Steve Sesnick
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Steven Sesnick took over the management of The Velvet Underground following the departure of Andy Warhol after the band's first album. Today, Sesnick is mainly remembered for sowing discord between The Velvets, finally leading to their disbanding.
After White Light/White Heat, much more difficult to understand than The Velvet Underground & Nico, Sesnick put Lou Reed against John Cale. Cale was for experimentation with dissonance and noise music - consider his notable contributions on Venus in Furs, The Black Angel's Death Song, Lady Godiva's Operation and Sister Ray - while Reed was the more lyrical and concerned about commercial success. The result was the firing of Cale and the hiring of Doug Yule.
On their next two studio records, Sesnick encouraged Reed to write songs aimed for their success on the radio and on the charts. The result was a very intimate, touching and melodic third album, and a fourth album "loaded with hits". But Reed, sick of the pressure from Sesnick, the producers and the record company, left the band a month before Loaded's release. According to Yule, Sesnick tried to minimize Reed's credits for that album. Reed eventually won back his songwriting credits through legal action.
Still, The Velvets would continue without their two most famous members. Yule took over the leadership and songwriting, while drummer Maureen Tucker re-entered after giving birth to her first child. In 1971, guitarist Sterling Morrison left after being offered a chair at the University of Texas at Austin. Sesnick hired keyboard player Willie Alexander and bass guitarist Walter Powers, two Boston-based musicians who had already collaborated on Yule's early project The Grass Menagerie. The band toured Europe later that year and started working on new recordings in England. Presumably in order to retain maximum control over the album, Sesnick sent home everybody but Yule, who wrote and performed Squeeze almost on his own. The title of the album itself is said to express Yule's feelings about Sesnick's will to get out the most from the band's name, even after it had evidently dried out.
Later in 1972, Sesnick asked Yule and a couple of additional musicians to tour England, but deserted the band just before the start of the tour. The band struggled through the dates and then called it quits. Some of the recordings from this tour were released on the Final V.U. 1971-1973 box set.
| The Velvet Underground |
|---|
| John Cale | Sterling Morrison | Lou Reed | Maureen Tucker | Doug Yule |
| Willie Alexander | Angus MacLise | Walter Powers | Billy Yule |
| Discography |
| Studio albums: The Velvet Underground and Nico | White Light/White Heat | The Velvet Underground | Loaded | Squeeze |
| Live albums: Live at Max's Kansas City | 1969 | Live MCMXCIII | Final V.U. | The Quine Tapes |
| Box sets and outtake compilations: VU | Another View | What Goes On | Peel Slowly and See |
| Selected best-of compilations: Rock and Roll | The Very Best of The Velvet Underground | Gold |
| See also |
| Chelsea Girl | Exploding Plastic Inevitable | Lou Reed | Nico | Steve Sesnick | Songs for Drella | Andy Warhol |
