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The Velvet Underground and Nico is an incredibly prolific, and influential album–its influence on modern music cannot be understated.  Yet, relatively few people have heard of it, and even fewer still have listened to it.  The band’s singer, and main composer Lou Reed achieved far more mainstream success with his solo career, producing the hit song “Take a Walk on the Wild Side,” than he did in The Velvet Underground.  However, commercial success does not reflect artistic integrity; without the cult following he earned with his debut, The Velvet Underground and Nico, Lou Reed would not have achieved the legend status he maintained leading until his death last October.

One of the main reasons that The Velvet Underground and Nico has become so widely revered is because of its daringly experimental nature.  Lou Reed pioneered the ostrich guitar technique on this album, wherein all of the strings on a guitar are tuned to the same note–creating an incredibly thick, drone sound.  The Velvet Underground and Nico was also one of the first albums to use down tuned guitars, further adding a sense of darkness to the album.  The album is also noted for featuring a viola on “Venus in Furs,” and “Black Angel’s Death Song.”  These musical innovations are coupled with slow moving song structure to create a hypnotic experience.  For instance, “All Tomorrow’s Parties” alternates between developing Reed’s guitar part, and Nico’s lyrics in order to draw out the song, and slowly engross the listener in its psychedelic atmosphere.

The Velvet Underground’s debut has become famous for its lyrical innovations as well as its instrumental developments.  This is not an album for the easily offended, Lou Reed purposefully wrote disgustingly obscene lyrics for The Velvet Underground and Nico because he felt it was a necessary step to modernize western music.  When the album was released in 1967, literature and the visual arts had come to embrace mature subjects–such as sex and violence–music had yet to accept these developments, though.  By shamelessly discussing these topics in his lyrics, Lou Reed’s work on this album helped music maintain its relevance as a legitimate art form.  Some may dismiss The Velvet Underground and Nico as smut, but I would remind those people that Edvard Munch’s paintings deal with the same grotesque subject matter, and they are now considered modern art masterpieces.

Without the avant garde there could be no mainstream.  Its because of bands like The Velvet Underground that we have Billboard hits.  Music enthusiasts owe it to themselves to be familiar with the obscure so that they can truly understand where modern music came from, and where it is going.