Few albums have left as deep a shadow across the landscape of modern music.
At the time, the album barely registered: sales were poor, reviews were indifferent or hostile, and radio play was virtually non-existent. Yet over half a century later, the record is frequently cited not just as a cult classic, but as perhaps the most influential album of all time. Its blend of avant-garde experimentation, raw storytelling, and fragile beauty lit a path that countless genres and artists would later follow.
Jagged, hypnotic, dangerous
The Velvet Underground emerged in mid-1960s New York, an unlikely fusion of street poetry and avant-garde experimentation. At its core were Lou Reed, a Brooklyn-born songwriter whose lyrics tackled drugs, sex, and urban grit with fearless candour; and John Cale, a classically trained Welsh violist steeped in minimalism from his work with the avant-garde composer La Monte Young. Together, Reed and Cale imagined a new kind of rock: simultaneously raw and experimental, confrontational yet strangely beautiful.
They were joined by Sterling Morrison, a guitarist whose steady, understated style anchored Reed’s angular riffs, and Maureen ‘Moe’ Tucker, a drummer who upended convention with her minimalist, tom-heavy beats played standing up. The result was a band that sounded unlike any other: jagged, hypnotic, dangerous.
Enter Warhol
The Velvets acquired, early on, a patron whose impact cannot be overstated. Andy Warhol was the era’s reigning pop-art provocateur. At his Factory studio – a creative hive of artists, filmmakers, and outsiders – Warhol offered not just rehearsal space but also legitimacy, connections and, crucially, the sense that their transgressive art belonged at the centre of cultural discourse. He put his name on the album as producer (though he contributed little musically) and, most importantly, added a striking new element: Nico.
A German model and actress with ties to Warhol’s circle, Nico was statuesque, enigmatic, and possessed a voice often described as “carved from marble” – cold, haunting, and utterly distinctive. Reed was initially resistant to her inclusion, but her detached delivery on tracks like ‘Femme Fatale’ and ‘All Tomorrow’s Parties’ gave the band a contrasting texture: Reed’s urban grit against Nico’s glacial elegance.
Finally, Warhol’s banana cover – peelable on early pressings – cemented the album’s legend. Released in 1967, The Velvet Underground & Nico was unlike anything else of its time: abrasive, fragile, and deeply subversive.
Velvet Underground & Nico: three key tracks
'Heroin'
One of the most harrowing songs in rock: its droning two-chord structure rises and crashes like a drug rush, while Reed narrates with disarming frankness. Both devastating and oddly transcendent, ‘Heroin’ broke open the limits of what popular song could express – and the depths it could plumb.
‘Sunday Morning’
Deceptively pretty, with celesta and hushed vocals, ‘Sunday Morning’ came into being late on in the Factory sessions, with Warhol urging for something more ‘commercial’. Its lullaby glow hides an undertone of paranoia and melancholy.
‘All Tomorrow’s Parties’
Nico’s sonorous voice transforms a tale of downtown New York’s desperate glamour into a gothic incantation. Cale’s pounding piano and the relentless drone behind her capture Warhol’s Factory scene in sound.
So many beginnings
It’s almost impossible to overstate how many musical directions trace back to The Velvet Underground & Nico. These music genres can all look back to the ‘Banana’ album as their Year Zero.
Psychedelia
While contemporaries like Jefferson Airplane or The Byrds explored cosmic harmonies, the Velvets offered a darker psychedelia rooted in urban grit. Songs like ‘Venus in Furs’ and ‘Heroin’ made altered states sound less like utopia and more like confrontation. That dark escapism influenced a welter of bands including Galaxie 500 and The Jesus & Mary Chain.
Folk
Folk, too, was reshaped by Reed’s literate, confessional lyrics and the band's jittery folk rock, hypnortic grooves and softly spoken vocals. The Feelies, The Modern Lovers, Yo La Tengo and the Cowboy Junkies all owe something to the Banana Album sound.
Singer-songwriters
Reed’s mix of poetry and street reportage offered a model for countless writers. Without him, it’s hard to imagine the confessional honesty of artists from Leonard Cohen via Patti Smith to Elliott Smith.
