Andy Warhol Explains Why He Decided to Give Up Painting & Manage the Velvet Underground Instead (1966)

In Good Omens—the six-episode adap­ta­tion of Ter­ry Pratch­ett and Neil Gaiman’s satir­i­cal fan­ta­sy about the Bib­li­cal end of the world—a run­ning joke relies on the viewer’s off­hand knowl­edge of the Vel­vet Underground’s sig­nif­i­cance. A refined, rare book­shop-own­ing angel calls the band “bebop” and has no idea who they are or what they sound like, a for­giv­able sin in the 70s, but seri­ous­ly out of touch decades lat­er in the 21st cen­tu­ry.

The schem­ing super­nat­ur­al agent should prob­a­bly know that the Lou Reed (and briefly Nico)-fronted, Andy Warhol-man­aged late-1960s-70s exper­i­men­tal New York art rock band had an out­sized influ­ence on human affairs. Bridg­ing a divide no one even knew exist­ed between beat poet­ry, avant-garde jazz, psy­che­del­ic garage rock, doo-wop, and Euro­pean folk music, the band is anec­do­tal­ly cred­it­ed with launch­ing thou­sands of others—having as much impact, per­haps, on mod­ern rock as Char­lie Park­er had on mod­ern jazz.

Warhol could not have known any of this when he decid­ed to spon­sor and pro­mote the Vel­vet Under­ground in 1966. He only man­aged the band for a year, in what seemed like both a stunt and a per­for­mance art project, part of his trav­el­ing mul­ti­me­dia show Explod­ing Plas­tic Inevitable, which he calls “the biggest dis­cotheque in the world” in the 1966 inter­view above. Warhol act­ed, and the band react­ed, shap­ing them­selves around his provo­ca­tions. He pro­ject­ed high-con­trast films at them onstage, they put on sun­glass­es. He pushed dead­pan Ger­man mod­el and singer Nico on them, they wrote and record­ed what some con­sid­er the great­est debut album in his­to­ry.

Warhol couldn’t have known how any of it would pan out, but in hind­sight his patron­age can seem like a pre­scient, almost meta­phys­i­cal, act of cul­tur­al subversion—and the work of a guile­less savant com­pelled by vague intu­itions and whims. He pre­ferred to give off the lat­ter impres­sion, then let crit­ics infer the for­mer. Warhol explains that he has aban­doned paint­ing and start­ed man­ag­ing the band because “I hate objects, and I hate to go to muse­ums and see pic­tures of the world, because they look so impor­tant and they don’t real­ly mean any­thing.”

Few peo­ple doubt the man­age­ment of his pub­lic per­sona was at least par­tial­ly cal­cu­lat­ed. But so much of it clear­ly wasn’t—as evi­denced by his own exhaus­tive record­ing of every detail of his life. Despite the amount of cal­cu­la­tion ascribed to him, a qual­i­ty the inter­view­er awk­ward­ly tries to ask him about, he seems to have been stu­pe­fied about his own moti­va­tions much of the time, beyond the fact that he strong­ly liked and dis­liked cer­tain sim­ple things—Elvis, Campbell’s Soup, obscure blonde femme fatales. At oth­er times, Warhol issued apho­risms as cryp­tic and pro­found as an ancient sage or post-war crit­i­cal the­o­rist.

Was the Vel­vet Under­ground more like Warhol’s uncom­pli­cat­ed love of cheese­burg­ers and Bat­man or more like his sophis­ti­cat­ed decon­struc­tion of film, media, and fash­ion, or are these not mutu­al­ly exclu­sive ways of look­ing at his work? The ques­tion may not real­ly con­cern music his­to­ri­ans, for whom Warhol’s ear­ly influ­ence was for­ma­tive, but maybe musi­cal­ly mar­gin­al. But if we think of him as a motive force behind the band’s look and ear­ly sound—a kind of con­scious cre­ative reagent—we might be curi­ous about what he meant by it, if any­thing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Big Ideas Behind Andy Warhol’s Art, and How They Can Help Us Build a Bet­ter World

Watch Footage of the Vel­vet Under­ground Com­pos­ing “Sun­day Morn­ing,” the First Track on Their Sem­i­nal Debut Album The Vel­vet Under­ground & Nico (1966)

Three “Anti-Films” by Andy Warhol: Sleep, Eat & Kiss

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness


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Comments (5)
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  • Leonard Finger says:

    Paul Mor­ris­sey did the heavy lift­ing as man­ag­er for the Vel­vet Under­ground. He was instru­men­tal in find­ing them and work­ing with them.

  • tess jr says:

    Nice arti­cle and insights, just a lit­tle con­fus­ing, between men­tions of the­su­per­nat­ur­al book­store char­ac­ter, and “the inter­view­er”, and where exact­ly “Warhol explains”.

  • tess jr says:

    “the 1966 inter­view”–?

  • The Dude says:

    “Was the Vel­vet Under­ground more like Warhol’s uncom­pli­cat­ed love of cheese­burg­ers and Bat­man or more like his sophis­ti­cat­ed decon­struc­tion of film, media, and fash­ion, or are these not mutu­al­ly exclu­sive ways of look­ing at his work?”

    How about a lit­tle of both. We all have our con­tra­dic­tions and appar­ent con­tra­dic­tions and yet these make the whole.
    Warhol had his quirks, his likes and his dis­likes. His love of some things com­mon and some things out of the main stream were part of his “whole.”
    Some parts of the VU’s first album were Warhol’s, but most of it was Lou and the band’s.
    All Tomor­row’s Par­ties and Femme Fatale, for exam­ple, were tremen­dous­ly influ­enced by Warhol. Songs like Euro­pean Son, Hero­in and Wait­ing for My Man are Lou’s and the band’s.

  • DANIEL THALER says:

    THESE FRIGGIN ARTISTS AND THEIR “I’M JUST TOO DEEP AND CONVOLUDED TO ANSWER A SIMPLE QUESTION” HAVE ALWAYS ANNOYED ME. YOU DON’T HAVE TO BE AFFECTED TO THE EXTREME TO BE CONSIDERED AN ARTIST. THAT WHOLE NYC SCENE BACK THEN. IT’S ONLY FITTING THAT HE DECIDED TO MANAGE LOU REED (VELVET UNDERGROUND). THEY SHOULD JUST PUT THEM IN A ROOM TOGETHER AND HAVE THEM TALK TO EACH OTHER, DAILY AND SEE WHO GOES NUTS FIRST.

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