Loaded: The Life (and Afterlife) of The Velvet Underground

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Rebellion always starts somewhere, and in the music world of the transgressive teen whether it be the 1960s of the 2020s, The Velvet Underground represent ground zero. Crystallizing the idea of the bohemian, urban, narcissistic art school gang, around a psychedelic rock and roll band - a stylistic idea that evolved in the rarefied environs of Andy Warhol's Factory - The Velvets were the first major American rock group with a mixed gender line-up; they never smiled in photographs, wore sunglasses indoors, and in the process invented the archetype. They were avant-garde nihilists, writing about drug abuse, prostitution, paranoia, and sado-masochistic sex at a time when the rest of the world was singing about peace and love.

Dylan Jones' definitive oral history of The Velvet Underground draws on contributions from remaining members, contemporaneous musicians, critics, film-makers, and the generation of artists who emerged in their wake, to celebrate not only their impact but their legacy, which burns brighter than ever into the 21st century.

Author Bio

New York Times and Sunday Times bestselling author Dylan Jones has written or edited over twenty-five books. In the Eighties, he was one of the first editors of i-D, before becoming a Contributing Editor of The Face and Editor of Arena. He spent the next decade working in newspapers - principally the Observer and the Sunday Times - before embarking on a multi-award-winning tenure at GQ. A former columnist for the Guardian and the Independent, he is a Trustee of the Hay Festival, and a peripatetic television producer. In 2012 he was awarded an OBE for services to publishing.