r/VelvetUnderground

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​On the Beatles sub, people say the Beatles are the greatest at everything and nobody shows up to hate on the band.

​But here on the VU sub, it's common to read things like:

​"The Beatles were and still are widely influential. VU had its admirers, but nobody really talks about them"

​"It's obviously more about the fact that anybody can write/sing 'Waiting for the Man' and 'Penny Lane' requires an orchestra"

​"Already liking the Velvet Undershittyground is just an effort to be different."

Los Angeles Times: "What about the Velvet Underground drew you and R.E.M. to cover their songs?"

MICHAEL STIPE: "For all of us in R.E.M., the Velvets were one of the most significant musical moments in American history. The first album is one of the top five, top three maybe, albums ever released, in terms of how complete it is and how great it is and what a lightning-in-a-bottle moment they captured. How audacious they were in their art, the music — and how much that was out of step with the world that they were in. And R.E.M. always felt a little out of step with what was going on. We forged our own path, and they were an aspirational influence for sure."

[...]

Los Angeles Times: "How well did you know Lou Reed?"

MICHAEL STIPE: "When he died [in 2013], I realized that I had known Lou for half of my life. He was kind of curmudgeonly and not altogether pleasant when we first met — I was 25, I think — but by the end of his life, we were friends.

We were neighbors on Canal Street, and of course I had deep admiration for him and for the work that he had done and the same for Laurie [Anderson], so we would hang out from time to time. He would give me these giant hugs and hold on to me for minutes at a time. He was a wildly intelligent and very emotionally accessible — and then inaccessible — person, but a total sweetheart in the end."

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I tried to share the link to the full interview yesterday, but Reddit automatically deleted it. So, I'll just leave the title of the article here for anyone who wants to find it on Google: "Michael Stipe, superfan, on the ‘beautiful queerness’ of the Velvet Underground" - Los Angeles Times, 2021.