The Velvet Forum

Here is the book: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... %3AIT&rd=1

Published in '71 before Lou had released his solo LP. Interesting commentary! He writes a thought provoking entry on the rock casualties of the day (Epstein, Joplin, Hendrix, Brian Jones), but he makes Hendrix out to be a truly sad case. Sad in the sense that he could never escape guitar-smashing antics in the 60's, and when he tried to (w/ Band of Gypsies) nobody really cared anymore.

Read it if you get the chance.

What does Lou have to say about the beatles? I've always wondered whether the beatles knew of the velvets in the 60's and what they thought of each others music, sounds like an interesting read.

"I had recently been introduced to drugs at this time by a mashed-in-face Negro whose features were in two sections (like a split-level house) named Jaw. Jaw gave me hepatitis immediately, which is laughable and pathetic at once, considering I wrote a famous amplified version of the experience as a song. Anyway, his bad blood certainly put an end to my abortive excursions and consequently tempered whatever enthusiasm I might have had for pop music at the time. The Beatles were innocent of the world and its wicked ways, I felt, while I no longer possessed this pristine view. I, after all, had had jaundice."

"This other-worldly approach vanished however, and after my mind and my liver kept me from the Army, I, too, danced to Beatle music..."

Meddy wrote:What does Lou have to say about the beatles? I've always wondered whether the beatles knew of the velvets in the 60's and what they thought of each others music, sounds like an interesting read.

It's certainly possible. Epstein did offer to help the VU on a tour of Europe before he passed away in the summer of '67. In addition the Fabs were fans of the VU's peers The Fugs so surely they must have heard the VU at some point.