“A CREATIVE PLAYGROUND ”

MY first encounter with The Velvet Underground was probably in my first year of college, around 1980. It was a profound discovery for me. I was already into Bowie and a lot of the artists who were so influenced by The Velvet Underground – it’s hard to think of artists who were influenced by The Velvet Underground! – so I was in a prime spot for their music to really matter. I think there’s something about that first record that describes a kind of sensibility – it’s in the content of the music, it’s in the sound of the music, it’s in the dirtiness of the music – that I associate with creative possibility. This music immediately makes you think about the frailty of identity and the fact that life is challenging, as a way of