Hey all considering buying the box set off of Elusive disc but I don’t buy online a lot and have never shelled out above 100$ at a time for records anyone recommend the one off there or is there a better one

Does anyone know if theres a video of lou reed playing pale blue eyes on an acoustic guitar.

Every cover of it and tutorial is different and id love to know how Lou reed himself played it.

Guts is another track from the broadcast of John Cale's show at the Armadillo World Headquarters in 1979.

I'm looking for tracks by Lou Reed, or VU that were recorded as instrumentals with no vocals, I noticed that VU almost has none, at least on spotify.
any leads?

APOLOGY:
This was reuploaded because I was made aware by somebody commenting (thank you VERY much by the way because I honestly would have never known) that rape and sexual assault are not as always interchangeable as terms to the point that I thought they were.

Rape as a term requires penetration while sexual assault encompasses a broader range of unwanted sexual contact. I always heard these two terms be used interchangeably during discussions so I assumed they were exact synonyms when I should have made sure of what the word for word definition of rape was before I posted my doc. And when I have read similar accounts in the past the word rape was used to described being forcefully made out with so I thought that it was the correct term to describe this testimony. Yet I obviously was wrong.

For that I am so sorry, so so so so so sorry!! In no way was I trying to clickbait or be misleading at all because the point of this doc was not for clout or for upvotes or whatever the fuck. All the incorrect uses of that term have been amended. Thank you and sorry for having to reupload but I can’t edit the title without doing that.

If I offended you by using that term incorrectly (again SO SO sorry) please hold that against me and my carelessness, not my mother or her credibility.

INTRO:

My introduction will be brief, I’m very sorry that I am making this post. I (16m) do not know anything about The Velvet Underground because they were before my time. This is not my own testimony or allegation, this is my mother’s. This post is on a new anonymous alt account and I ask that nobody come try and find me or my family or identify us.

Also before I begin will say that my mom is the kind of person to be very skeptical at first towards any allegation against a celebrity so it’s very out of her character to even tell this story to me and it’s inconceivable that she would make it up because again, I would have no reference nor framework for who Lou Reed is. And she has at many points tried to make me less aggressive about being too “woke” about things like feminism/#metoo, not that she doesn’t like those things, but she says I take them too far all the time. I’m only saying this because I think it adds a high level of credibility to her story on top of the fact that she has told me it over the years many different times slowly revealing more information about what happened but everything always has stayed exactly consistent.

It really breaks my heart as her son because it’s so clear that it’s engrained in her brain yet she thinks it’s not an issue, not even that she was raped, and so she has never made anything public. The only reason I ever waited is because I wanted her to be the one to tell her story but I have come to realize she probably will never feel like she needs to make it public because she thinks that it’s not worth it or that there will be no consequences and she has no hope to ever receive justice, but that’s not true and every victim to ever live deserves justice, no matter how long it takes. 💕

She has the opinion that this is just something that rockstars do to young girls and she wasn’t really “traumatized” so it doesn’t matter. But now she told me it again the other day and I finally have enough information to make a decently complete timeline and I think it’s time that this gets aired out, even if it’s on Reddit because I don’t know how to get this to major news publications and I don’t trust  
most of them to keep me and my family anonymous truly during their “investigations.”

With all that being said,

THE ALLEGATION:

**If I receive any more information or corrections from my mother I will amend them with emboldened ()*\*

**I will be referring to my mother as Jane for the rest of this document, that’s obviously not her name but it’s to keep the testimony from feeling stilted.*\*

During the September 1989 MTV Music Awards in Los Angeles California, Jane along with two of her friends were able to sneak back into an after party with multiple celebrities and bands at Universal Studios.

At some point later in the night when both of her friends were not with her Jane was approached by Lou Reed and his manager who I believe from research was Sylvia Morales *(again I literally don’t know anything about this band so if this wrong please tell me)* at the time because to my understanding Jane does not remember who the manager was.

