John Cale To Play ‘Velvet Underground & Nico’ 50th Anniversary Show

 
Art & Culture

As we plunge deeper into these unstable times of ours, desperately flailing about for a handhold, we're going to have to endure all sorts of tedious baby boomer anniversaries. 50 years of Sgt. Pepper's. The Who Sell Out. Piper at the Gates of F*cking Dawn. Everyone sacking off the editorial meetings at MOJO because the content basically schedules itself now, caught in an endless nostalgia loop of covermounts and branded tea towels.

Let's be honest – the canon doesn't need more reinforcing. We all know how important these albums are by now. But nostalgia has a place in music, so long as artists aren't building their careers on it. And one artist who's never stopped moving forwards is John Cale.

2017 marks the 50th anniversary of The Velvet Underground & Nico, one of the most iconic and influential art rock albums of all time despite only selling 30,000 copies in its early years. Allow me to fall back on that tired old Brian Eno quote – "everyone who bought one of those 30,000 copies started a band."

Having recently celebrated this anniversary at the Philharmonie de Paris with an impressive set of collaborators (Animal Collective, The Libertines, Mark Lanegan), Cale has announced that he will also be performing the album live in Liverpool, the city he sailed from when he first left the UK for America. And you can expect some more very special guests to be joining him.

The Liverpool show will take place on May 26th at a special open-air stage in the heart of the city's docklands, symbolically facing out across the Atlantic to New York, the album's birthplace.

Tickets go on sale at 9am this Friday 28th October.

Comments are closed.