The Velvet Underground album Johnny Marr was “obsessed with”
The rise of The Velvet Underground could be considered the Big Bang for alternative music. Although there had been some off-colour musicians throughout the 1960s, it wasn’t until Lou Reed took his niche topics about the grimy side of New York City to the masses that most listeners started to go outside the confines of traditional rock and roll. The alternative generation was just a few years away, and a young Johnny Marr was listening intently when he first got the ball rolling.
When Marr cut his teeth in different bands across England, his trademark style almost became a hybrid of the alternative movement and classic rock trademarks. Although his appearance on Top of the Pops with The Smiths may have looked like the ‘80s incarnation of Brian Jones from The Rolling Stones, the rolling guitar figures on songs like ‘This Charming Man’ put him one notch above the average rhythm guitar maestro.
Although Marr would praise some of the biggest bands of his youth, like The Stones, he still revered the work of the Velvet Underground, with Reed making his guitar squeal on albums like White Light/White Heat. A few years later, though, Marr’s favourite Velvet album remained a relic after the group had broken up.
Years after making their farewell record Loaded, some leftover tracks were assembled onto the album VU, straddling the final days of the band’s career and the beginning of Lou Reed’s solo work. Released in 1985, Marr was enamoured with the prospect of hearing new Velvet songs, telling The Quietus: “When this album came out, it was like finding The Commandments 11 to 20. I almost didn’t want to get my hopes up too much as it promised amazing things. When I did get it, I couldn’t believe how good it was”.
For all of the great music that The Velvet Underground had already brought out, it was a different playing field for Marr to hear this for the first time. As opposed to the little kid still learning guitar, Marr was already headfirst into The Smiths’ glory years, having already released the album Meat is Murder and finding himself on top of the charts.
Though most artists would stagnate when they reach the top, Marr attributed this album setting him over the edge, continuing, “To be hit by something as a fan of music when you are already number one in the album charts yourself was an utterly brilliant thing. It dropped into my life like a ton of inspiration. I was obsessed with it”.
From there, Marr started to bring the different soundscapes he was hearing into his music. Throughout The Smiths’ future albums, like The Queen is Dead, Marr was beginning to go outside the confines of his usual bag of tricks and focus on different textures, much like his heroes did on this album. Like being handed down inspiration, Marr’s innovation behind the fretboard would shape the world of British music for the next few decades.
The obsession with The Velvet Underground doesn’t end at ‘80s indie rock. Combined with the new material, the legacy of albums like VU became more prevalent amongst rock stars alternative to the mainstream like David Bowie and Damon Albarn, with Arctic Monkeys naming their fifth album AM as a quasi-tribute to the album. The Velvet Underground had been broken up for over a decade by the time VU was released, but it looked like fans were still willing to peel slowly and see what they had in the can.
