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Dave Thompson
doug yule, moe tucker, walter powers, and sterling morrison, late 1970. photo from doug yule collection courtesy of sal mercuri On Aug. 23, 1970, Lou Reed played his last show with The Velvet Underground, the band he had led since its formation as psychotic, anti-pop theater, five years before. Fittingly, the group's final shows, the city that bred the band, informed their earliest music and, a two-year midlife estrangement not-withstanding, remained their spiritual center throughout their existence.
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A lot had changed since the days when the Velvets had been synonymous with Andy Warhol, screaming violas and 20-minute experiments in dissonance and noise. Warhol had gone; so had cofounder John Cale, bailing out after the second album; and so had Nico, the model turned chanteuse who voiced some of the group's best-loved (or, at least, most melodic) early material. Guitarist Sterling Morrison and drummer Maureen "Mo" Tucker remained, of course, but they agreed with Reed that the spirit of the "modern" band, as they launched their two-month residency at Max's Kansas City on June 24, 1970, was different from that which had spray-painted its urban chic reality across Warhol's Factory in 1965. In fact, Tucker is particularly adamant on that point. Pregnant with daughter Kerry at the time, she'd taken a leave of absence before the Max's residency even opened and watched the drama unfold from the sidelines.
She was replaced in the lineup by Billy Yule, a high-school kid whose older brother, Doug, just happened to have replaced Cale for the Velvets' eponymous third album the previous year. Indeed, by the time of their fourth, the recently issued Loaded , Doug Yule was as much the band's frontman as Reed. When Reed fell ill during the recording sessions, Yule took over the vocals, and few people could tell the difference. As relations worsened between Reed and the band's manager, Steve Sesnick, Yule -- unbeknownst to him -- was maneuvered into a position of ever-greater strength.
Considering how much of the Velvets' career was lived out in the obscurity of a band whose biggest hit, their first album, climbed no higher than #171 on the chart and whose present-day renown and legend is wholly posthumous, it is a minor miracle that Reed's...