33-1/3 Book Series – The Velvet Underground & Nico by Joe Harvard

While I have generally enjoyed this series, it sometimes irks me a bit that some of the books, like this one, are written by people who learned of the album long after it came out. I realize that even I was a bit of a late-comer, having been turned on to this by fellow Gizmo Kenne Highland in the early 70’s, but Harvard claims that he did not own any of the Velvets albums until 1989! Without hearing this in the pre-punk days, it is hard to comprehend just how bizarre this sounded to the average rock’n’roll listener. While Harvard understands that this contains some avant-garde material, it doesn’t seem as if he gets just how far from the mainstream this was, even in its quieter moments.

In any case, the book is fairly well researched, with interview quotes from all parties involved and even personal interviews with those who were there at the time and were fans, such as Jonathan Richman. Harvard does seem to take some off-hand lines too seriously (Reed saying something to the effect that it took three hours to record the album, which obviously was a smart-ass exaggeration) but does try hard to determine what really happened and who was really involved.

He gives a pretty good run-down of the songs, with personal anecdotes from band members and engineers/producers. Oddly, he doesn’t mention the blatant “Hitch Hike” (Marvin Gaye) steal in “There She Goes Again”, showing their homage to commercial r’n’r, but maybe that’s because he admits that it is his least favorite song on the album.

Joe also tends to talk about himself a bit more than I cared for – a bit of a narcissistic experiment for him – but does give a lot of information. Overall, though, it is a pretty good tale of this truly classic album.