John Cale
THE STOOGES
During the psychedelic haze of the late '60s, the grimy, noisy and relentlessly bleak rock & roll of The Stooges was conspicuously out of time. Like the Velvet Underground, The Stooges revealed the underside of sex, drugs, and rock & roll, showing all of the grime beneath the myth. The Stooges, however, weren't nearly as cerebral as The Velvets. Taking their cue from the over-amplified pounding of British blues, the primal raunch of American garage rock, and the psychedelic rock (as well as the audience-baiting) of The Doors, The Stooges were raw, immediate, and vulgar. Iggy Pop became notorious for performing smeared in blood or peanut butter and diving into the audience. Ron and Scott Asheton formed a ridiculously primitive rhythm section, pounding out chords with no finesse, in essence, The Stooges were the first rock & roll band completely stripped of the swinging beat that epitomized R&B and early rock & roll. During the late '60s and early '70s, the group was an underground sensation, yet the band was too weird, too dangerous to break into the mainstream. Following three albums, The Stooges disbanded, but the group's legacy grew over the next two decades, as legions of underground bands used their sludgy grind as a foundation for a variety of indie rock styles, and as Iggy Pop became a pop culture icon.
After playing in several local bands in Ann Arbor, MI, including the blues band The Prime Movers and The Iguanas, Iggy Pop (born James Osterberg) formed The Stooges in 1967 after witnessing a Doors concert in Chicago. Adopting the name Iggy Stooge, he rounded up brothers Ron and Scott Asheton (guitar and drums, respectively) and bassist Dave Alexander, and the group debuted at a Halloween concert at the University of Michigan student union in 1967. For the next year, the group played the Midwest relentlessly, earning a reputation for their wild, primitive performances, which were largely reviled. In particular, Iggy gained attention for his bizarre on-stage behavior. Performing shirtless, he would smear steaks and peanut butter on his body, cut himself with glass, and dive into the audience. The Stooges were infamous, not famous, while they had a rabidly devoted core audience, even more people detested their shock tactics. Nevertheless, the group lucked into a major-label record contract in 1968 when an Elektra talent scout went to Detroit to see the MC5 and wound up signing their opening act, The Stooges, as well.
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Produced by John Cale, The Stooges' primitive eponymous debut was released in 1969, and while it generated some attention in the underground press, it barely sold any copies. As the band prepared to record their second album, every member sank deeper into substance abuse, and their excess eventually surfaced in their concerts, not only through Iggy's antics, but also in the fact that the band could barely keep a simple, two-chord riff afloat. Fun House, an atonal barrage of avant-noise, appeared in 1970 and, if it was even noticed, it earned generally negative reviews and sold even fewer copies than the debut. Following the release of Fun House, The Stooges essentially disintegrated, as Iggy sank into heroin addiction. At first, he did try to keep The Stooges afloat. Dave Alexander left the band and after a spell in which Zeke Zettner and then James Recca took his place, Ron Asheton moved to bass as James Williamson joined as guitarist, but this incarnation wasn't able to land a record deal, despite recording a handful of demos. For the next two years, the band was in limbo as Iggy weaned himself off heroin and worked various odd jobs. Early in 1972, Pop happened to run into David Bowie, then at the height of his Ziggy Stardust popularity. Bowie made it his mission to resuscitate Iggy & the Stooges, as the band was now billed. With Bowie's help, The Stooges landed a management deal and a contract with Columbia, and he took control of the production of the group's third album, Raw Power. Released in 1973 to surprisingly strong reviews, Raw Power had a weird, thin mix due to various technical problems. Although this would be the cause of much controversy later on, many purists blamed Bowie for the brittle mix, its razor-thin sound helped kick-start the punk revolution. At the time, however, Raw Power flopped, essentially bringing The Stooges' career to a halt, with the band's disastrous final gig captured on the live album Metallic K.O.
In 1976, Bowie once again came to Iggy's rescue, helping him establish himself as a solo act by producing the albums The Idiot and Lust for Life and playing keyboards in Iggy's road band. In time, Iggy established an international following as one of rock's great renegades, but the other Stooges didn't fare quite as well. Dave Alexander died of pneumonia in 1975, aggravated by an inflamed pancreas. James Williamson returned to Iggy's circle as a songwriter and producer on the albums New Values (1979) and Soldier (1980), but in the 1980s he dropped out of music and began a successful career in electronics. Ron Asheton and Scott Asheton launched a band called the New Order (no relation to the successful British group), but it didn't fare well and soon split up. In 1981, Ron Asheton was recruited to join New Race, a short-lived side project formed by Radio Birdman guitarist Deniz Tek which also featured MC5 drummer Dennis Thompson and Radio Birdman alumni Rob Younger and Warwick Gilbert. However, the group (as intended) split after a single Australian tour and album. After returning to Michigan, Ron gigged periodically with Destroy All Monsters and Dark Carnival, acted in a handful of low-budget films, and in 1998 he recorded with the ad hoc band Wylde Ratttz, featuring Thurston Moore and Steve Shelley of Sonic Youth, Mark Arm from Mudhoney, and Mike Watt, ex-Minutemen and fIREHOSE. Wylde Ratttz's cover of "TV Eye" appeared on the soundtrack of the film Velvet Goldmine, but the group's album remains unreleased. Following The Stooges breakup, Scott Asheton played with a few local groups in Detroit before joining Sonic's Rendezvous Band in 1974, with Fred "Sonic" Smith of the MC5, Scott Morgan of The Rationals, and Gary Rasmussen of The Up; the band earned a potent reputation as a live act, but record labels were wary and the group slowly faded out by the end of the decade.
