“IT WASN’T THE REAL THING ”
BY the time The Velvet Underground finally arrived in Britain, they were unrecognisable from the group whose first album, released only four and a half years earlier, had proposed an entirely new direction for rock music. Just about the only thing they had in common with the original band was the name. In some eyes, that was more than they deserved. Danny Fields, the New York scenemaker and sometime manager of the Stooges and the Ramones, christened them the Velveteens, which seemed to fit pretty well because whatever they were, it wasn’t the real thing.
No Lou Reed, who had left the band during the recording of just over a year earlier. No Sterling Morrison, who had withdrawn from the fray to teach medieval literature at the University of Texas. They still had Maureen Tucker, though, which was
