The Velvet Forum

I recently bought this picture postcard, sent by Sterling to his future wife, Martha, on 25 October 1969 — the final date of the VU’s three-night stand at the Vulcan Gas Company, Austin, TX. At first glance, the content may seem banal, but there’s an interesting clue here in the line, “Somebody is coming around to interview me ….”

That somebody was surely the esteemed playwright, poet, and journalist Gregg Barrios. Barrios’s interview with Sterling was first published in the 6 March 1970 edition of Fusion magazine. To my knowledge, the date of this interview has never been narrowed down any further than “late 1969”, but I’m confident that we can now date it precisely to 25 October. We already knew that the interview took place in Texas, and, given that Barrios was based in San Antonio, it makes sense that he would travel the 80 miles to see the band play in Austin, rather than make the much longer journey to their only other Texas gigs that year, in Dallas.

Barrios died in August 2021, aged 80.

Excellent stuff. Thanks a lot for sharing.

Driven Insane wrote: ↑12 Dec 2021 22:41 Excellent stuff. Thanks a lot for sharing.

You’re very welcome.

I love it when an item of memorabilia helps nail a piece of rock and roll history.

From Barrios’s interview, we can extrapolate that he attended the Vulcan gig on 24 October 1969, and that the Velvets’ set that night included “Femme Fatale”, “I’ll Be Your Mirror”, and “I Can’t Stand It”. In lieu of the missing Vulcan recordings, Barrios’s contemporary, firsthand account is likely as reliable a source as we’ll ever have.

How wild is it that Sterling chose a card depicting not only the school he'd wind up teaching and studying at, but the very building in which his office would be housed.

Sheila Klein wrote: ↑14 Dec 2021 00:58 How wild is it that Sterling chose a card depicting not only the school he'd wind up teaching and studying at, but the very building in which his office would be housed.

The UT Austin connection didn’t pass me by. It’s a nice precursor of things to come.

Was Sterling’s office in the UT Tower, though? I would have thought that, being the main building on campus, the Tower would house all of the bigwigs, administrative staff, etc., with the lowly Teaching Assistants consigned to cubicles within their respective department buildings. Different school, obviously, but that’s how things were when I worked at UNO, many years ago.

Also, this article from a few years ago leads off with a photo that claims to show Sterling on the roof of his office, with the UT Tower in the background:

https://medium.com/the-alcalde/what-goe ... 4982f49915

I also own one of Sterling’s UT Austin ID cards from the mid-1970s. There’s a few of these knocking about amongst collectors, but I like this one in particular for the thousand-yard stare Sterl is giving to the camera:

Was Sterling’s office in the UT Tower, though?

When I visited him there in 1980, it was. It was a very small office in a very large building.

Same building, alas, as the site of this horrible event from a few years earlier:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Whitman

Sheila Klein wrote: ↑14 Dec 2021 17:52

Was Sterling’s office in the UT Tower, though?

When I visited him there in 1980, it was. It was a very small office in a very large building.

Thanks for that. Nothing like a little personal experience when it comes to such things.

I would imagine that Sterling probably got moved around over the years, as all employers — public and private — are wont to do with their employees, but it’s good to know he was based in the Tower for at least part of his time at UT Austin. Gives my postcard that extra connection, like you said earlier.

I have spent a little time in Austin, and even considered moving there permanently at one point, but life took me elsewhere.

That tower sends chills down my spine.

Tower Trailer

On August 1, 1966, after stabbing his mother and his wife to death the night before, Charles Whitman, a former Marine, took rifles and other weapons to the observation deck atop the Main Building tower at the University of Texas at Austin, and then opened fire indiscriminately on people on the surrounding campus and streets. Over the next 96 minutes he shot and killed 15 people, including an unborn child and one final victim who died from his injuries in 2001. Whitman also injured 31 others.