Velvet Underground Quotes

Not many people bought Velvet Underground LPs, but those who did, started a band.

I think Andy Kaufman is to comedy what the Velvet Underground was to music - it's like, 80 thousand records sold, but everybody who bought one started a band.

I always believed that I have something important to say and I said it.

I always wanted to move to New York because of the Velvet Underground, because of the picture that they painted of New York City.

No part of Manhattan these days really has the same vibe I get from a Ramones song or a Velvet Underground song.

As a teen, I heard the second Velvet Underground album, 'White Light/White Heat,' and it was too much for my limited scope of appreciation. It was intense, but I didn't get it.

The most important part of my religion is to play guitar.

These are really terribly rough times, and we really should try to be as nice to each other as possible.

I think that everything happens for a reason, everything happens when it's going to happen.

One of the greatest learning experiences I had was hanging out with Maureen Tucker from the Velvet Underground. There's a woman who has no training and has a very simplistic and very tribal drumming style. I don't even know that she can even do a drum roll, but she's probably my favorite rock drummer because she plays every note perfect.

Everybody gets a tag. If you listen to a Velvet Underground record, you don't think, 'Godfathers of Punk.' You just think, 'This sounds great.' The tags are there in order to help try to sell something by giving it a name that's going to stick in somebody's memory. But it doesn't describe it. So 'depressing' isn't a word I would use to describe my music. But there is some sadness in it -- there has to be, so that the happiness in it will matter.

I like their darkness but I also like the pop-side of the Velvet Underground.

I don't know anyone actually who does care what a critic says.

Though gay lifestyles have certainly moved into the open, there's little evidence that society has become more open in its basic attitudes or that entertainers should feel cozy in emerging from the velvet underground.

The first Velvet Underground album only sold 10,000 copies, but everyone who bought it formed a band

I grew up in the '90s. I listened to a lot of The Clash, Velvet Underground and Roxy Music. I wasn't into Boyzone, or anything.

One chord is fine. Two chords are pushing it. Three chords and you're into jazz.

When I was growing up, I fetishised New York City. It was the land of Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground, it was where Leonard Cohen wrote 'Chelsea Hotel', it was CBGBs and all the punk rock clubs. Artists and musicians lived there, and it was cheap and dangerous.

I knew about things like Iggy Pop and The Velvet Underground, weirdly, before I knew about David Bowie. I didn't know what David Bowie was, when I was a kid. I thought he was like Visage.

The best New York in the world is driving down the [Pacific Coast Highway] listening to the Velvet Underground. That's the best time I've ever been to New York.

As a New Yorker you can't help but be proud of the fact that so much music and culture started here. Punk rock, jazz, hip-hop and house music started here, George Gershwin debuted 'Rhapsody in Blue' here; the Velvet Underground are from New York.

I do a cover of a Velvet Underground song, and they were one of the most important bands, for me.

The clothes I wear... that doesn't change. I love long dresses. I love velvet. I love high boots. I never change. I love the same eye make-up. I'm not a fad person. I still have everything I had then. That's one part of me... that's where my songs come from. There's a song on the new Fleetwood Mac album [Mirage] that says, 'Going back to the velvet underground/back to the floor that I love,' because I always put my bed on the floor. 'To a room with some lace and paper flowers/ back to the gypsy that I was.'

It's depressing when you're still around and your albums are out of print.

That's the words: "So I'm back to the velvet underground" - which is a clothing store in downtown San Francisco, where Janis Joplin got her clothes, and Grace Slick from Jefferson Airplane, it was this little hole in the wall, amazing, beautiful stuff - "back to the floor that I love, to a room with some lace and paper flowers, back to the gypsy that I was."