Watch The Black Crowes’ live cover of The Velvet Underground classic ‘Oh! Sweet Nuthin’’
When George Harrison finally found himself stilted with the state of rock ‘n’ roll, he turned to his son Dhani who recommended a band he grew to greatly admire. “As for recent groups, he played me the Black Crowes,” Harrison enthusiastically recalled, “and they really sounded OK.” It’s as great a compliment as you can get as a musician.
The reason that they struck a chord with a lot of the old guard is that they seemed to reprise the old ways of music and played “without any of the bullshit”. In their own subtle way, this proved to be highly influential as they wrestle music back towards earnest conventions following the experimentation that followed the fall of the synth saturated 1980s.
Thus, it seems fitting that they recently covered another band that garnered great influence beyond their impact at the time. As Brian Eno recalled: “I was talking to Lou Reed the other day, and he said that the first Velvet Underground record sold only 30,000 copies in its first five years. Yet, that was an enormously important record for so many people.”
Fatefully adding: “I think everyone who bought one of those 30,000 copies started a band! So, I console myself in thinking that some things generate their rewards in second-hand ways.” Indeed, the New York proto-indie rockers really did help to spawn a different direction in music despite masterpieces like Loaded failing to chart globally. How on earth such an atrocity is possible remains to be seen.
Considering by many fans as the last Velvet Underground record owing to the departures of Lou Reed, Sterling Morrison and Maureen Tucker that followed its release, the soaring crescendo of ‘Oh! Sweet Nuthin’’ is, in a way, the farewell of one of the greatest bands of all time on one of the greatest records ever produced.
As was their style, the song provides a tableau of the proverbial ‘man on the street’. We all know the poor old protagonist, Jimmy Brown; it’s just usually his tale isn’t met with such profound triumph. Black Crowes’ attempt to harness this same sense of exultancy with their raucous closing with this live version from 2022.
You can check out their cover of the Velvet Underground classic recorded at the Alcatraz in Milan, Italy below.
