Up-Tight: The Velvet Underground Story Read Free

The Velvet Underground. Malanga had been a dancer on
Alan Freed’s Big Beat
TV show when Freed got busted in a payola scandal (that also affected, among others, Dick Clark) and the show got closed down. Rubin was an intimate of, among others, Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Bob Dylan, Jonas Mekas and Andrei Voznesenskv, who had, according to Ginsberg, “dedicated her life to introducing geniuses to each other in the hope that they would collaborate to make great art that would change the world”. It was the middle of December 1965.
    GERARD MALANGA: “She asked me to bring my whip and suggested I dance while the group performed, as Barbara knew how much I enjoyed it, having already seen me dance to Martha and The Vandellas in Andy’s film
Vinyl. On the
following day, Barbara and I entered Cafe Bizarre to the glaring sounds of what appeared to be a rock’n’roll group, but there all resemblance ended. The stage was level with the rest of the floor, so the group was right up against the tables and chairs. I waited for about 20 minutes before getting up to dance. I was tentative at first because no one else was on the dance floor at the time and I thought my participating would be an intrusion since the musicians were in such close proximity to the audience. I did, finally, make my way to the front of the audience – a few scattered customers – and was joined minutes later by a young girl who quickly retreatedback to her seat. During the intermission Barbara introduced me to Lou Reed and John Cale. Lou said how much he enjoyed my getting up to dance to the music. I told him I felt a little self-conscious because I was intruding, but he assured me I wasn’t, and both he and John said I should come back and dance again. They really wanted people to dance to the music and not just to sit and listen to it. The music was very intimidating.”
    MORRISSEY: “The next day you told me The Velvets were interesting, you and Barbara wanted to film some footage of them, and you asked me to come along to help with the lighting. I thought they were fascinating. The first thing that registered to me, and I think to Andy later, was the drummer Maureen, because you could not tell whether she was a boy or a girl. This was a first within rock’n’roll because The Beatles all looked like little girls but you knew they were boys. You had no idea what Maureen’s gender was. The second thing was John Cale’s electric viola. And the third thing was they sang a song called ‘Heroin’. For some reason when I’m looking for something the first thing I see always works out for me. When I take an apartment it’s always the first one. And usually casting actors in movies I always cast the first one that comes in front of my mind and I say that’s right. I never fool around and change a person. I never saw any other rock’n’roll groups. They were a unique group and they were called The Underground. That’s another reason I went down because you told me the name of the group. And this was the term always connected with Andy, too. I didn’t say anything at the time, but the next day I said, ‘Andy, I found the group to play at Michael Myerberg’s UP.’ So Andy came down the very next night.”
    The Cafe Bizarre was a long narrow room with sawdust on the floor and a number of tables with fish-net lamps ranged along the walls. The Warhol party, including Sedgwick, Morrissey, Malanga and Rubin, sat at a couple of tables against the wall in front of and to the left of the band. It was aThursday night. Nobody paid any attention to their arrival. The art and rock worlds were still quite separate and the ten or fifteen people scattered among the tables didn’t recognize the new arrivals. The silver-haired man in dark glasses and a black leather jacket with his chin resting on an elegantly slim hand listened to the animated conversation of his companions, occasionally interrupting with a short, playful comment but remained for the most