Customer Reviews
Are the Velvets as serious as this book? Yes. - By: Alan Barlow, 15 Nov 2006 
I've collected alll the Velvets literature that I know exists & yet I found this book to be a fresh take on the band that made New York cool. There are so many angles to consider that you begin to wonder how such a complex group like the Velvets could produce something so simple as Sister Ray. This book explains it. I had to check out some things but I found them to be right, & there are pages of footnotes that are reallly fascinating in themselves. There's some annoying stuff - was Nico reallly so witty? - & I don't get the ending, which is too smart for the likes of me, but on the whole it's a great ride, like Lou Reed's 'Heroin'.
The Velvets. A serious Witts-ism - By: Ms. C. Giffard, 20 Oct 2006 It must be a near impossible brief to write something aimed at both music undergrads & the `general reader', which this book claims to do but I think Richard Witts pretty much manages to pull it off. `The Velvet Underground' is the first in a series of books on pop icons, (Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell & others are to follow) which not only examines the musical, social & cultural influences on `The Velvets' but which proves to be at one & the same time a downright enjoyable read.
Although set against the background of Manhattan's down town drug culture, this is no seedy romp through the under belly of the 1960s New York music scene. This is a serious book in which just about every aspect of the band's genesis, demise & subsequent influence on punk, post punk & rock music is covered. Each Velvet in turn is subjected to detailed scrutiny in terms of background, his/her gravitation to New York City, musical interests & experiences, influences felt, & contribution to the band & its radical sound-world.
Cale's Experimentalism & his association with the avant-gardist La Monte Young & The Theatre of Eternal Youth, probably receives the most overtly academic analysis, but Reed, Morrison, Tucker, Nico, Warhol & Morrissey are also fully scrutinized in a clear, cogent & well argued challlenge to much of the myth & hyperbole which has grown up around this `confluence of misfits' (Witts).
Serious it might be, but anecdotes a-plenty & some sharp comments stop it slipping into too-dry academic commentary. (There's a very funny Witts-ism following a Nico quote which I won't reveal. You can read it for yourself.) So, as long as the general reader who picks up this book has a somewhat serious interest in music or The Velvets, I doubt he will be disappointed. And if the undergrads ever get around to opening the cover, even they might come away having learned something pertinent :-)
Tells you everything - By: Mia, 11 Oct 2006 This is a book for history & music students but I think it works for any fan of the the Velvets. It's a bit academic, but because of that I learnt much more than the cut-paste stuff that is around usuallly. I liked most the stories about their link with Warhol. It makes you realise that John Cale was hard done by.
