11. The Velvet Underground & NicoThe Velvet Underground & Nico
This one, with Andy Warhol, is fascinating. I find all the stories about it really interesting. The band are all doing something brilliant on that record, too. Then you’ve got these people who argue about who’s doing the producing and it’s a really interesting story. I think John Cale got the credit at one point, and then he says he didn’t do it, and then the engineers get the credit. And then Lou Reed says it was Andy Warhol, as he’d paid for it. Reed says he let the band set up and the band would play and he’d be in the control room next to the engineer. And Warhol would say, "Doesn’t it sound beautiful?" [Laughs] Imagine the engineers… I could be wrong and they could have been exceptional fellows. But engineers normally want to tidy things up and make things like other records they’ve worked on. Having someone like him there with his weird vibe and his fame, they probably thought, "yeah alright, we’d better leave it". It’s a very strange record on all fronts really.
