Stellar pick Betty, I do like the Velvet Underground!
I've been bricking it all day waiting to make that pick. Pretty sure I'd have cried if I missed out
They're such an important band in my life. There are other bands I probably listen to more now, but none that I feel so deeply connected to. Plus, a nice little bonus is that they influenced almost everyone from 70's punk to 80's indie and 90's alternative rock, so they can fit with most bands.
I know for most others it was Bowie dying that totally blew them away, but for me it was Lou Reed back in 2014. I'd been brought up on everything the Velvets, Nico, John Cale and Lou from the moment I became conscious of music and probably long before. From car journeys across the French countryside soundtracked by Sweet Jane, Walk on the Wild Side and Heroin, to being an outsider kid at school listening to Berlin on my walkman at lunch break, and then finally seeing Lou Reed live in a Roman amphitheatre in France back in 2007 with my whole family beside me. And he was fucking amazing too. Great memories.
I'll do a bit more of a write up on them in the final vote, but for me there are few bands who have come along with a sound so contrary to music of the time. With songs about death, sex, drugs, and bondage way before it was remotely acceptable. Lou Reed sums it nicely here - “I just keeping thinking that when The Velvet Underground first came out with songs like ‘Heroin’, we were so savaged for it... here it is a few decades later, and I have those lyrics published in a book, and I’m giving readings at art museums. We wanted to make records that would stick around like great novels or movies, and we believed in what we were doing, even if nobody else did.”
