What makes a lifelong Velvet Underground fan decide to sift through hundreds of cover versions of the iconic band’s songs in order to come up with ten of the most interesting? I blame one of my colleagues here at Audiophix.
See, he posted a video recently of the Cowboy Junkies’ cover of VU’s “Sweet Jane.” It’s a great version. Even VU band leader and song composer Lou Reed lauded it, and Lou Reed generally hated everything.
But it did get me thinking that there must be others. The Velvet Underground was one of the most influential bands of the early rock era, and they continue to inspire musicians more than fifty years after calling it quits.
Ten iconic covers of the Velvet Underground by artists you may not know
They released four studio albums during Reed’s tenure, another after he left, and several compilations of deeper cuts some years later. Reed was a prolific writer, but still, that is a relatively small output for such a significant band. Still, by my quick research, there have been more than 350 covers of Velvet Underground songs released since the early 1970s.
A lion’s share of those covers were of songs from their historic debut, The Velvet Underground & Nico (1967). Four songs from that album – “Venus in Furs,” Femme Fatale,” “Sunday Morning,” and “All Tomorrow’s Parties” – have more than 20 versions floating around out there.
The paean to sadomasochism, “Venus in Furs,” has been recorded by at least 33 other artists, making it the most covered VU tune.
Setting aside that Cowboy Junkies’ take on “Sweet Jane,” let’s check out ten other awesome covers of Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground. What I’m looking for here are songs that may be a bit off the beaten path. Beck recorded a lot of VU songs, and he did them very well. But there’s no Beck on the following list.
I’m just looking for things that are a little different. After the Velvet Underground was nothing if not different.
“Waiting for the Man” by Bauhaus with Nico (1982)
I am not going to include any covers performed by VU members (mostly Lou Reed and John Cale) during their post-Velvet solo careers. But I am making a minor exception here. Nico, the German beauty enlisted by Andy Warhol to give the Velvets some sex appeal in their early days, was never an artistic fit with Reed.
He fired her after the famous first album, on which she had sung three of the songs.
She did not sing “Waiting for the Man,” one of Reed’s first long story songs about the underbelly of NYC. This one is about a “white boy” going uptown to score drugs. Goth rockers Bauhaus performed the song live with Nico at the nightclub Fagin’s in Manchester in the early ‘80s, and they crank out a lively, sloppy version with Nico and Bauhaus vocalist Peter Murphy practically singing two different songs, at different speeds, and at the same time. The effect is mesmerizing.
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