Malanga, G. (1995). Up-tight – The Velvet Underground Story. London: Omnibus Press.

DeCurtis, A. (2017). Lou Reed: A Life. London: John Murray.

Davies, H. (2009). The Beatles: The Authorised Biography. London: Ebury.

Doggett, P. (1991). Lou Reed – Growing Up in Public. London: Omnibus Press.

Henry, T. (1989), Break All Rules! Punk Rock and the Making of a Style, Ann Arbour MI: UMI Research Press.

Hare, R. D., & Vertommen, H. (2003). The Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised. Multi-Health Systems, Incorporated.

Heylin, C. (2005). All Yesterday’s Parties – The Velvet Underground In Print 1966-1971. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press.

Hogan, P. (2007). The Rough Guide To The Velvet Underground. London: Penguin.

Hogan, P. (2007). The Dead Straight Guide To The Velvet Underground. London: Red Planet.

Jovanovich, R. (2010). The Velvet Underground – Peeled. Aurum Press.

Kostek, M.C. (1992). The Velvet Underground Handbook
. London: 
Black Spring Press.

Lewisohn, M. (1990). The Complete Beatles Chronicle. London: Harmony Books.

McNeil, Legs; McCain, G. (1996). Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk. London: Grove Press.

Muggleton, D. & Weinzierl, R. (2003). The Post-Subcultures Reader. Oxford: Berg.

Norman, P. (2011). Shout! the Beatles in their generation. New York: Simon and Schuster.

Reed, L. (1992). Between Thought and Expression. 
London:  Penguin Books.

Unterberger, R. (2011). White Light, White Heat: The Velvet Underground Day-By-Day. London: Edition Olms.

Wall, M. (2013). Lou Reed: The Life. Croydon: Orion Books.

Witts, R. (1993). Nico: The Life & Lies of an Icon. London: Virgin Books.

 

Velvet gold mind: Psychopathy, addiction, ECT, and the psychology of Lou Reed

Regular readers of my blog will have no doubt picked up that one of my all time favourite bands is the Velvet Underground (VU) – often referred to as “The Psychopath’s Rolling Stones“. I bought my first VU album on vinyl back in 1980 as a 14-year old adolescent (a 12-track compilation that I still have simply called ‘The Velvet Underground’). When I bought it I had heard very few VU songs on the radio and one of the main reasons I bought it was because a number of my musical heroes at the time (Ian McCulloch the lead singer of the Echo and the Bunnymen being the one I seem to remember) kept listing VU songs in their ‘Top 10 Tracks’ in Smash Hits magazine.

Over time I have steadily accumulated a massive collection of VU and VU-related albums (mainly solo LPs of VU band members, most notably Lou Reed, John Cale, and Nico, as well as dozens and dozens of bootleg LPs). As much as I love the recorded solo outputs of Cale and Nico, it is Lou Reed that I have always found the most psychologically fascinating on both a musical and personal level (even though Cale was admittedly the better musician) – and because of his autobiographical lyrics (many of which were collated in his 1992 book Between Thought and Expression). Reed (along with a few other musicians such as John Lennon, Morrissey, David Bowie, Adam Ant, and Gary Numan) is someone I would love to have interviewed, as he was a psychological paradox and appeared to have so many different facets to his personality. During is early career, Reed was a self-confessed drug addict and wrote songs about both heroin (‘I’m Waiting For The Man‘ and admitting in his song ‘Heroin‘ that it was “my wife and it’s my life”) and amphetamines (‘White Light, White Heat‘). I would also argue that in later life he replaced these negative addictions with what Bill Glasser defined as a ‘positive addiction‘ in the form of t’ai chi ch’uan (i.e., tai chi).

