Primer on how to become a Velvet Underground fan

October 13, 1:28 PMPhoenix Music ExaminerSerene Dominic

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Rock critic Jim DeRogatis talks about what first attracted him to rock’s seminal underground band in his new book “The Velvet Underground: An Illustrated History of a Walk on the Wild Side.”
How did you come about doing this pictorial history on the Velvet Underground as opposed to doing a straight narrative as in, say, the Lester Bangs book?
This project originated with Voyageur Press, they were doing a series of well-done, hard covered art books on a couple of bands, they’d done one on Led Zeppelin which came out really well and I contributed an album essay for Houses of the Holy, which is my favorite Zep album, Greg Kot did one, a bunch of other writers. They wanted to do one on the Velvet Underground, they had access to a lot of photos which  hadn’t been  printed in the others books or hadn’t been seen ever in some cases and they approached me about writing the connective tissue historical overview and help corral and edit some of the other critics who write about the individual albums and I said sure. That’s like, “Merry Christmas!” Sounds like a lot of fun. The photos were really driving the book and it was nice to provide some context for that. What I brought in and what some of the other writers brought in.
How much of the art has never been seen before?
 It’s amazing, The art director and the editor deserve the coverline more than me because that’s really the heart and soul of the book. I don’t know where they found that stuff because on the dozen books I have on my shelf of of Lou Reed, John Cale and Velvet Underground books, I’ve never seen a lot of that. Ive never seen those pictures of the Velvets in zombie white faced makeup, there’s two double truck spreads of the band playing “Heroin.” It was actually a 1965 CBS News documentary about the making of an underground film. I don’t know where they came up with that stuff.

In your dedication you repeat that quote attributed to Eno, about “that 5,000 people bought that first Velvet Underground album but everyone of them formed a rock band.” Or as you add, became a rock critic.

 Which was a pathetically small number. It’s very hard to find where Eno actually said that. The quote endures, the idea was people who bought it got it. I think Eno and Lester Bangs and Robert Quine got it more than others, They  helped us understand this band. And that’s part of the daunting task about writing about this band now in the new millennium. When some of the most  eloquent people in the history of rock journalism have written about this band, Lester Bangs at the top of the list, Alan Willis, and Lenny Kaye and on and on and on, what’s left new to say about the band and I think that one of those things is that gets perpetuated is this larger than life thou shalt not question the Velvet Underground these guys were geniuses kind of thing. And that’s true. But I think humanizing them and remembering that three of the four instrumentalists that  grew up to be princes and princesses of darkness all grew up in well manicured suburban Long Island homes within a few miles of each other. It’s worth remembering that these were not super human beings.
Which came first for you, the Velvet Underground’s music or the myth?
I was introduced to the Velvet Underground through reading Lester Bangs’ writing. The thing that set the Velvets apart was that this was an adult band with heavy themes in a challenging way making capital A art. The first time you listen to “Heroin,” it’s kind of an overwhelming experience, you don’t necessarily know what to make of it. As a thirteen, fourteen year old, I had the Beatles’ red and blue albums. I like this, this is cool. I’m also liking Jethro Tull then you hear the first Velvets record and go “what the (expletive) is this?’
It underscores when it came out and to this day that rock and roll can be something more more than mere  entertainment. It can be serious art that can change your life and change your perspective of the universe. When Lou Reed sings  “My life was saved by rock and roll, he didn’t become that accountant living on Long Island like his father. It’s not an exaggeration.

Reading you summary of the band’s last gig at Max’s Kansas City, it’s pretty incredible to think that he moved back in with his parents who came and picked him up after that show!
On the last gig he went into this period of exile in Long Island in his farther’s accounting office and it was by no means certain that he was going to have a solo career. when he dd came out with that first Lou Reed solo album, it was certain that was gonna be the path he’d take.

