So, somewhere in the Warhol archives in Pittsburgh there are probably cassettes from Andy’s visits to the sessions.” Exploding Plastic Inevitable He considered his life to be a manifestation of that. He let things happen around him and then commented on or utilised those events and images for his works of art. “Warhol always carried a small recorder with him - he preserved a cassette version of every breath he drew - and as soon as anyone said anything he would record them. Everyone deferred to him on ‘Heroin’ and ‘Waiting For The Man’.
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And if they didn’t, Cale normally won, although Reed had the final say over his own singing. Usually, there’d need to be a consensus between John Cale and Lou Reed if they agreed on something, it was ‘next track’. “He was never there for any eight-hour stretch: more like 30 minutes, during which he’d stand behind me, listen to a playback and say, ‘Oh, yeah, yeah, that sounds great.’ I don’t think Warhol gave us the slightest instruction or command, and nobody really asked him what he thought of the recordings.
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“Warhol was in the control room for part of two of the four days John Licata and I worked on that record,” he says. Norman Dolph concurs with Reed’s recollection. “He just sat there and said, ‘Oooh, that’s fantastic,’ and the engineer would say, ‘Oh yeah! Right! It is fantastic, isn’t it?’” “Of course, he didn’t know anything about record production, but he didn’t have to,” Lou Reed remarked when discussing Warhol’s studio activities in an April 1989 Musician Magazine feature by Bill Flanagan. Instead, these were handled by Columbia sales exec Norman Dolph and Scepter Records engineer John Licata before three of the songs were then re-recorded, others were remixed and another added by Verve staff producer Tom Wilson and engineer Ami Hadani. Nevertheless, despite showcasing the VU in his multimedia Exploding Plastic Inevitable music/film/dance/lighting events, Andy Warhol barely participated in the avant garde outfit’s 1966 recording sessions for an LP steeped in Reed’s lyrical references to sex, drugs, depravity and the denizens of Warhol’s Factory art facility. It was as the manager of the New York-based group co-founded by singer-songwriter-guitarist Reed and Welsh bassist-violist John Cale - with Sterling Morrison playing guitar and bass alongside Maureen ‘Mo’ Tucker on drums - that Warhol ensured he was credited as the producer of their seminal debut album The Velvet Underground & Nico, featuring the contributions of the German-born singer who was another of his protegés.
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Like pop-art pioneer Warhol’s excursions into the world of film, his involvement in the mid-’60s music scene via the Velvet Underground had limited commercial appeal but was highly influential. From left to right: Nico, Andy Warhol, Moe Tucker, Lou Reed, Sterling Morrison and John Cale.Photo: Steve Schapiro/Corbis But the only real reason I think we had that freedom is because Andy as the ‘producer’ was saying, ‘Ohhh, that’s great.’” The Velvet Underground and Nico and Andy Warhol. The record company never listened to the records in the first place, so they came out exactly like they’d been made and we got to experience that freedom. And so right at the very beginning we experienced what it was like to be in the studio and record things our way and have, essentially, total freedom. “They would say, ‘Is that OK, Mr Warhol?’ and he’d say, ‘Ohhh, yeah,’ and so they didn’t change anything.
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“The advantage of having Andy Warhol as a producer was that, because he was Andy Warhol, they left everything in its pure state,” Lou Reed told a TV interviewer in 1993. We asked Andy Warhol’s co-producer to set the record straight. Its status as one of pop’s most influential albums is clear, but the circumstances surrounding the creation of The Velvet Underground & Nico have always been clouded.