In the 1960s and early 1970s, Reed’s lyrics covered topics that shocked many people. His song lyrics recounted life’s misfits and those that lived on the fringes (particularly of the life he had himself experienced in New York and as part of pop artist Andy Warhol’s entourage). His world was one of drug addiction, transvestite drag queens, bisexuality, and sado-masochism. Like many of the best and most literary writers, he wrote about what he knew and had experienced. As Reed himself pointed out many times, the subject matter of his songs were no different from his literary heroes such as Edgar Allen Poe, Hubert Selby Jr., William Burroughs, and Delmore Schwartz. Sex and drugs were common themes in novels and poetry. Reed wondered why listeners and rock critics alike were so horrified by the content of his songs when the same content could be found in books from the 1950s and early 1960s.

Reed was a much feared interviewee by music journalists and often poured vitriol on many rock critics (Lester Bangs and Robert Christgau being the most high profile). Just listen to his 1978 live LP Take No Prisoners that is remembered more for the acerbic monologues in between the songs than for the music. Although I would have loved to interview him, his experiences with psychologists and psychiatrists arguably left him emotionally scarred for life (or at the very least a deep mistrust of therapists). His affluent parents sent him for weekly sessions of electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) as a young teenager to “cure” him of his homosexual desires and urges. It had such a negative impression on him that he documented the experiences on his song ‘Kill Your Sons’ (from his 1974 LP Sally Can’t Dance). As he was quoted as saying in Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain’s 1996 book Please Kill Me:

“They put the thing down your throat so you don’t swallow your tongue, and they put electrodes on your head. That’s what was recommended in Rockland State Hospital to discourage homosexual feelings. The effect is that you lose your memory and become a vegetable”

Up until the ECT session, Reed appeared to have lead a relatively trouble-free childhood (although there were admittedly some juvenile delinquent activities). The ECT sessions may have been the catalyst that far from ‘curing’ him of his sexual urges confused the issue even more. Reed was more explicit in the lyrics to ‘Kill Your Sons’ about the whole experience of ECT and what he thought about it:

“All your two-bit psychiatrists are giving you electro shock/They say, they let you live at home, with mom and dad/Instead of mental hospital/But every time you tried to read a book/You couldn’t get to page 17/’Cause you forgot, where you were/So you couldn’t even read/Don’t you know, they’re gonna kill your sons”.

I have read almost every biography that has ever been published on Reed and there appears to be an almost unconscious pathological need to subvert the traditional rock cycle treadmill of fame and success. There is no doubt that Reed wanted to be respected and remembered for his literary writing – but many of his decisions and actions were self-defeating. In my own field of gambling, the psychologist Edmund Bergler speculated that addicted gamblers have an ‘unconscious desire to lose’ – a form of psychic masochism. If Reed was on Bergler’s couch, he may have come to the same conclusion about Reed.

There are so many points in Reed’s life where he appeared to deliberately sabotage his own career and commit what others have described ‘artistic suicide’. For instance, after David Bowie had befriended him in the early 1970s and produced his first hit LP (Transformer) and biggest hit (‘Walk On The Wild Side’), he fell out with Bowie and recorded what a number of rock critics have described as “the most depressing album of all time” (the 1973 LP Berlin). He then seemed to get his career back on course with his one and only top 10 US album (1974 LP Sally Can’t Dance) only to follow it up with the album consisting of four tracks of guitar feedback each 16 minutes in length (1975 album Metal Machine Music). James Wolcott writing for the Village Voice went as far as to say that  Metal Machine Music “crowned Reed’s reputation as a master of psychopathic insolence”. Although both “career killing” LPs have since been hailed as masterpieces in their own way, both releases provide an argument that Reed was a masochist on some level even if the original pain didn’t become pleasure until 30 years later.

The arguably self-inflicted pain didn’t end with his musical output. Almost every important person he looked up to in his life between 1964 and the early 1990s were cast aside and verbally and/or physically abused by Reed at some point. This included his managers (e.g., Andy Warhol, Steve Sesnick, Dennis Katz), his admirers and benefactors (e.g., David Bowie), his record company senior executives (e.g., Clive Davis), his lovers (e.g., Shelly Albin, Nico, Bettye Kronstad, Sylvia Morales, “Rachel” [Tommy] Humphries), and his musical collaborators (e.g., John Cale, Doug Yule, Robert Quine).