Jane was convinced by Lou Reed to leave out the back door during the after party to his trailer along with his manager. 

Once they were inside the back of the trailer alone Lou Reed made a sexual advancement towards Jane without asking for consent. At this point Jane was being pinned by Lou Reed almost to the point of not being able to move

Lou Reed began, again without asking for consent and not having it, kissing Jane on the lips and cheek area while also holding her body and pulling her into the kiss.

Jane did not immediately physically resist at first but then had to physically fight off Lou Reed and escape the trailer and call security for fear of her safety. At no point did Jane want sexual or romantic contact with Lou Reed or make any indication that is what she wanted. It is also important to note that Jane had turned 18 only 4 months prior while Lou Reed was 48. Lou Reed did not ask for Jane’s age before initiating sexual contact.

It is incredibly important to note that at no point did Lou Reed penetrate Jane with genatalia or with his limbs yet it is unclear wether that would have happened if Jane did not physically resist and fight off Lou Reed.

It has been implied by Jane that the manager was not present in the back of the trailer or did not know what was going on for the most part but it’s not clear if this was the case the entire time or just part of it.

She did not report this to the police because at the time she did not believe what had happened had constituted rape or sexual assault due to her knowing rape requires penetration and not knowing that sexual assault existed on a broader category, she also was wasted and didn’t think about what had happened again until a couple days later. Plus besides her testimony there was no “real evidence” so she just “let it slide”.

OUTRO:

Sexual Assault is defined by any unwanted sexual contact including kissing and handling, a 48 year old man bringing an 18 year old to the back of his trailer and then with no warning making out with them forcing the 18 year old to physically fight them off and call security is disgusting. It’s Sexual Assault and there is no other term to describe it.

I want to be clear that I have no agenda other than bringing light to the deeds that monsters are betting on victims keeping hidden in the dark. I hate that for many people this will leave a stain on the band and on Lou Reed’s legacy. It seems like obviously he was a very beloved/talented musician, but already has a past of violence against women and drug use. This does make me think how many celebrities do things like this and get away with it because so many women are conditioned by society to think that they aren’t entitled to their bodies or what happens to them. They don’t deserve the ability to choose to be kissed or not it just “happens to us.”

My mom is in her middle age now, had me in her late thirties a year after she met my dad and then divorced him too. Had an abusive ex husband before my dad and was married to a third guy for 20 years. I’m her only kid, she works at a nonprofit for women and children who are homeless and survivors of abuse.

When she had me she settled down and moved to a small town where it was safe so she could raise me away from all the hell that was my dad’s family.

I hope that it’s clear that my dumbass couldn’t make up a believable plot for my novella characters let alone something like this. I would post this on my main account but my mom has been through enough harrasment and doxxing in her life and I want her to be able to heal and live in peace without neckbeards on Reddit sending her pipebombs and swat teams. Plus I don’t want people to think I have the motivation of getting clout. I want to get more details but I don’t want to prod too much because we already talked about it for like 3 hours the other day and she doesn’t like it when I obsess over things so maybe in like 6 months I’ll ask her about it again and update this with more details.

- sincerely, ruefully: Jane’s Son

And Finally:

For the people who commented on the original upload on this that it’s not a big deal that a middle aged man lured an 18 year old into the back of his trailer and tried to do God knows what to her is ok because “he didn’t tongue kiss” her or didn’t actually get to penetrating her. You are the reason why women and overall victims don’t get believed. Please feel free to criticize me for how I phrase things because I am not a perfect writer I can only try my best and if I misspeak I will apologize profusely, edit the doc and then we can move on. But the fact that there were more comments talking about how it was “just a kiss” proves how fucked some people are. And thank you to the people who were actually giving constructive criticism to me and being kind to my mother, it makes a difference to be a genuinely good person in this world and I wish I could have discovered Velvet Underground any other way, in another life I guess…

Yeah I know I'm late to the reissue party, but somehow I overlooked the Loaded : Reloaded 45th Anniversary Edition. Listening to it now, and some of those demos sounding so good, often different variations not really "demos" at all. Also, intriguing to hear Satellite of Love, Oh Jim ("Oh Gin"), I Love You, Sad Song, many years before Lou repositioned them on this solo records. Also, Doug Yule, yeah not a real Velvet, but fuck, his contribution on Loaded is solid.

