The Velvet Underground ~ The Velvet Underground & Nico

The Velvet Underground ~ The Velvet Underground & Nico

Record Label: Verve
Release Date: March 12, 1967

We go back in time but like in the previous post about The Dark Side Of The Moon, we are going to talk about stickers. Andy Warhol's banana stickers. I always thought he was a bit of a creep (I mean..look at him), but I do like some of his art and this album is a good example of such art. Andy Warhol, the artist. Film maker, painter, sculptor, manager and whatnot. The most famous person in Pop Art (to date). He is the creator of the album cover of The Velvet Underground's most notorious album and basically put the Velvet Underground in the picture. Coincidentally, like Thorgerson in the previous post, Lou Reed of the Velvet Underground also died last year, in 2013. Another tribute! Unfortunately, this album sold only roughly 30.000 copies in the first five years.

Quick history lesson. Andy Warhol met the Velvet Underground while they were playing in nothing but a cafe. He was introduced to them by film maker Paul Morissey, who had seen the band play there at their first gig. Andy Warhol was at that moment interested in multimedia (film making) and 'real', down to earth things and the Velvet Underground had it all. Paul Morissey? He was just after making money in the rock-and-roll business.

From A brief history of album covers[1]:

"[the album cover] perfectly captures late-60s Pop Art as Andy Warhol saw it, using simple, recognizable popular culture imagery for mass production"

Andy Warhol is listed on the album as the producer of the album. He was however not your typical producer. Rather than managing the band and telling them what to do, he just let the band do whatever they wanted to do. All he really did for the band was create the iconic cover. According to The Velvet Underground and Andy Warhol story, Lou Reed, says the following:

"Andy was the producer and Andy was in fact sitting behind the board gazing with rapt fascination.. at all the blinking lights. He just made it possible for us to be ourselves and go right ahead with it because he was Andy Warhol. In a sense he really produced it, because he was this umbrella that absorbed all the attacks when we weren't large enough to be attacked... As a consequence of him being the producer, we'd just walk in and set up and did what we always did and no one would stop it because Andy was the producer. Of course he didn`t know anything about record production...He just sat there and said, Oooh that`s fantastic, and the engineer would say, Oh yeah! Right! It is fantastic, isn't it?"

The banana sticker

On the right you see the cover, slightly peeled. That's right. It was possible to peal the banana sticker off and reveal a pinkish banana. Well, that was only possible on the early copies, a 1980s re-issue in Japan and on a 2008 re-press. Most editions thus do not actually have the sticker and the ones that do are rare collector's items by now.  While one of the reasons for the album to be delayed was that the Verve did not want to release more than two weird albums in one year (they had just released Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention`s). The second reason is that in order to create these covers a special machine was needed. Luckily MGM Records was more than happy to pay for these costs as it realized Warhol's connection to the album would surely boost sales.[2][3]

Behind the sticker

Lawsuits. Don't you love them? Believe it or not, the album led to a lawsuit twice, once for the front and once for the back. Let's start chronologically and start with the back cover lawsuit.

Back cover lawsuit:

The first issue of the album contained an image of actor Eric Emerson (don't worry I hadn't heard of him either, apparently he starred in some of Warhol's movies) projected upside-down (really hard to see) on a wall behind Velvet Underground. Emerson demanded payment or he would sue them and MGM decided to recall all copies rather than pay him. His projection was airbrushed away, already printed editions were sold with a large black sticker to hide the projection. Interestingly, the projection was restored for the 1996 CD reissue. (from: Wikipedia - Album page) Unfortunately for the band, among other things, due to all the commotion their launch was less of a success than it could have been.

Top: Eric Emerson
(upside-down, arms stretched out left & right)
bottom: gone!

Black sticker to hide Eric Emerson

Front cover lawsuit:

In 2012 (unfortunate for Lou Reed, who would die only a year after), rather than someone suing Velvet Underground, they sued the Andy Warhol Foundation (from Courthouse News Service). Lou Reed and John Cale claimed they were unlawfully licensing the band's iconic banana to third parties.
The Warhol Foundation in turn claimed they had copyright interest in the design, whereas the Velvet Underground partnership says the banana picture cannot be copyrighted, as it came from an advertisement and was public domain. The lawsuit was dismissed due to reasons that are way too boring to even elaborate upon (there are numerous articles on the web that do this in great detail) and settled outside of court.

Oh hey, did I mention this album is featured on the book that inspired me to use this blog name?

L'inspiration

References (literature):

1. A brief history of album covers (2008), ISBN 978-1-84786-211-2
2. Harvard, Joe (2007) [2004]. The Velvet Underground and Nico. 33⅓. New York, NY: Continuum International Publishing Group. ISBN 0-8264-1550-4.
3. Bockris, Victor & Malanga, Gerard (1996) [1983]. Up-tight: The Velvet Underground Story. Omnibus Press. ISBN 0-7119-5223-X.

~ jar