Some people have claimed Reed was almost psychopathic in some of his actions. The criminal psychologist Professor Robert Hare developed the Revised Hare Psychopathy Checklist (PCL-R), a psychological assessment that determines whether someone is a psychopath.

At heart, Hare’s test is simple: a list of 20 criteria, each given a score of 0 (if it doesn’t apply to the person), 1 (if it partially applies) or 2 (if it fully applies). The list in full is: glibness and superficial charm, grandiose sense of self-worth, pathological lying, cunning/manipulative, lack of remorse, emotional shallowness, callousness and lack of empathy, unwillingness to accept responsibility for actions, a tendency to boredom, a parasitic lifestyle, a lack of realistic long-term goals, impulsivity, irresponsibility, lack of behavioural control, behavioural problems in early life, juvenile delinquency, criminal versatility, a history of ‘revocation of conditional release’ (i.e., broken parole), multiple marriages, and promiscuous sexual behaviour. A pure, prototypical psychopath would score 40. A score of 30 or more qualifies for a diagnosis of psychopathy”

Personally, I think there are psychopathic traits in almost any person with a successful career, and Reed (from the many biographies I have read) would certainly endorse some of the indicators in the list above. However, as he (i) became older, (ii) became teetotal and drug-free, (iii) studied Buddhist philosophy (including meditation and tai chi), and (iv) settled down and married performance artist and musician Laurie Anderson, he arguably became happier and produced some of the best music of his career.

The trio of ‘concept’ albums including his ‘warts ‘n’ all’ tribute to his home city (New York, 1989), his moving tribute to Andy Warhol (Songs for Drella, 1990, with John Cale), and his lyrical musings on illness, death and dying (1992, Magic and Loss) were all critically lauded (and among my own personal favourites). Songs for Drella (the VU’s nickname for Andy Warhol – a contraction of the names Cinderella and Dracula) is not just one of Reed’s best albums but it’s one of the best LP’s ever. The fact that the songs were heartfelt and full of remorse for the way Reed had treated Warhol in the latter years of his life, suggest that the characterization of Reed as a psychopath is unfair.

Dr. Mark Griffiths, Professor of Gambling Studies, International Gaming Research Unit, Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham, UK

Further reading

Bockris, V. (1994). Lou Reed: The Biography. London: Hutchinson.

Bockris, V. & Malanga, G. (1995). Up-tight – The Velvet Underground Story.London:Omnibus Press.

Doggett, P. (1991). Lou reed – Growing Up in Public. London: 
Omnibus Press.

Glasser, W. (1976), Positive Addictions. New York, NY: Harper & Row.

Henry, T. (1989), Break All Rules! Punk Rock and the Making of a Style, Ann Arbour MI: UMI Research Press.

Hare, R. D., & Vertommen, H. (2003). The Hare Psychopathy Checklist-Revised. Multi-Health Systems, Incorporated.

Heylin, C. (2005). All Yesterday’s Parties – The Velvet Underground In Print 1966-1971. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press.

Hogan, P. (2007). The Rough Guide To The Velvet Underground. London: Penguin.

Jovanovich, R. (2010). The Velvet Underground – Peeled. Aurum Press.

Kostek, M.C. (1992). The Velvet Underground Handbook
. London: 
Black Spring Press.

McNeil, Legs; McCain, G. (1996). Please Kill Me: The Uncensored Oral History of Punk. London: Grove Press.

Muggleton, D. & Weinzierl, R. (2003). The Post-subcultures Reader. Oxford: Berg.

Reed, L. (1992). Between Thought and Expression. 
London: Penguin Books.

Wall, M. (2013). Lou Reed: The Life. Croydon: Orion Books.