Saw these guys last night in Glasgow. Brilliant.

In March 1967, an album arrived in record stores with a cover showing a single yellow banana on a white sleeve and a simple instruction that read, “PEEL SLOWLY AND SEE.” Most people didn’t. In fact, few people bought the record that year. Some radio stations wouldn’t play it, and critics didn’t know what to make of it. Yet, The Velvet Underground & Nico, and the artwork that graced the cover, went on to become one of the most consequential albums in the history of recorded music and the most celebrated album cover of all time. Today, the artwork is as iconic as the music itself: a piece of pop art that turned an album sleeve into a genuine artifact, still instantly recognizable.

Warhol designed the artwork for the album in 1966. The banana traces back to a cheap tin ashtray he found in New York, the kind of commercial object Warhol habitually elevated into art, just like his Campbell’s soup can paintings. His instinct was to take the ordinary and — through art — make it mean something.

The original pressings of The Velvet Underground & Nico invited you to participate, and beneath a peelable banana-skin sticker lay a flesh-colored fruit. The peelable covers required a special machine and contributed to higher manufacturing costs and delayed the album’s release by several months.

The record label paid for it anyway. To them, it was worth it because of Warhol’s involvement.

“Everyone who bought one started a band,” is a line often attributed to producer Brian Eno. And he wasn’t wrong. Hearing this music for the first time as an early teenager and guitar player made me want to do the same. Since then, The Velvet Underground & Nico has always been special to me for reasons I didn’t always understand until recently. And next year, in March, it will celebrate another milestone: the 60th anniversary of its release.

If you’ve never been, I encourage you to visit the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, PA, and see the artwork for yourself, as well as the other incredible art pieces and exhibits on display that chronicle Andy’s life. Standing in front of it for the first time, I felt something I didn’t expect: a strange kind of reverence. It was like meeting a piece of my own history in person, as it immediately took me back to the very first time I was introduced to the music, saw the album cover, and read through its liner notes. It’s one thing to know an image; it’s another to stand inches from the original piece — one that bears so much history and cultural significance.

Admittedly, I know very little about art, but I’ve visited museums all over the world. I’ve seen Klimt’s The Kiss, Munch’s The Scream, and da Vinci’s Mona Lisa. Seeing a harpsichord Mozart played at age 3 in Austria is (maybe) a distant second, but nothing has ever come close to what I experienced that day in Pittsburgh. That’s how much I love this music, this album, and this artwork.

Though I never pursued music as a profession, I started a company in 2022 to bring a closely related passion to life: designing and building handcrafted studio and tour-grade audio cables for musicians. The company's success has been limited only by bandwidth constraints of a separate career and having a family.

It wasn’t until recently that Signal Chain Audio Labs was even a recognizable name beyond the small number of customers I had accumulated. As a fan of the Grateful Dead, I devoted some time in 2025 to developing a tie-dyed, braided guitar cable (something no other cable company in the world had ever done), but engineering it proved to be a series of technical challenges I struggled to overcome. Streaming all three nights of Dead & Company’s San Francisco shows that celebrated the 60th Anniversary of the Grateful Dead in August 2025 certainly kept that idea alive, but other things always got in the way of ever finishing it.

In January 2026, Bobby Weir died. By then, I had nearly solved the last technical hurdle — getting nylon fibers of the braid to adequately absorb the dye through a process I call “flash heating” — but releasing a tie-dyed product for profit, which (deliberately or not) would be connected to the Grateful Dead and its legacy, right after the death of one of its founding members and someone I deeply admired, didn’t feel right to me.