Krautrock and minimalism
Cale’s drone experiments with La Monte Young fed directly into the Velvet sound. German musicians like Can and Neu! picked up on those long, motoric rhythms and hypnotic repetitions, creating krautrock’s distinctive pulse. Minimalist composers like Philip Glass and Steve Reich also acknowledged the Velvets’ role in breaking down the barrier between ‘serious’ experimental music and rock.
Indie rock
Perhaps the Velvets’ clearest legacy lies in indie rock. Their scratchy guitars, lo-fi ethos, and uncommercial stance laid the blueprint for generations of underground bands. R.E.M., Sonic Youth, The Jesus and Mary Chain, and later acts like The Strokes and The National all drink deeply from this well.
Punk
With John Cale producing their debut, Iggy Pop’s Stooges took the Velvets’ droning menace and turned it into pure aggression. In tandem, Reed’s sneering delivery and the repetitive structures of songs like ‘I’m Waiting for the Man’ became embedded in the DNA of punk. Johnny Rotten’s Sex Pistols, Richard Hell, and countless others would later carry it forward.
A long legacy
Brian Eno’s famous quip is repeated endlessly because it rings so true: The Velvet Underground & Nico may have sold poorly on release, but ‘everyone who bought one started a band’. Its influence was not in mass popularity but in the creative seeds it sowed in those who heard it.
Critics who once dismissed the Velvets’ debut have since come to revere it. Rolling Stone magazine ranks it among the greatest albums of all time; musicians from U2 to St. Vincent cite it as foundational. The album’s stark honesty about taboo subjects broke ground for music that was willing to confront life unvarnished, while its willingness to embrace noise, drones, and avant-garde structures legitimised experimentation in rock.
Half a century on, the album still feels modern – raw, uncompromising, beautiful, and unsettling. It is music that refuses to age into nostalgia, continuing to provoke and inspire.
Six albums born from The Velvet Underground & Nico
1. Roxy Music – Roxy Music (1972)
Roxy Music’s extraordinary debut blends art-school experimentation with pop sheen, echoing The Velvet Underground & Nico’s fusion of avant-garde textures and rock immediacy. Brian Eno’s sonic treatments mirror John Cale’s experimentalism, while Bryan Ferry’s cool detachment recalls Lou Reed’s urbane storytelling.
2. David Bowie – The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (1972)
Bowie gave us glam rock’s defining statement, full of Reed-inspired characters and grit – and addressing the Velvets’ three key themes of drug use, sexual orientation, and societal critique.
3. Patti Smith – Horses (1975)
Horses channels The Velvet Underground & Nico’s raw spirit, fusing poetry with primal rock. Her stark delivery and minimalist backing echo Lou Reed’s streetwise lyricism and the Velvets’ stripped, confrontational aesthetic.
4. Joy Division – Unknown Pleasures (1979)
Stark, minimalist instrumentation; haunting vocals; cold, urban tension: Joy Division adapted the Velvets’ blueprint for post-punk’s brooding, atmospheric soundworld.
5. Sonic Youth – Daydream Nation (1988)
Of all the indie bands, Sonic Youth most lovingly carried forth the Velvets’ experimental spirit, combining dissonant guitars, feedback, and unconventional song structures into a sprawling, artful noise-rock masterpiece.
6. Galaxie 500 – On Fire (1989)
The seminal indie rockers’ second (and defining) album channels the dreamy minimalism of Reed and co., blending languid guitars and hushed vocals to create introspective, hypnotic indie rock.
When Lou Reed sang ‘I’m waiting for my man’ in 1967, he wasn’t just sketching a street transaction; he was rewriting the possibilities of rock. With John Cale’s drones, Sterling Morrison’s guitars, Moe Tucker’s primal drumming, Nico’s haunted presence, and Andy Warhol’s patronage, The Velvet Underground & Nico became a record not of its moment but ahead of it.
In retrospect, no other single album seems to have opened so many doors. If influence is measured not by sales but by echoes through time, then this might indeed be the most influential album of all.
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