My recent posts on Duran Duran have prompted me to mine the past a bit, trying to trace a path backwards to a suitable origin. I ended up at the Velvet Underground, which is typical, for nearly every pop-art musical road ultimately leads either to or from the Velvet Underground. They are the crossroads.
I dare say that few bloggers, if any, are currently ruminating on the connection between the Velvet Underground and Duran Duran, but that, after all, is why God gave the world Catbirdman, I suppose (hopefully that’s not the only reason). I shall, then, humbly take up the role and fill the void. In the words of Adrian Monk, you’ll thank me later.
And so begins yet another continuing series of posts here on Subanimal Sounds (I seem to keep starting these things and never finish them…). This one will last 22 posts, will weave its way through the 1970s, and will culminate in Duran Duran’s first single. Every entry will have two things in common: 1. the artist will be one cited by a member or members of Duran Duran as a formative influence; and 2. the song will be, by Catbirdman standards, absolutely fabulous.
And so we begin, as have so many would-be musos, with the Velvet Underground. If any group has been more pivotal than this, I challenge anyone to name them/him/her. We’ve heard it all a hundred times or more: the band hand-picked (more or less) by Andy Warhol, coupled with Nico, ignored commercially, embraced critically forever after. Not many people listened to the Velvets at the time, but those who did formed a band, talked about forming a band, bla bla bla.
One of those people was the young Nick Rhodes, née Bates, the future stylist par excellence of each individual (and every one was different, which remains a true feat of genius) Duran Duran offering, be it a bum-pumping single or a cerebrum-thumping album cut, of the 1980s. Nick was a late convert to the Velvets, having had to overcome an early prejudice against the lo-fi, deceptively off-key scrapings of the primitive sound. He learned quickly, as did all of those artistically inclined, that the primal was subtle, dressed in unconscious sophistication, and ultimately essential.
The Velvet Underground is essential for any musical education. As countless others have testified, here is a seminal track that lies at the root of countless other seminal tracks… from the Velvet Underground’s third album, I give you, “What Goes On”…