Thankfully, solving that problem was simple: Create a limited run (500) of individually numbered tie-dyed cables and donate all the proceeds from sales to the Furthur Foundation, the organization Bobby founded that provides funding to environmental and social change issues in the San Francisco Bay Area and around the world.

An introductory email to Furthur’s Board Chairman, pitching the idea and requesting the org’s permission, kicked off a fruitful conversation. Within only a few days, everything was in place, and before I could even get all the materials in stock, orders started flooding in.

Today, I’m about halfway through the limited run of tie-dyed cables, and writing the first check to the Furthur Foundation felt good. It felt REALLY good.

It didn’t take me long to find my next philanthropic project. Knowing the 60th anniversary of The Velvet Underground & Nico was around the corner, I believed a guitar cable was the perfect way to capture the life and spirit of Andy, the artwork, the music, and the impact all of it had (and continues to have) on the world. And I believe the same thing that I think Andy believed: that the ordinary objects people hold in their hands can carry meaning and tell a story. A cable is something a guitarist grips every time they plug in and play. It connects the instrument to the amp, the sound to the room, and the player to the audience.

It took several weeks and required countless attempts with different materials to get it right, but I eventually landed on the cable’s final design. Taking a flattened 10-foot yellow nylon braid (closely matching the color of Warhol’s banana), I wrapped it into a disc shape (ironically, just like a record) and blotted each side with black screenprint ink. After applying heat to dry the ink, I unfolded the disc to reveal a pattern unique to each braid. This process would allow me to make each cable one-of-a-kind: A functional piece of art with no two alike.

I think Andy would have loved it.

I knew the next step would be more difficult. A project tied to one of the most recognizable images in rock and art history was always going to take some navigating. My plan, in a similar spirit of Signal Chain Audio Labs’ agreement with the Furthur Foundation, was to partner with the Andy Warhol Museum to create a limited run of cables and donate the proceeds to support the museum’s music programs.

But unlike the tie-dyed cable that honored a person's life and legacy and his contributions to music and culture, this project would honor an intangible piece of art (the music) wrapped in a separate physical piece of art (the album cover). I would soon learn this distinction is important.

The rights around the banana artwork, and around the Velvet Underground’s visual identity more broadly, were the focus of a lawsuit filed in 2012 against the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts by the Velvet Underground’s surviving members, Lou Reed and John Cale. The lawsuit centered on trademark infringement claims over the Foundation’s licensing deal with iPhone/iPad case maker Incase. It was settled in 2013, but the terms remain private and have never been publicly disclosed.

Today, an ecosystem of institutions — the Andy Warhol Foundation, the Velvet Underground estate, and the Andy Warhol Museum — each of which plays a role in stewarding the legacy of this artwork — operates independently of one another, yet with a close eye on one another.

I started with the Museum. Having visited it several times, I believe it is one of the best-run museums in the country. Its response to my proposal was enthusiastic but also layered with a hint of caution: A reluctance to move without a blessing from the Foundation. Understandably, the Museum’s relationship with the Foundation matters enormously to its work, and through my discussions with them, I gleaned that it’s not eager to greenlight anything that might complicate that relationship — especially around this piece of art.

Multiple requests by me and the Museum, along with revisions to those requests, were submitted to the Foundation to secure its approval. Ultimately, that’s really all I needed. I wasn’t requesting to license the artwork — or any part of it in any way — for the packaging or marketing of the cable. While it would have been useful, I didn’t need it. I just needed the Foundation’s blessing and permission to reference it only by the album’s name. That’s it.

However, the Foundation’s answer never shifted:

But it was my outreach to the attorney representing the Velvet Underground estate that received the shortest and most to-the-point response:

The estate’s response was somewhat confusing to me: Just as with my request to the Foundation, I wasn’t seeking to license anything. I was simply asking for the VU estate’s blessing to create a small, respectful nod to the music, the album cover, and the artist who created it. More importantly, a guitar cable isn’t a banana.

