Description
Offered for sale is a Japanese pressing of The Velvet Underground & Nico by the Velvet Underground & Nico, including the original obi and an unpeeled banana sticker on the front cover.
Note: This 1986 pressing was the final Japanese issue before Japanese record companies stopped pressing vinyl. Most copies were sold on compact disc; the vinyl pressing is fairly scarce.
About this copy: This copy of The Velvet Underground & Nico is a 1986 Japanese pressing on the Verve label of an album that was originally released in the U.S. in 1967, but which was not released in Japan until 1973.
The cover is M-. The banana sticker is present, fully intact and is M-. The obi is VG++ with a couple of minor wrinkles and slight wear at the top edge, but no tears.. The lyric insert is M-.
The disc is VG+ with a light hairline through the last half of the “All Tomorrow’s Parties” and a fingernail mark through the first two tracks on side two. (see photo.) The mark looks worse in the photos than it is; it’s not a deep scratch and should be inaudible.
A nice copy of a scarce Velvet Underground LP and the first copy we’ve had in quite a while.
Background: The 1967 debut by the Velvet Underground, The Velvet Underground & Nico, sold poorly in its initial release, and given that the record company had to make multiple changes to the already-expensive, Andy Warhol-designed cover, the album almost certainly lost money for the record company. Despite that, people, especially other musicians, managed to hear it, and today, the album is rightly regarded as one of the most influential albums in rock history.
AllMusic.com gave The Velvet Underground & Nico five stars, saying:
One would be hard-pressed to name a rock album whose influence has been as broad and pervasive as The Velvet Underground & Nico. While it reportedly took over a decade for the album’s sales to crack six figures, glam, punk, new wave, goth, noise, and nearly every other left-of-center rock movement owes an audible debt to this set. While The Velvet Underground had as distinctive a sound as any band, what’s most surprising about this album is its diversity….
While the significance of Nico’s contributions have been debated over the years, she meshes with the band’s outlook in that she hardly sounds like a typical rock vocalist, and if Andy Warhol’s presence as producer was primarily a matter of signing the checks, his notoriety allowed The Velvet Underground to record their material without compromise, which would have been impossible under most other circumstances. Few rock albums are as important as The Velvet Underground & Nico, and fewer still have lost so little of their power to surprise and intrigue more than 40 years after first hitting the racks.
The album drew attention for a number of reasons, including the cover art, which depicted a banana with the curious caption, “Peel slowly and see.” Most buyers peeled the sticker back to see what was underneath, and were probably disappointed to realize that what was underneath was essentially an image of a peeled banana, albeit a pink one. Finding original pressings today with the banana intact can be a chore, and can cost a small fortune.
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| Country of origin: | Japan |
| Size: | 12″ |
| Record Label: | Verve |
| Catalog Number: |
18MM 0525 |
| Year of Release: | 1986 |
| Format: | Stereo |
| Share: |       |
