But that certainly wasn't the only challenge to its commercial prospects the group's ensuing albums met an even more dismal commercial fate, and a disillusioned Reed left the band in August, 1970. This was due partially to a legally induced (more on that shortly) factory recall that removed the album from shelves just as its Warhol-driven publicity was peaking. Still, it was initially considered a commercial failure, selling approximately 60,000 copies in its first two years - not bad, but no More of The Monkees.

(who covered three songs from the album in their early days) and alt-rock titan Beck (who covered the entire album with some friends in 2009). Ensuing generations of The Velvet Underground and Nico's spiritual progeny have included punk pioneer Patti Smith (who covered at least two Velvets songs in her early days), R.E.M. Upon his rise to fame five years later, Bowie paid back his vast Velvets influence by producing Reed's Transformer that album's single, 'Walk on the Wild Side,' jump-started the grumpy bard's solo career and remains his biggest-ever hit. Pitt returned to London with a test pressing of TheVelvet Underground and Nico that his young charge promptly appropriated in every sense of the word. Among the first was a young David Bowie, whose early manager Ken Pitt had art-world connections and met with Warhol and Reed at the former's famous studio The Factory during a November 1966 trip to New York. It has spawned multiple generations of obsessives and influencees.

It's the first album to truly combine a novelist's gritty realism with equally confrontational rock music, yet it's also a fount of soft, vulnerable songs like 'Femme Fatale' and 'I'll Be Your Mirror' - songs that are all the more poignant because you can sense, somehow, that the sensitive soul who wrote them is also kind of an asshole.Ī detail of Satlof's collection of Velvet Underground records and ephemera. 13 on Rolling Stone's 2012 '500 Greatest Albums of All Time' tally. But the world eventually caught up with it, and for the past 30 years it's had perennial placement on best-ever lists, including No. 171 on Billboard's albums chart in December 1967. With a near-peerless collection of songs - nearly all written by frontman Lou Reed - and an iconic, banana-sticker cover designed by band benefactor Andy Warhol, this jarring and innovative collection was initially a cult success at best, with no hit singles and a 'peak' of No. The Velvet Underground and Nico, released 50 years ago tomorrow (there is actually some disagreement on the exact date), is the definitive way-ahead-of-its-time album. This was Mark's first collected record, and it features a signature from Lou Reed. Fricke calls it “a stunning turnaround… 10 tracks of mostly warm, explicit sympathy and optimism, expressed with melodic clarity, set in gleaming double-guitar jangle and near-whispered balladry.” This releases comes as part of the celebrations for the 45th anniversary and follows on from the Super Deluxe CD release in 2014.A record from Mark Satlof's collection of Velvet Underground records and ephemera.

The record was also a stylistic leap, as Lou Reed described to Rolling Stone editor David Fricke, “I thought we had to demonstrate the other side of us”. Gone was co-founding member John Cale, and in his place was a 21-year-old with Long Island roots named Doug Yule, who stepped right in. The Velvet Underground’s classic self-titled third album, originally released in March 1969, by MGM, was a departure from the band’s first two albums in more ways than one. The Velvet Underground Self Titled Limited Vinyl LP

The velvet underground vinyl