120 - The History of the Velvet Underground with Richie Unterberger

120 - The History of the Velvet Underground with Richie Unterberger

Author: Rock n Roll Book Club June 14, 2026 Duration: 44:08

We turn our attention to one of the most influential bands of all time, The Velvet Underground for the first time with biographer Richie Unterberger. 


Lou Reed grew up in suburban Freeport, Long Island listening to the first wave of rock & roll. 


Later at Syracuse University Reed began to write future Velvet Underground tracks including Heroin & I’m Waiting For The Man, while there he also met future Velvets guitarist Sterling Morrison. 


Meanwhile in Garnant, Wales a young John Cale was a musical child prodigy, later moving to Goldsmiths College in London & on to New York on a music scholarship. 


After graduating Lou Reeds ends up at budget record label Pickwick Records writing songs on demand for immediate release. 


Through Pickwick, Lou Reed & John Cale meet & Lou begins to visit John in his Ludlow Street apartment in Manhattan. 


Also in New York, Lou coincidentally bumps into Sterling Morrison & he joins them in what becomes The Velvet Underground, all living together in Ludlow Street. 


The band take their name from a pulp novel by Michael Leigh & drummer Moe Tucker replaces Angus MacLise to complete the classic lineup. 



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Hosted, Produced & Edited by Simon Cardwell

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The Music Maps Podcast from the Rock n Roll Book Club isn't your typical music show. It's an audio expedition where geography is the guide. Every episode starts with a specific location-a city, a venue, a forgotten roadside attraction-and uses that place as a launchpad to explore the sounds, stories, and scenes connected to it. You might find yourself deep in the blues clubs of Chicago one week and tracing the underground punk threads of a small European town the next. The conversations are wide-ranging, connecting the dots between iconic artists and obscure movements, all anchored to a point on the map. Listening to this podcast feels like adding a new, richly detailed pin to a global atlas of musical influence. It’s about the context behind the chords and the cultural soil from which genres grow. The result is a continuously evolving, deeply human portrait of how music and place are inextricably linked, one fascinating destination at a time.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 50

Music Maps Podcast
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