🎸 NOVEMBER 12, 1965 – THE FIRST CHORD OF REVOLUTION
On November 12, 1965, inside a high school auditorium in Summit, New Jersey, something strange happened.
A few dozen teenagers gathered for what they thought would be a regular Friday night dance. But what they saw was unlike anything they’d ever heard before.
That night marked the first-ever live performance of The Velvet Underground — a band that would never top the charts, never play stadiums, yet would change the direction of rock music forever.
They were raw, abrasive, hypnotic, and totally out of place in that suburban gym.
No one in the audience knew it yet, but they were witnessing the birth of modern alternative music.
🎸 THE WORLD BEFORE THE VELVETS
The mid-1960s were a time of pop perfection.
The Beatles were charming the world with melody and wit. The Beach Boys were harmonizing about California dreams. The Rolling Stones were dangerous, but still radio-friendly.
Everything was neat, polished, and marketable.
But in the shadows of New York, there was a different world — one of noise, poetry, drugs, and disillusionment.
In that underground scene, art met chaos. And out of that chaos, The Velvet Underground emerged.
🎸 LOU REED AND JOHN CALE – TWO WORLDS COLLIDE
It began with two men who couldn’t have been more different.
Lou Reed, a Long Island native, was a frustrated songwriter working for Pickwick Records, churning out teenage pop hits he secretly despised. He wanted something real — something dark, literary, and honest.
John Cale, from Wales, was a classically trained violist obsessed with avant-garde minimalism, studying under La Monte Young in New York’s experimental scene.
When Reed’s bizarre single “The Ostrich” needed a band to perform it, Cale was recruited — and the two instantly connected.
Cale brought dissonance and drone. Reed brought street poetry and attitude. Together, they created a new language of sound.
They called their group The Velvet Underground, after a paperback book about sexual subculture.
🎸 BEFORE FAME, BEFORE WARHOL – JUST A BAND IN A SCHOOL GYM
Before Andy Warhol, before the banana album, before “Heroin” and “Venus in Furs,” there was that night at Summit High School.
The lineup was raw:
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Lou Reed on guitar and vocals
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John Cale on viola, bass, and keyboards
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Sterling Morrison on guitar
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Angus MacLise on drums
MacLise, the original drummer, was more of a poet and mystic than a musician. He considered performances “a trap.” He believed playing for money was selling out, and nearly refused the gig.
But for this show — reportedly unpaid — he went along.
The band loaded their instruments into a borrowed car, drove to the New Jersey suburbs, and stepped onto a high school stage.
🎸 WHAT THE AUDIENCE SAW
Imagine it: 1965. The students expecting pop covers or maybe a surf band — and instead, four men in black producing drones, feedback, and lyrics about darkness.
It must have sounded like the apocalypse.
John Cale later recalled that some kids danced, others stared in confusion. The teachers in charge of the event reportedly hated it.
But for the band, it was perfect. It was the first step toward the noise and beauty they would unleash on the world.
Within weeks, MacLise quit — declaring that “rock ’n’ roll is a trap.” He was replaced by Maureen “Moe” Tucker, whose simple, primitive drumming would become an essential part of their sound.
And with that, The Velvet Underground as we know them was born.
🎸 ENTER ANDY WARHOL – THE FACTORY YEARS
By 1966, they were performing regularly at Andy Warhol’s Factory in New York City.
Warhol, captivated by their rawness, became their manager and added his own touch of art-world glamour.
He paired them with the German singer Nico, transforming the band into a surreal spectacle: white light projections, experimental films, and a haunting voice floating above the chaos.
Their performances weren’t concerts — they were happenings. A mix of noise, beauty, and danger.
🎸 “VENUS IN FURS” – SOUNDTRACK OF DECADENCE
One of the songs that captured their early essence — and likely grew out of those first chaotic gigs — was “Venus in Furs.”
Inspired by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s 19th-century novel of the same name, the song was built on John Cale’s droning viola and Reed’s icy monotone:
“Shiny, shiny, shiny boots of leather
Whiplash girlchild in the dark…”
It was unlike anything in rock music at the time. No chorus, no hooks — just a hypnotic descent into forbidden desire.
This wasn’t flower power. It was power stripped of flowers.
The song would become a defining track on their 1967 debut album, The Velvet Underground & Nico, often called “the banana album” for Warhol’s iconic cover art.
🎸 THE FIRST SHOW’S RIPPLE EFFECT
The Summit High School gig barely registered in the press. There were no critics, no cameras, no fanfare. But history would later look back at that moment as a starting point of the modern underground.
That night, The Velvet Underground set the tone for everything to come: minimalism, honesty, and confrontation.
They didn’t care about commercial success — and indeed, they never had much of it. Their debut album initially sold fewer than 30,000 copies.
Yet as Brian Eno famously said, “Everyone who bought one of those 30,000 copies started a band.”
🎸 WHY THEY MATTERED
The Velvet Underground proved that music didn’t have to be perfect. It could be messy, uncomfortable, and true.
They sang about addiction (“Heroin”), sexuality (“Venus in Furs”), and urban isolation (“I’m Waiting for the Man”).
In a decade obsessed with love and peace, they showed the other side — the one that bled in the shadows of the city.
And it all began in that unlikely place: a suburban high school auditorium in New Jersey.
🎸 AFTER THE NOISE FADED
The band’s life was turbulent. Members came and went, egos clashed, and by the early 1970s, The Velvet Underground dissolved.
But their influence never did. Punk, new wave, indie, and alternative all grew from their DNA — from The Sex Pistols to R.E.M., from Sonic Youth to The Strokes.
Every band that ever played too loud for comfort owes a debt to that night in 1965.
🎸 NOVEMBER 12 – A DATE TO REMEMBER
Looking back, November 12, 1965 wasn’t just their first gig.
It was the night a new kind of rock music was born — one that valued art over fame, honesty over harmony, and noise over niceness.
The Velvet Underground didn’t start in a club, or at a festival, or in a fancy venue.
They started in a gymnasium, under fluorescent lights, surrounded by confused teenagers — and from that chaos came a movement that would redefine music itself.
🎵 Song: “Venus in Furs” (1967)
Album: The Velvet Underground & Nico
Writers: Lou Reed
Released: March 12, 1967
Legacy: A haunting masterpiece that fused literature, art, and rock into one hypnotic vision.