In 2002, Ron Asheton and Scott Asheton joined J Mascis + the Fog for a tour in which they performed a handful of Stooges classics from the group's first two albums. The show's were enthusiastically received, especially in Europe, and word got back to Iggy Pop, who had been talking with Ron Asheton on and off for several years about a possible Stooges reunion. In 2003, Iggy was recording the album Skull Ring, which featured contributions from a number of noteworthy bands, and he decided to add The Stooges to the roster; the Asheton brothers backed Iggy on four cuts (with Ron handling both guitar and bass), and on April 27, 2003, The Stooges played their first concert in 30 years at California's Coachella festival, with Mike Watt sitting in for the late Dave Alexander. The reunited Stooges began hitting the road on a semi-regular basis for the next three years, playing major festivals in Europe and the United States, and in the fall of 2006 the group entered Electrical Audio Studio in Chicago, IL, with engineer Steve Albini to record The Weirdness, an album culled from 22 new songs written by Pop and the Ashetons. The Weirdness was released in March 2007, followed by a major world tour.
Albums:
Source: artistdirect.com
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Lou Reed
Solo artist and singer/songwriter for The Velvet Underground, Lou Reed has survived electro-shock therapy, scathing critics, a false death report and numerous hit and miss album releases to become one of the most influential artists in the 20th century.
His career has spanned over five decades, raised taboo subjects such as homosexuality and drug abuse and pioneered distorted guitar and feedback effects. Present day labels him as the “Godfather of Punk”, photographer, recording studio collaborator and even an animated cartoon character voice.
Reed met his first of many partners in music, John Cale, while working as a staff songwriter at Pickwick Records in New York. Reed attracted attention with his off-the-wall lyrics and non-standard guitar tunings.
In 1965, Cale and Reed formed The Velvet Underground, with some managerial help from famous artist, Andy Warhol. The band went on to produce and record albums that although weren’t acclaimed in their day went on to influence the forthcoming glam rock and post-punk bands of the 70s, 80s and 90s.
Once The Velvet Underground was signed to an Atlantic Records’ label, Reed was asked to tone down his song subjects in order to reach a more mainstream audience. Shortly after, Reed quit the band in 1970.
By 1972, he had embarked on a solo career, despite the criticism, and had his first (and only) Top 20 hit with Walk on the Wild Side.
One of his more infamous works was in the form of Metal Machine Music which was a double LP of just recorded, non-sensical feedback loops. The jury is still out on the reason for this album – a record company quota responsibility, a joke or an avant-garde musical expression?
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Reed joined The Velvet Underground to support a European reunion tour and a collection of original work re-released as a five-CD box set called Peel Slowly and See. In 1996, The Velvet Underground was inducted into the Rock 'n' Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio. Reed performed with former band members Cale and Maureen Tucker at the induction ceremony.
As a solo artist, Reed has been nominated twice by the Hall of Fame. As a member of The Velvet Underground, Reed was responsible for bucking the trend over the happy hippies. As a solo artist, he continues to raise eyebrows, experiment with fashion and musical styles and is widely-regarded as an elder statesman of rock.
Juanita Appleby
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THE VELVET UNDERGROUND
The influence of the Velvet Underground on rock greatly exceeds their sales figures and chart numbers. They are one of the most important rock and roll bands of all time, laying the groundwork in the Sixties for many tangents rock music would take in ensuing decades. Yet just two of their four original studio albums ever even made Billboard’s Top 200, and that pair – The Velvet Underground and Nico (#171) and White Light/White Heat (#199) – only barely did so. If ever a band was “ahead of its time,” it was the Velvet Underground. Brian Eno, cofounder of Roxy Music and producer of U2 and others, put it best when he said that although the Velvet Underground didn’t sell many albums, everyone who bought one went on to form a band. The New York Dolls, Patti Smith, the Sex Pistols, Talking Heads, U2, R.E.M., Roxy Music and Sonic Youth have all cited the Velvet Underground as a major influence.
