Aware of one's surroundings while songwriting as opposed to simply replicating/transcribing previous songwriting.

All of you are cunts, beatles fans and beatles haters.

When did I ever say that being influenced by something has to mean replicating and transcribing it?

Your assumptions are sort of verified here:

http://www.lacitybeat.com/cms/story/...70&IssueNum=74

This is the relevant bit though:

I remember a small uproar from readers when you were quoted in Rolling Stone saying that the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper had absolutely no impact on your work. That was sacrilege to some, but it seems obvious now.

I have no idea if I actually ever said that. But [the Beatles] had nothing to do with what we were doing. Which is neither here nor there. It's not criticism. John Lennon later on does "Cold Turkey," but that's years later. It was a continent already visited. But a lot of the old blues guys had gotten there a long time before that, before me.

...

They weren't assumptions, every hardcore vu fan knows about the velvets' hatred for the beatles.

so why did you say you assumed it was true?

Personally i prefer the Rutles

Sorry, you're right, that doesn't make sense. I was posting while tired and drunk.


It surprised me to find Reed riffing a Beatles song, so I was thinking to myself that perhaps the normal assumption by hardcore VU fans that there was major beef between the two bands is only based on the fact that Reed and his pretty large ego took spokesperson duty for the whole band and stressed that VU were the antithesis of ''Sgt. Pepper'' and that whole mainstream flower power explosion happening at that time, but I rarely came across the opinions of the other members of the band on The Beatles, so most books about VU take Reed's opinions as the sole proof for this supposed ''war'' between the two bands. Actually, I remember reading somewhere that Maureen Tucker was a casual fan of theirs before she was asked to play in the band. McCartney also offered to put their first record out at first, so it could be that the whole thing was just bitchiness.

I was also thinking that the first VU album is generally regarded as the ultimate anti-hippie, avant-rock album of the 60's together with ''Sister Ray'', yet the structure/melodies of a few songs on it (Sunday Morning/There She Goes/Femme Fatale for instance) isn't really all that different from pre-psychedelic era Beatles, save from some lyrical content, which was the work of Lou Reed alone, not the others.

Here.

none of em sound as good as the records.

Reed was probably just being ironic. I mean, I play Smoke on the Water sometimes and I hate that song.

Does anyone know if any of the band's compilation albums are going to receive the same treatment?

the ultimate anti-hippie shit is either the first VU, the first MOTORHEAD, or the first SABBATh

I've never quite understood the idea that sabbath were an anti-hippie band. I know they go on about it themselves and it's true that they ditched the love and peace angle. Ultimately though I've always felt that they really only offered another side of the hippie thing, rather than an alternative to it. I mean, as much as people seem to lijke to act as though they were, they were hardly Slade.


... there, and everywhere

Slade and Quo AKA the united front against hippies.

Hippies was middle class kids dropping out of the society and expanding their consciousness with drugs, meditation, alternative religions, etc.

Sabbath was working class kids, angry as all fuck, seeking to destroy that happy peace love tiogetherness BULLSHIT that had suckered in all the hippies. They may have been the other side of the coin, but that does not mean they were the same.

?????????????????????????????????????????????????? ?????????????????????????????????????????????????? ?????????????????????????????????????????????????? ?????????????????????????????????????????????????? ?????????????????????????????????????????????????? ?????????????????????????????????????????????????? ?????????????????????????????????????????????????? ?????????????????????????????????????????????????? ?????????????????????????????????????????????????? ?????????????????????????????????????????????????? ?????????????????????????????????????????????????? ?????????????????????????????????????????????????? ??????

Sterling Morrison - middle class
Lou Reed - middle class
John Cale - middle class


Mo' Tucker - working class, not exactly too bad off, though.

The Beatles - weren't they all from working class backgrounds?

"THEN THE BEATLES CAME, AND GOT US HOOKED ON ENERGYYYYYYYYYYYY
LOOK WHAT YOU STARTED, ELVIS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

-Rorscach Test