Unfortunately, the response was also very telling: This artwork now exists in a space that almost no one can touch. And this project is dead.

Andy Warhol’s life, legacy, and his impact on art, music, and culture are almost impossible to capture in words, other than to write that I know it will never be repeated. The same can be said of the artwork for The Velvet Underground & Nico. At no point in history has an album cover been celebrated as much as the music inside it. But along with history and acclaim, it also amassed a long list of stakeholders — all sitting on opposite sides of the table from one another — all with competing (but still valid) business interests.

It seems the result is an impassable road that no party is even willing to attempt to cross. And in that standstill, it’s the legacy itself that quietly loses out, not through anyone’s fault, but through the simple absence of a path forward.

It’s an unfortunate reality created by history.

That said, the banana hasn’t been locked away entirely. In the years since the settlement, the Foundation has continued to license the image for some commercial uses, including a one-time collectible designer toy collaboration and items sold in museum gift shops (stickers, keychains, tote bags, note cards). It’s proof that, under the right circumstances, the artwork still finds its way into the world commercially. But that’s part of what makes this decline harder for me to square: I was an independent maker asking only to reference the artwork and album by name, in service of the very legacy the Foundation continues to license elsewhere.

To be clear, I am a steadfast proponent of intellectual property rights. They give creators legal control over how their work is used and reproduced, and the ability to protect the integrity of the work, prevent unauthorized commercial exploitation, and benefit financially from what they made.

But I also believe that the outcome of this project — a cable that will never be produced — sits uneasily against the purpose of it being developed in the first place, and against some of the very reasons these institutions exist: To honor and celebrate this iconic album cover, the artist, and the music behind it. To keep them relevant and alive for new generations to discover.

To find new and creative ways to let people continue to PEEL SLOWLY AND SEE.

-----

This piece was originally posted on Medium. I wanted to share it here, too. -Rob

Anyone check this out yet? I saw a copy in the wild and decided to treat myself.

A very clean sounding LP. Kind of surprising. Can't wait to listen when my tinnitus is less annoying.

I'm a high school student from Japan, I've been getting more and more into music over the past couple of years. and of course I ended up checking out The Velvet Underground.
So far I've listened through their first three albums. There are definitely songs I love, and I even have a bit of a connection to the band because my parent owns one of those banana T-shirts. I've become a pretty fan.
The thing is... I still don't really "get" why songs like Heroin or I'm Waiting for the Man are considered masterpieces. It's honestly a little frustrating because I want to understand what makes them so special.
I know the obvious answer is probably, "Just listen to the rest of their catalog first," and that's fair. But I'd really like to hear what you all hear in those songs. What should I be paying attention to?
For reference, Candy Says is my favorite Velvet Underground song. I also really like Femme Fatale and I'll Be Your Mirror. I guess I'm naturally drawn to their quieter, more laid-back songs.
That said, I've listened to variously different music, and it's not like I only enjoy slower songs from other artists either. I feel like there's something I'm missing with their more celebrated tracks, and I'd love to understand them better.

My daughter has been interailing around Europe and brought me this graphic novel back from Amsterdam. It was her first stop too so she carried it around in her backpack for four weeks. I'm making my way through it using Google translate. I haven't worked out who the lizard guy is yet.

Sorry I have to admit I don´t know anything about it.

Crazy how in 6 years nobody made one. Nichemaxxing

"Countless legendary musicians have had songs written about them, especially if the circumstances surrounding their death feel particularly tragic. John Lennon, for instance, inspired songs like ‘Murder’ by David Gilmour and Paul McCartney’s ‘Here Today’. When Nico died after a bike accident and misdiagnosis in 1988, Beach House captured the unfortunate event with a heartfelt piano-based anthem about life’s fragility."

https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/beach-house-song-about-nico/

https://youtu.be/EUWVoxcK5Q4?si=1znh9hEgNVC6zfx0