If you’d asked Lou Reed, he would’ve told you that The Velvet Underground were criminally misunderstood. I’ve probably been guilty of it. Journalists often write of the band as the ultimate act, defining the second wave of counterculture. After the hippies had cleared out and the times seemed to get darker, Reed’s troupe are often characterised as the ruled of a seedy underbelly when really, he liked classic rock and roll just like the rest of them.
It’s easy to understand why the misunderstanding took hold. Reed was never the typical archetype of a rock star. While more classic frontmen might have pointed to other acts as their initial inspiration, like Paul McCartney pointing to Elvis Presley or Mick Jagger pointing to Chuck Berry, Reed pointed to a university lecturer. His initial spark for wanting to make music came from an English class—or at least that’s the story that’s often said.
When really, it was a lot more normal than that. After The Velvet Underground got underway, introducing themselves with dark, gloomy numbers like ‘All Tomorrow’s Parties’ or ‘European Son’, written as a homage to that teacher, they were quickly boxed in as left-fielders. People talk about Reed being a singular artist, especially when he later moved into his solo work and got even crazier on records like Berlin, but the man himself never saw it like that.
He didn’t see himself as an island, nor did he see himself as this stranger outsider isolated from the general music world. He liked the same things as everyone else. Meaning, he liked The Beatles too.
“I remember,” Reed explained to Rolling Stone in 1979, “reading descriptions of us as the ‘fetid underbelly of urban existence.’” It made him feel maligned when really, his intentions were simple. He explained, “All I wanted to do was write songs that somebody like me could relate to. I got off on The Beatles and all that stuff”.
Reed was human, at the end of the day. Coming of age in the 1950s and early ‘60s, he wasn’t immune to the mass, immeasurable impact of the Fab Four. At that time, no one with any level of interest in music was getting out at least somewhat unaffected by The Beatles. They were everywhere, and they were redefining the rules at hyperspeed.
Reed was also a huge Dylan fan, stating ten years later, in 1989, “I always go out and get the latest Dylan album.” So given that in 1966, right before Reed would launch his own musical career, The Beatles were deeply influenced by Dylan too on Revolver, it’s a perfect circle of inspiration that Reed was hooked into – even if his own music came out sounding like neither of them.
I’m sure plenty of fans of The Velvet Underground’s darker works or Reed’s more experimental pieces wouldn’t like to connect the dots between that and The Beatles. With many in the early punk scene, Reed was beginning to open the doors, too, wanting to distance themselves from rock and roll. But Reed himself only ever wanted to make good music, so it makes sense that he wouldn’t brush off the most popular act around.
The difference was all in intention, though. While he liked the band, he didn’t want to make music for their hordes of screaming girls. He said, “Why not have a little something on the side for the kids in the back row?”