DOUG YULE's account of the final years of the Velvets
(From his essay included in the recent box set of
live recordings)
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Everyone's heard the story: the way that Lou left the Velvets, how the group was taken over my Lou's evil Twin, Doug; how Doug was manipulated by Steve Sesnick, the evil manager; all the comments and all the opinions. all offered as history and fact but in truth closer to myth than anything else. What's missing from the group's biography is the immediacy of the events as they unfolded and the context in which they occurred.
Since the resurgence in interest in the Velvets began twenty years ago, the group and the events surrounding it have always been viewed through the filter of elapsed time, like a lens that shows the scene in the context of events that have not yet occurred.
In 1967, when I first met the Velvets, rock a roll was king. It was the be-all and the end-all of the popular culture, the voice of the young generation, the shape of things to come. Bob Dylan, arguably the leading voice of dissent in the sixties, was going electric. Revolution was rock and roll was revolution. We laughed at the bands that played nice and pretty. It was called bubble gum music. The band mentality, the protocol of rock, was the Roberts Rules of the sixties and Seventies. Bands were, and occasionally are today, one of the few truly democratic institutions. You can't fire someone from a band. You can fire a back-up musician and call the union for another one. You can fire a session musician and order up another one. But in a band, everyone's equal. If they're not, it's not a band. When bands need to change, to lose one or two people, they break apart and reform. The majority keeps the name. It's the way it worked from my first band to the last, which is breaking up and reforming as I write this.
When the Velvets broke apart and came back together without John, I joined. When Lou quit and everyone else still wanted to play, we did. Sure, Sesnick was whispering one thing in this one's ear and something else in that, but when it happened, there was a band, an entity of its own, and the members who remained desired to continue, so they did. Looking back, it's easy to say that the band ended or changed dramatically at that point, and it did. When John left it also changed dramatically. But while it was happening, in the present tense, the band played on. First Walter Powers joined, playing bass, which freed me to play guitar, something I've been craving for some time. Then, when Sterling left to go to school, Willie Alexander joined. When Lou Left, I began doing some of my own songs and when Willy came, he added some of his. It's the way that bands worked: If you were in, the band would play your tunes, as long as everyone liked them.
What you have in front of you now is the post-John, post-Lou, post-Sterling band. It isn't the same band that started out on the Lower East Side, but it's where that band eventually wound up.
The first concert is form a university in the UK. We had a flat in London that was within walking distance of Harrods and a hamburger joint that had real Heinz Ketchup on the tables. We'd drive out on the afternoon of a gig and drive back after the show itself--all the venues tend to blur together and take on each other's character until thirty years down the road you're left with one big gig in one big hall that has too many dimensions to be real.
The only place I ever saw that had a 2 story, red-carpeted staircase leading down to the stage was in Holland, at the Koncertgebouw, the venue for the second recording. This concert, part of that same tour, includes some tunes broadcasted over the Netherlands radio, during which show we were presented with the Edison Award. I'm not certain that the award and this concert occurred at the same point in time, but I remember the studio, the heavy bronze colored statue and the fact that it disappeared, never to be seen again. We speculated that Sesnick wound up whit it. This TV show was what you would expect a TV appearance to be: The other TV appearance I did with the Velvets was on the middle Atlantic coast somewhere (Philly, Baltimore, somewhere) and involved lip-syncing to something from the new album. We were all a little shocked when they told us we would be lip syncing, it had never occurred to us that it was a possibility.
The Dutch audiences are wonderful. The Koncertgebouw is a wonderful place to play. I think that of every place I've been, it's the nicest.
The third disk is a night in Wales. This band, while traveling under the name of Velvet Underground, was put together just for this tour by Steve Sesnick. Presumably he did it for the deposit money because when we arrived at London ready to work, neither he nor anyone else was waiting to meet us. We had no money, no hotel rooms, no tour support, and no amps. We spent the first night sleeping on the floor in a cold water flat in London in the beginning of winter. The promoter arranged for us to rent some amps and gear, fronting money for a deposit. The tour was fun in that sort of dark, out-on-your-own kind of way. But we got through it and got home.
The fourth disk, which was recorded at Oliver's in Boston, near the soon to be extinct Fenway Park, was a mistake. My brother, two friends, and I were playing in a band in New Hampshire, working in bars and wherever else we could find for whatever we could get. It was better than getting a real job. We were approached by a promoter who offered to book us throughout New England. Easy Money, right? Unfortunately, he insisted on booking us as the Velvet Underground. Every time it happened, we told him, No more, don't do it, but he did. I think that this was the third time. The next time, we stopped talking to him. But this performance was taped by someone who came to see the Velvets and consequently became part of the underground recordings of the group. Like most live recordings, some of it is good; some is bad, and a lot is in between.
Thanks to Bill-for being an excellent brother, Rob-for calm in the face of overwhelming odds, Walter (the six foot Buddha)-for knowing smiles and great wisdom, Willy-for pushing the envelope, George and Don-for enduring the New England winter, Mark-for showing up and Moe-for being the best there is. Thanks to Sal Mercuri for making everything happen. Special thanks to Sterling.
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