I think everyone who bought one of those 30,000 copies started a band!"Įxpectations ran high for the Byrds release following the Top 10 status of The Byrds' Greatest Hits in 1967. The sales have picked up in the past few years, but I mean, that record was such an important record for so many people. The poor reception did, at least, occasion this notorious quote from a 1982 Brian Eno interview in Musician: "I was talking to Lou Reed the other day and he said that the first Velvet Underground record sold 30,000 copies in the first five years. It re-entered the album chart that fall, slip-sliding around its lower reaches until it was recalled by Verve because of a lawsuit filed by reluctant back-cover subject Eric Emerson. The Velvet Underground & Nico eked into the Billboard 200 at Number 199 in May 1967, peaking at Number 195. As Richie Unterberger notes in his history of the band, White Light/White Heat, the band's label Verve gave the album a soft sell, and commercial radio had yet to have an opening for acts as mold-breaking. (A Village Voice ad that ran around the album's release claimed that it was "so underground, you'll get the bends.") But The Velvet Underground & Nico was barely received by the public at all at first, even though the album's peelable cover gave consumers a handy way to get their hands on an Andy Warhol original. By the time the celebrated New York act the Velvet Underground released their long-delayed debut album in March 1967, their downtown cool and off-kilter approach to rock had made them a curiosity of sorts.
0 kommentar(er)