The Velvets’ addressed such taboo subjects as sexual deviancy (“Venus in Furs”), drug addiction (“Heroin,” “White Light/White Heat”), paranoia (“Sunday Morning”) and the urban demimonde (“All Tomorrow’s Parties”). In so doing, they brought rock and roll into theretofore unexplored experiential realms with a literary and unabashedly adult voice. Musically, the group ranged from droning, avant-garde improvisations (“Sister Ray”) to songs built upon time-tested rock and R&B foundations (“I’m Waiting for the Man”). The Velvet Underground managed to be both arty and earthy, reflecting the duality within the college-educated but streetwise Lou Reed, who wrote most of the material.
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The group—vocalist/guitarist Reed, keyboardist and viola player John Cale, guitarist Sterling Morrison, and drummer Maureen “Moe” Tucker - played their first show together in 1965. The following year they were taken under the wing of artist Andy Warhol, who saw them perform at Cafe Bizarre in Greenwich Village. The Velvets soon became the house band at Warhol’s studio, the Factory, and the centerpiece of his multimedia extravaganza, the “Exploding Plastic Inevitable.” Their debut album, The Velvet Underground and Nico, featured a classic Warhol-designed pop-art jacket that depicted a big yellow banana. Inside were 11 songs that radically revised the rock and roll sensibility - especially two songs about drug addiction, one despondent and sobering (“Heroin”) and another a ribald slice of Harlem street life (“I’m Waiting for the Man”). Several songs, notably “Femme Fatale” and “All Tomorrow’s Parties,” featured the heavily accented vocals of cool German chanteuse Nico.
The Velvet Underground’s second album, White Light/White Heat was more sonically radical. Filled with leakage and distortion, its chaotic centerpiece was the 17-minute “Sister Ray.” The group’s self-titled third album was, by comparison, quiet and introspective, defined more by cautious optimism (“Beginning to See the Light”) and soul-searching (“Jesus”). By then, John Cale had left at the insistence of Reed, with whom he clashed, and was replaced by Doug Yule. Between the releases of The Velvet Underground and Loaded – officially, their fourth album – the group recorded enough unreleased material to fill two albums. Indeed, two albums of archival unearthings from 1969 were issued in the mid-Eighties as VU and Another View.
When Loaded appeared in late 1970, only Reed and Morrison remained from the original lineup. The group had switched record labels, from MGM/Verve to Atlantic/Cotillion, and adapted a more pop-oriented approach. Loaded contained some of Lou Reed’s most accessible compositions, many of them sung by the pop-voiced Doug Yule. Yet though Reed felt the album was “loaded” with hits, it was their second in a row not to chart at all. That seems inconceivable today, given its high quality and enduring influence. The album’s ten tracks were hooky and melodic, yet informed by Reed’s literary intellect, and two of them – “Sweet Jane” and “Rock and Roll” – have become acknowledged classics. Of Loaded’s anthem to the power of popular music, Reed explained, “’Rock and Roll’ is about me. If I hadn’t heard rock and roll on the radio, I would have had no idea there was life on this planet.”
Prior to the release of Loaded, Reed left the Velvet Underground to embark on a solo career. And though a Yule-led Velvet Underground briefly kept the name alive, that was essentially the end of the story: four brilliant albums that formed a blueprint for the next three decades of rock and roll. The founding members reunited in 1993 for a brief European tour; it had been 25 years since they’d shared a stage. A double-disc documentary, Live MCMXCIII, appeared later that year. There was talk of a new studio album, but the reunion turned out to be short-lived. A new wave of interest in the Velvet Underground was stirred by the 1995 release of Peel Slowly & See, a five-CD box set that included their first four albums and numerous rarities. At their 1996 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the Velvet Underground sang a new song, “Last Night I Said Goodbye to My Friend,” a tribute to guitarist Sterling Morrison, who’d died of cancer the previous year.
Members included John Cale (born December 5,1940, in Crynant, Wales; bass, viola, guitar, and vocals; left group in 1967, was replaced on base by Doug Yule, 1968), Sterling Morrison (born Holmes Sterling Morrison, Jr., August 29, 1942, in East Meadow, NY; guitar and vocals), Nico (born Christa Paffgen, [most sources say] March 15, 1943, in Budapest, Hungary [one source says Cologne, Germany]; left group in 1966; died in 1988; vocals), Lou Reed (born Louis Firbank, March 2, 1942 [one source says 1944], in Freeport, NY [one sources says Brooklyn, NY]; vocals, guitar, and piano; left group in 1970), and Moe Tucker (born Maureen Tucker, c. 1945, in New Jersey; drums and vocals).
Albums:
Source: Simon Glickman
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