Lou Reed Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Sandy Pearlman

Critical Essay by Sandy Pearlman

With the Velvet Underground the pussyfooting has stopped. They do songs like "Venus in Furs" …, "Heroin," "The Black Angel's Death Song." That shows us what their world view is like. When the Stones did their first nihilist album (December's Children) you could have missed it without the album cover's help. You might have thought it merely beautiful. But the world system of the Velvets—rooted in sex, violence, disorder, perversion and stuff like that—is far too obvious. These guys are so serious that they have a coherent position. (p. 23)

Sandy Pearlman, "Saucer Lands in Virginia," in Crawdaddy (copyright © 1967 by Crawdaddy Publishing Co., Inc.; all rights reserved; reprinted by permission), October, 1967, pp. 20-4.∗