Best velvet underground biography template

Shunned in the ‘60s for their avant-garde, shocking rock, The Velvet Underground were more important to music’s future than the Fab Four, argues Greg Kot.

When Lou Reed died a few weeks ago at the age of 71, I wrote an obituary asserting that Reed and his band The Velvet Underground influenced rock’s future as much or more than any ‘60s band, including The Beatles.

Please hold the outrage.

There’s no arguing the decades-long ubiquity of the Beatles, the extraordinary impact they had on not just music, but on the counterculture and the way their generational peers thought, spoke, dressed and cut their hair.

But in strictly musical terms, the Velvets – Reed, John Cale, Sterling Morrison, Maureen Tucker and, later, Doug Yule were new rock’s future, the band that launched a dozen musical subgenres and movements. The roots of underground and experimental music, indie and altern