Velvet Goldmine…
An acetate of an early version of The Velvet Underground‘s first album, The Velvet Underground & Nico, has sold on eBay for an astonishing US $155,401. This easily makes the disc the most expensive of all time.
David Bowie is mentioned in the eBay description of the album, from which this excerpt written by Eric Isaacson of Mississippi Records…
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This acetate, which is possibly the only surviving copy, represents the first Velvet Underground album as Andy Warhol intended it to be released.
Though the same compositions and even a few of the same “takes” (albeit in different mixes) were used on the subsequent commercial release, that which was eventually issued as their debut album on Verve, “The Velvet Underground & Nico”, was a significantly different creation.
I had heard of these nascent recordings before… it was said by some that the master tapes had burned in a fire, by others that all of those recordings ended up being on the released album, and still by others that the only existing copy of that material was on an acetate owned by David Bowie, and that he was known to tout it as his most prized possession.
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David Bowie has indeed made mention of this acetate which he was given by his then manager, Kenneth Pitt, in December 1966. One of the songs that particularly impressed the 19-year-old Bowie was Waiting For The Man, which is possibly the most performed of any cover version by Bowie.
Here’s what he had to say about the excitement the recording generated for him: “I literally went into a band rehearsal the next day, put the album down and said, We’re gonna learn this song. We learned Waiting For The Man right then and there, and we were playing it on stage within a week.”
In an article for Vanity Fair in 2003 he talked further about just how firmly his finger was on the pulse: “In December of that year, my band Buzz broke up, but not without my demanding we play Waiting For The Man as one of the encore songs at our last gig. Amusingly, not only was I to cover a Velvets’ song before anyone else in the world, I actually did it before the album came out. Now that’s the essence of Mod.”
David’s earliest known version of the song was recorded in 1967 during the Deram sessions and has never had an official release. BBC session versions of the song were recorded in 1970 and 1972 and a live Ziggy version was captured for posterity on the Santa Monica album. Other bootleged live versions have surfaced from various tours over the years.
I asked David if the acetate he owned included different versions to that of the released album. He said that it was the same as the released version, but that it was a pre-release acetate…complete with Warhol signature!
Of course, this too is an extremely rare artefact, but its value is actually irrelevant as it’s not something DB would ever want or need to part with.
If you want to