This year marks the 50th anniversary of The Velvet Underground & Nico, the magnum opus that appeared during flower power’s full bloom and brought to pop infinite new sonic possibilities and radically darker themes, from drug abuse to sadomasochism. With its influence stretching from David Bowie to Lady Gaga, perhaps Brian Eno’s celebrated quote about the initially low-selling classic – “Everyone who bought it formed a band” – isn’t much of an exaggeration. With only John Cale and drummer Moe Tucker surviving from the 1967 lineup, and the latter having seemingly retired from music, the former enlisted young indie guests to bring the songs to Liverpool’s Sound City festival.
Songs that were originally played in half-empty clubs to the sound of chinking glasses were unveiled before an air-punching, banana-pelting crowd of 11,000. The incongruity of the venue – a dustbowl on a bleak industrial estate – in some ways suited the Velvets’ aura of subversion. However, those forking out £55 for a ticket surely expected better than 30-minute bar queues and a puny sound system, which meant that the likes of a more electronic treatment of I’m Waiting for the Man struggled to be heard over audience chatter.
Cale’s “reimagination” also meant playing around with the album’s tracklisting and including songs from second album White Light/White Heat. The Kills’ leather-clad blonde, Alison Mosshart, looked and sounded Velvet for a more rollicking arrangement of the title track. Gruff Rhys donned a lab coat for a beautifully gory Lady Godiva’s Operation.
However, There She Goes Again sounded under-rehearsed and messy, and Wild Beasts’ fragile rendition of the hallowed I’ll Be Your Mirror was inaudible enough to trigger a chant of “Louder! Louder!”
In the absence of introductions, video images, or what one might call A-list guests, it was often difficult to work out who was on stage. Some mistook Fat White Family’s besuited, sunglassed Lias Saoudi for ex-Verve singer Richard Ashcroft, until he opened his mouth for a pub karaoke All Tomorrow’s Parties.
However, some of the better moments suggested that, if lessons are learned, forthcoming performances in New York might yet be sensational. The now white-haired Cale reprised his vocal/screeching viola role for Venus in Furs. Late co-founder Lou Reed – his iconic 60s image gazing from video screens – would surely have been amused to hear, “Taste the whip, now bleed for me” become a Friday-night singalong.
Tyneside singer Nadine Shah oozed powerful femininity in a glorious Femme Fatale, and poor Saoudi was much better suited to a triumphantly unsettling Heroin, in which he threw in everything from a blood-curdling primal scream to a barmy, spontaneous Michael Jackson crotch grab.
The best moments in the show came when everyone lost themselves in the formidable power of the music. An epic, 30-minute Sister Ray smashed the curfew, went all acid house and Dias’s microphone suddenly became mysteriously inaudible for the line “She’s busy sucking on my ding dong”. Perhaps some aspects of the Velvet Underground remain too dangerous for mass consumption after all.
• This article was amended on 28 May to correct the location of future performances.
