Frank Zappa’s favourite song by The Velvet Underground
Lou Reed, the iconic frontman of The Velvet Underground, was known to have come up with a few whoppers in his time. Through the undulations of addiction woes and a problematic relationship with envy, the songwriter would often lie in interviews to mislead journalists for whom he had the least respect. Additionally, the New York poet was notably capricious, so his opinions were known to change on a sixpence.
With this established, we can take a hefty dose of salt when examining Lou Reed’s opinions on his fellow artists. Take his comments about the venerable avant-garde composer, for example: “He’s probably the single most untalented person I’ve heard in my life,” Reed once said of Zappa. “He’s a two-bit pretentious academic, and he can’t play his way out of anything. He can’t play rock’n’roll because he’s a loser. And that’s why he dresses up funny. He’s not happy with himself, and I think he’s right.”
Whether Reed had simply got out of bed on the wrong side that morning is anyone’s guess, but it doesn’t take an Einstein to suppose there was more at play here. A feud of sorts broke out between Frank Zappa and The Velvet Underground in 1966. The latter was performing as part of Andy Warhol’s Factory collective, The Exploding Plastic Inevitable, at the time and were yet to release their seminal debut album.
During a visit to the West Coast, the Velvets brushed shoulders with Zappa during a shared gig engagement. Allegedly, Zappa made a provocative comment about the band and its artsy Factory association. The jibe was exacerbated somewhat by the fact that both artists shared the same label, MGM, and were rivals as alternative acts.
Just what Zappa said, or indeed whether he said anything at all, is unknown, but something triggered a couple of years of acrimony. As Zappa’s Mothers of Invention bandmate Jimmy Carl Black once recalled, “I don’t remember Zappa actually putting them down on stage, but he might have. He really disliked the band. For what reasons, I really don’t know, except that they were junkies, and Frank just couldn’t tolerate any kind of drugs. I know that I didn’t feel that way, and neither did the rest of the Mothers. I thought that they were very good, especially Nico (whom I secretly fell in love with, or was it lust?).”
“I especially thought that Moe was a very good drummer because, in those days, I don’t recall there being any other female drummers on the scene,” he added. “The thinking of the audiences was completely different than those from New York City. They were lukewarmly received.”
Over the years, Zappa and Reed seemed to bury the hatchet. The latter inducted the former into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995. In his speech, Reed lauded the late Zappa’s artistic integrity and his steadfast attitude to causes close to his heart, both in and outside the music industry.
“Of the many regrets I have in life, not knowing [Frank Zappa] a lot better was one of them. Whether writing symphonies, satirical broadsides or casting a caustic glow across the frontier of madness that makes up the American political landscape,” he said. “Whether testifying before Congress to put the PMRC in its rightful lowly place or acting as a cultural conduit for President Vaclav Havel and the Czech government, Frank was a force for reason and honesty in a business deficient in these areas.”
For his part, Zappa admitted to being a fan of The Velvet Underground, especially their 1967 debut album, The Velvet Underground & Nico, in 1969. “I liked that album,” he told Frank Kofsky. “I think that Tom Wilson deserves a lot of credit for making that album because it’s folk music. It’s electric folk music, in the sense that what they’re saying comes right out of their environment.”
In 1980, Zappa was invited to take over BBC Radio 1 in a guest slot to play some of his favourite songs. Amid his broad spectrum of selections was the classic debut cut ‘All Tomorrow’s Parties’. The musician was also said to be a fan of ‘Femme Fatale’, another song featuring Nico.
Listen to ‘All Tomorrow’s Parties’ by The Velvet Underground below.
