Harrison said the tapes likely just remained boxed up somewhere in New York all through the 1970s and beyond the death, in 1987, of Warhol, whose hundreds of cardboard-carton “time capsules” full of ephemera attest to his refusal to ever throw anything away. Documentation in the museum’s possession indicates the two reels were shipped to Warhol himself in 1969, some two years after he and the band had severed ties. But seemingly - at the time - no one did. Surely, someone must have realized their importance. “These are how the songs were transforming and being arranged at the Factory and how Warhol was hearing them at the Factory.” “These are without outside influence,” he said. ![]() For decades, critics have ranked it as one of the greatest rock albums ever.Īs Harrison put it, they document the band’s seminal artistic vision. 171 on the Billboard album charts, it proved a seminal influence on a generation of rockers from early acolyte David Bowie to the punk bands of a decade later, goth music, and beyond. Though “Velvet Underground & Nico” drew mixed contemporaneous reviews and reached only No. The remaining six songs were remixed to varying degrees. Three of those nine - “Heroin,” “Waiting for The Man,” and “Venus in Furs” - were later rerecorded in Los Angeles, with famed producer Tom Wilson, while two additional songs were added: “Sunday Morning,” recorded in November 1966, in New York, and “There She Goes Again” (which Harrison said also might have been recorded at Scepter, though it was left off the final tape). (The new Warhol exhibit includes 100 wall-mounted copies of the LP on loan from Velvet Underground fan Mark Satlof.)Īt the Scepter sessions, the band recorded nine of the 11 songs that would appear on “The Velvet Underground & Nico,” which, due to various holdups, was not released by Verve Records until March 1967. Warhol also designed the debut album’s cover, with its famous “peel slowly and see” banana design. Those songs were counterbalanced by quieter, more melodic - but still unsettling tunes -like “All Tomorrow’s Parties.” That mostly meant his celebrity gave them license to realize their raucously avant-garde artistic vision, which featured Reed’s edgy lyrics about sadomasochism and shooting heroin, and an often-confrontational musical style incorporating drones, dissonance, and pounding rhythms. Warhol also served as producer on their early recordings. He landed them a recording contract and insisted on adding the husky-voiced Nico to the boundary-pushing quartet of Lou Reed, John Cale, Sterling Morrison and Mo Tucker. He met the band in December 1965 and became their manager for more than a year. Warhol’s role in the Velvets’ career is well documented. The master mixed-down tapes from the Scepter sessions. The Andy Warhol Museum, Pittsburgh Contribution The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, Inc. “To me, it’s they haven’t had access to the quality that we have.” “It’s not that folks haven’t had access to these,” said Harrison. ![]() That makes the rediscovered Scepter tapes the earliest-generation document of the band’s earliest studio time as a unit. However, that and all other known versions originated with an acetate pressing made from the mixed-down ¼-inch reel-to-reel mono tapes in the Warhol’s possession, said Ben Harrison, the museum’s senior director of performing arts and programming. Material from the Scepter sessions has circulated widely for years, including its release in 2012 as part of a Velvet Underground boxed set. The show, including continuous in-gallery music, rare film footage and vintage photos, opened Friday and runs through Sept. Now, the long-lost tapes from those days are the basis for “The Velvet Underground & Nico: Scepter Studio Sessions,” a new exhibit at The Andy Warhol Museum that’s itself the product of a winding archival journey. But the songs they recorded there formed the basis for one of the most influential albums in rock history. But for the time being, the Velvet Underground & Nico were Warhol’s music project - the house band at his Factory studio and the sonic centerpiece of the multimedia spectacles soon to be dubbed the Exploding Plastic Inevitable.Īfter their four days at Scepter, the Velvets weren’t any better known. They were there thanks to Andy Warhol, by then a world-famous artist who had recently announced his retirement from painting to focus on filmmaking. In April 1966, the four members of an unknown rock band called The Velvet Underground and a little-known singer and actress named Nico walked into New York’s Scepter Studio.
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