Timeline 1967
Playing with Nico
In February Cale, Sterling Morrison and Lou Reed take turns playing guitar at Nico's residency as a solo artist at the Dom in New York. For the first shows she uses a tape made by Cale, which is kind of humilating. 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 can be heard 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 & Nico
In March The Velvet Underground & Nico is finally released. Andy Warhol is credited as the producer, a promotion gimmick. Lou Reed:
"He just made it possible for us to be ourselves and go right ahead with it because he was Andy Warhol. In a sense, he really did produce it, because he was this umbrella that absorbed all the attacks when we weren't large enough to be attacked ... and as a consequence of him being the producer, we'd just walk in and set up and do what we always did and no one would stop it because Andy was the producer. Of course he didn't know anything about record production—but he didn't have to. He just sat there and said 'Oooh, that's fantastic,' and the engineer would say, 'Oh yeah! Right! It is fantastic, isn't it?'"
The songs are recorded at the Scepter and Mayfair studios in New York, and TTG in Hollywood.
Warhol created the famous peelable banana cover. On the inside of the gatefold cover where quotes about the band. Richard Goldstein for the New York World Journal-Tribune:
"The sound is a savage series of atonal thrusts and electronic feedback. The lyrics combine sadomasochistic frenzy with free-association imagery. The whole sound seems to be a product of a secret marriage between Bob Dylan the Marquis de Sade."
Actor Eric Emerson took umbrage of the use of an up-side down photo of him shot at one of Andy Warhol's Exploding Plastic Inevitable events on the back cover and threatened to sue. The folks at record label MGM panicked and recalled copies of the album and hit the photo with an ugly stickerr. They had him airbrushed out on subsequent pressings.
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 from 1966, and a concert recorded at the Valleydale Ballroom in Columbus, Ohio, on November 4, 1966.
Terry’s Cha-Cha
In May he records Terry's Cha-Cha, a modal jazz excercise with Terry Jennings on soprano saxophone, Angus MacLise on hand drum and tambourine, and himself electric piano played from a Wollensak recorder. Released in 2001 on the Stainless Gamelan: Inside The Dream Syndicate Vol III album, the third in a series of three albums documenting Cale's avant-garde music
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.
Nico's "Chelsea Girl"
Cale plays viola, bass, guitar and piano on Nico's debut album Chelsea Girl, which is released in October. 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 Christopher 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.