 And to see the flyers of some of the shows they did at school auditoriums, opening up for pop groups like The Myddle Class. Had they not hooked up with Andy Warhol, they were this close to becoming a garage band that stayed at that level.

This wasn’t this genius from the get-go destined to be influential for years project. It was a band that had natural beginnings, meeting at colleges, playing great bar gigs. Lou Reed in his  earlier incarnations was in “Louie Louie” frat bar bands. It was that whole sum of the parts. John Cale was someone who could have easily gone the conservatory route of being a real serious classical/avant garde musician but had this desire to make that fearful noise he heard in “Heartbreak Hotel.” And Lou Reed who is a real garage rocker like any band that Lenny Kaye would compile on Nuggets but has the desire to do something more with rock and roll that Hubert Selby, Jr. did with Last Exit to Brooklyn. And I think rock and roll is a s powerful as any great novel. That was what brought those two together and the seeds of everything that the band would do , covering a lot of ground more ground in a short amount of time. You can argue than the Beatles in those four studio albums. The seeds of it all and what Reed and Cale would do on their solo careers are there on that first album. A very ambitious band to give you “Sunday Morning” and “Black Angels Death Song” (laughs).
Did your coming to New York make you appreciate the Velvet Underground more?
I grew up in Jersey City just across the river. I’d cut class in  high school against my mother’s  wishes and without her knowledge and go to the Village on 7th Street and Sixth Avenue  and walk to Bleeker Bob's and but White Light White Heat first on vinyl. Woe. Forget about “Sister Ray” —what the (expletive) is “Heard Her Call My Name.” It just blows your mind. And because I read Lester Bangs lauding Robert Quine as the greatest  guitarist ever short of what Sterling Morrison and Lou Reed did on "Heard Her Call My Name" so you’re sitting there and saying “What must this song sound like? “And we’vew all had  that experience when somebody says something so hyperbolic and over the top about some piece of music. You buy it you bring  it home and say Vampire Weekend sounds like Graceland by Paul Simon- not brave new and mind blowing You bring home White Light White Heat and it doesn’t sound like ANYTHING you ever  heard and  still believe the song has that power today And that’s not romanticizing it. You can play it for some 13 year-old kid and you can see the fear and terror and the sheer enthusiasm well up at once.  It’s the real deal.

 Being a fan, did you approach the Nineties Velvet Underground reunion with some trepidation?

I thought it seemed like a bad idea because it’s always hard to capture that initial impulse. I had seen the first performances Reed and Cale did for Songs For Drella before it got into a big multi-media production and went to the Brooklyn Academy of Music. They did it for a couple of nights at St. Ann’s church in Brooklyn with just Cale on viola, Reed on guitar.  Really low key. I thought that was as close to seeing the Velvet Underground as I was gonna get. It didn’t last long because they were soon at each others’ throats. You’ve been in bands you've been in relationships you get together with an ex and after 40 years where you have nothing in common. No matter how intense that initial period was you don’t recapture what was originally there.
They managed to recapture the tension…
They recaptured the bad stuff! Cale says that the most honest and best thing that came out of that reunion was that song “Coyote.” It’s short, there’s not much to it but at least it was about the four of them moving forward and bringing to the collaboration what they’d become in the last 40 years that they didn’t play together.
It’s amazing to see the Velvet Underground name on psychedelic West Coast posters alongside the Jefferson Airplane and Quicksilver Messenger Service.
The West Coast infamously did not understand the Velvet Underground. It was that peace and love vibe in California. San Francisco and LA and did not get the Velvets.
They got the Doors.
Well yeah but it was Lester Bangs that called Morrison “Bozo Dionysus.” The Doors were a cartoon of the dark side more than they actually were the dark side. when you’ve got a flamenco guitarist  and a cocktail keyboardist. I don’t think the Doors were nearly as scary as the Velvet Underground. “The End” aside. And even them for a really scary version of The End you’ve got  to go to Nico, she recorded a really horrifying version with Cale.