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1960s Music Journalism History

The Velvet Underground Found Critical Attention in Andy Warhol’s Press

September 1966 Cavalier

Now the camera moves, the lens focuses, but still the mood is tedium and death, still the preoccupation perversion, the cast queers and hustlers, and now it’s the Velvet Underground, an atonal, cacophonous rock and roll group and the Factory, Andy’s studio, is painted silver and you can look right into the gymnasium of the Y.M.C.A., and even the John is silver, and even Andy’s hair is silver, like a silver coated Hershey’s chocolate kiss . . .

Tin-foil walls of Andy Warhol’s Factory reflected more than ironically glamorous pop art. Those crinkly facets reflected a band madly defining itself.

The Velvet Underground first came to national attention within the wave of publicity their mentor Andy Warhol rode. Yet most of the band’s early press occurred outside of music magazines, including the men’s lifestyle magazine Cavalier that published “Inside Andy Warhol” in September 1966.

This article reflected a rising embrace of gay culture in the mid-1960s with its references to “cast queers” and the Y.M.C.A. Gay culture also becoming a theme in pop music as pioneered by VU and Lou Reed.

As the band got off the ground in 1966, it basked in Warhol’s reflected glory. A small boost in their path to renown, like a silver coated Hershey’s chocolate kiss . . .

September 1966 Cavalier

Copyright 2021 Donald E. Armstrong, Jr.

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