The Velvet Underground [Paperback]

Michael Leigh (Editor)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1871592283 | ISBN-13: 978-1871592283 | Publication Date: February 1998

Swingers and swappers, strippers and streetwalkers, sadists, masochists, and sexual mavericks of every persuasion; are all documented in this legendary expose of the diseased underbelly of '60s American society.

The book that lent its name to the seminal New York rock 'n' roll group, whose songs were to mirror its themes of depravity and social malaise. Welcome to the sexual twilight zone...

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Michael Leigh was an author and sexologist dedicated to documenting sexual deviancy in 60s America. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Foreword In this book, Michael Leigh took a razor to the soft white underbelly of '60s Middle America, spilling out its rotten entrails for the world to rake over. He revealed a burgeoning demi-monde of sado-masochism, transvestism, drug abuse, homosexuality, paedophilia, bestiality and pornography - a zone he chose to describe as "The Velvet Underground”. In documenting this subterranean disease, Leigh exposed the secret emptiness and alienation of an entire generation and culture that even in 1963 was dangerously out of control, reflecting all the fears and frustrations of the creeping sickness of post-atomic America. A mere six years on, these malignant seeds would burst into sudden, shocking flower with the media Apocalypse precipitated by Charles Manson and his Dune Buggy Attack Battalion, fulfilling Leigh's premonitions of anarchy. It is appropriate, therefore, that the East Coast rock group who took their name from this book were mirroring its themes of sexual and social sickness in their nihilistic noise poetry even as the "love children” of California were being torn apart and destroyed by Altamont and Helter Skelter. "The Velvet Underground” - in coining this image of sick beauty, Michael Leigh unwittingly provided not merely the name for a rock'n'roll group, but a synonym for an era and lifestyle immortalised by that group and its associates - Warhol's Factory perceived as a microcosm of that nationwide unrest and mania which prefigured the chaos of 1969, and the inauguration of a fatally attractive credo which will recur for as long as society, as we know it, persists. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Paperback: 192 pages
• Publisher: Velvet Publications (February 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1871592283
• ISBN-13: 978-1871592283
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.3 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,388,883 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars The Velvet Underground, August 3, 2000

By 

Alberta Hunter (Burlington, NJ US of A) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Velvet Underground (Paperback)

This book is snoresville! I was expecting all sorts of juicy bizzare perverted junk but what I got was Mr. Michael "The whole world will by judged by my moral standards" Leigh's version of bizzare perverted junk. The intro has some bad bits in it about what the ancient Romans used to do at their orgies and the end of the book about the wild things teenagers did on spring break was funny. For the most part it's pretty bland and boring even compared to Barbara Cartland and Catherine Coulter drama romance cheeseball books. You can watch the sleazy movie Unholy Matrimony and get the same basic idea that this book gives you. It was probably shocking at the time it came out. Most of the book is about letters Leigh got back from answering ads in Swinger papers. The worst one was the woman who sent in pictures of herself fornicating with a Mastiff dog. Her husband took the pictures and she wrote in the letter that the dog enjoyed himself as much as she did (somehow I doubt it.) If you want the book just to see why Moe Tucker and crew named themselves after it, you may as well get it out of the library from inter-library loan or something unless you're a collector. Then maybe it's worth the ten bucks.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars For a very special audience, October 2, 2002

By 

Arielle's Rose "~A S Rose~" (Santa Ana, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Velvet Underground (Paperback)

.

The majority of reviews on this book are by disappointed Lou Reed fans. Having read the book first, I was a little disappointed when the band came along. Thus, I'm compelled to register this dissenting opinion:

This book winkingly presents itself as a documentary on the pre-hippie sexual revolution and "swinger" movement of the 1950's and -60's. I bought this book because the cover illustration suggested it was mostly about BDSM (sado-masochism, bondage, sexual domination, leather, related fetishes).

I was a little disappointed, not because the book covers --in remarkably salacious detail for a supposéd research piece-- a panoply of sexually variant practices: personal ads for wife-swapping, nudism, mailorder sex paraphernalia, clothing fetishes, prostitution, homosexuality, bestiality, etc., but because only a small part of it is about BDSM.

Still, I found several pages containing interesting and graphic passages from letters and interviews from hardcore sado-masochists and devotees of both male and female domination. One memorable account deals with the practices of a circle of dominant midwestern wives, known as "Wanda's Club."

Those looking for titillation will find it; Since the book was written in an era when sexually explicit material needed to have "redeeming social value," the author adopted an attitude of shock and disapproval, couched in a mock, case-history research style. Nevertheless, there is a little something to tickle every sexual palate, except, thankfully, pedophilia.

As an enlightening sociological and historical work, it does have value. For myself, it was enough to discover that I was not alone in my unspoken yearnings and fantasies. It's an unusual book, but I've treasured it for four decades.

.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars only ok, May 11, 2001

By 

Dementia (Toronto, ON, Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Velvet Underground (Paperback)

This plotline in this book could have been worked out a little better. It seemed to swerve all over the place, and information tended to be repeated more than once.

The author claimed objectivity, and in most cases did not criticize the people he was writing about. However, I sensed an underlying tone of disrespect for homosexuals.

There was alot of information presented, and it was obvious that a great deal of research had been conducted.