Timeline: 1967
Playing with Nico
In February Cale, Morrison and Reed take turns playing guitar at Nico's residency as a solo artist at the Dom in New York. Tim Hardin, Tim Buckley, Ramblin' Jack Elliott and Jackson Browne also back her up.
Andy Warhol's Index Book
Published as a multimedia package, Andy Warhol's Index Book consisted of a book, pictures and a one-sided 7 inch picture flexi disc.
On the disc the Velvets are discussing the book itself, with their first album The Velvet Underground and Nico playing in the background.
As this point the album wasn't released yet, so this is first outing of the debut album.
Cale would later edit and reassemble Nico's spoken words from the flexi disc to use them for Ari Sleepy Too on the Dance Music album in 1998.
The Velvet Underground and Nico
In March The Velvet Underground and Nico is finally released. Andy Warhol is credited as the producer, a promotion gimmick.
Warhol created the famous peelable banana cover.
The 2002 deluxe edition contains the mono and stereo mixes as well as a couple of solo Nico tracks. The 2012 45th anniversary deluxe edition contains Nico's Chelsea Girl album, the Norman Dolph acetate and a concert recorded at the Valleydale Ballroom in Columbus, Ohio, on November 4, 1966.
Sun Blindness Music
Records the mammoth drone piece Sun Blindness Music in October 1967. The track runs for more than 40 minutes.
It is played on a Vox Continental organ. It is finally released in 2001 on the Sun Blindness Music album, the first in a series of three albums documenting Cale's avant-garde music.
Chelsea Girl
Cale plays viola, bass, guitar and piano on Nico's debut album Chelsea Girl. Winter Song is written by Cale, Little Sister by Cale and Reed, and It Was a Pleasure Then by Nico, Cale and Reed.
The album was recorded quickly. Jackson Browne, who played guitar on the album, said that they had three days to complete the backing tracks. Cale would bemoan the rushing of thing as well:
"None of us had any patience, so it was very sloppy. We didn't have anybody telling us how to do things."
Enter Steve Sesnick
Steve Sesnick, who managed the Boston Tea Party nightclub (a venue that hosted a lot of Velvet Underground shows), starts managing the band, after Lou Reed had basically fired Andy Warhol. He starts pushing Reed, which pisses off Cale:
"Lou was starting to act funny. He brought in this guy Sesnick - who I thought to be a real snake - to be our manager, and all this intrigue started to take place. Lou was calling us 'his band' while Sesnick was trying to get him to go solo. Maybe it was the drugs he was doing at the time. They certainly didn't help."
The bookkeeping is a total clusterfuck and it will take Cale's lawyer Chris Whent three years for the first royalty checks to arrive, after he started sorting out the mess of the Velvets' financial records, an uneviable task he got handed to him in 1983.
Sesnick dies from complications from a heart attack in St. Augustine, Florida, on October 27, 2022. He was 81.
White Light/White Heat / Here She Comes Now single
A third single by The Velvet Underground, White Light/White Heat, is released in November, with Here She Comes Now on the B-side. Same faith as the previous attempts to get into the charts.