The Velvet Underground were as important a band as the Beatles, simple as. This frazzled debut is not quite as atonishing as their undoubted masterpiece White Light/White Heat, but the sheer weight of songs as good as Sunday Morning and Venus In Furs really do knock you for six. The haunting vocals by Nico can be extremely good (All Tomorrows Parties), or can grate a little (I'll Be Your Mirror). But Lou and John steal the thunder on the album.
This is an album of moments; Cale plays piano on I'm Waiting For My Man, and still hasn't bettered it in his long winding solo career. Reed does his drunken hick impression on European Son (in both singing and playing). Morrison and Tucker are the pounding rhythm section that gives the album it's fire.
But the whole thing is eclipsed by the stark, scary and downright brilliant solo confession by Lou Reed, Heroin. The song will never, in my opinion, be beaten; it really did show McCartney how to tell one of those short stories he was so fond of in a 'pop' song (well, um...it's sort of pop...), showed Lennon how to explore the psychadelic soundscape, and invented, er, stoner rock.
The NME recently called them the "parallel universe Beatles", and this is certainly true. Had it not been for their highly contraversial nature of their songs, they would have been equally as big. But that's what makes them so special. As fame and money eluded them, Reed spiralled deeper into sonic experiment. What came next was the brightest and best chapter for the Velvet Underground, but not the last...