All Yesterdays' Parties:
The Velvet Underground in Print 1966-1971
Edited by Clinton Heylin
Da Capo Press
Review by David Chiu
Much has been written about the storied
career of the Velvet Underground long after that influential
New York group disbanded in the early '70s. Since then, not a
year passes by without a story about VU appearing in a British
music magazine or in the form of another band biography. However
this latest book edited by Clinton Heylin marvelously collects
articles and other published writings (album reviews, news items,
interviews) during VU's brief existence. Drawing from such sources
as Rolling Stone, Crawdaddy, the New York Times, Circus, and
Creem, the book paints a career spanning overview of the group.
It's interesting in the earlier articles how the Velvets status
was secondary compared to the notoriety of their patron Andy
Warhol. Setting the stage for the band's taste for the unconventional
is a New York Times article from 1966 describing their
performance at the annual dinner of the New York Society for
Clinical Psychiatry. Safe to say, most of the people in attendance
had left the dinner unnerved by the glorious noise. It is remarkable
that a band who had not sold many records during its career can
warrant a considerable amount of press and praise; these writers
had already uncannily foreseen the genius of singer/songwriter
Lou Reed, and the talents of violist John Cale, drummer Maureen
Tucker, and guitarist Sterling Morrison.
There are also a couple of insightful articles
of the Velvets' legendary residency at Max's Kansas City in 1970,
which would prove to be Reed's final hurrah with the band. Readers
should definitely check out Lester Bangs' obituary of the band
entitled Dead Lie the Velvets, Underground. There is one particular
great passage in the article in which Bangs describe the back
cover of the Loaded album, which merely affirms Reed's
departure signaling the group's death: "An almost-empty
recording studio, but who is that lone cat sitting over there
at the piano. Some tireless genius so dedicated he stays on to
work it on out even after everybody else had packed up and gone
home? Is it Leon Russell? Elton John? No, no-it's-why it's jolly
old [bassist] Doug Yule, I do believe! Gee Doug, I sure never
knew you were bustin' your ass like that!"
To his credit, the editor does not include
any later articles written about the band; these collected writings
serve as a time capsule of an era that can never be recreated.
The only entry in this anthology that is modern is Patti Smith's
speech when the Velvets were inducted into the Rock and Roll
Hall of Fame in 1996. A VU fan can read all the praises and tributes
he or she wants in today's print and web publications but to
really understand what people thought of the Velvets back then,
All Yesterday's Parties is the reference source.
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