It is unlike anything I’ve ever heard.’ We learned ‘Waiting for the Man’ right then and there, and we were playing it on stage within a week. And I literally went into a band rehearsal the next day, put the album down and said, ‘We’re going to learn this song. It was serious and dangerous and I loved it. You like weird stuff, so maybe you’ll enjoy it.’ I played it and it was like ‘Ah, this is the future of music!’ I was in awe. My friend gave it to me and he said, ‘This is crap.
There’s a white label on it, and it says ‘Warhol.’ He signed it. It hadn’t got a company or anything at the time. Maybe you can take it back to England and see if you can get any interest over there.’ And it was still the vinyl test pressing. A friend of mine came over to the states to do some work with Andy Warhol at The Factory, and as he was leaving, Andy said, ‘Oh, I just made this album with some people. This song was a big influence on David Bowie, who explained to Performing Songwriter magazine in 2003: “I actually played ‘Waiting for the Man’ in Britain with my band before the album was even released in America. Lou Reed, John Cale, Nico, and Maureen Tucker have all recorded solo versions of the song. Even after their signing with Atlantic for their fourth album, Loaded, Ahmet specifically told them to tone down controversial material. So their first album ended up with MGM Records instead. Atlantic executive Ahmet Ertegun wouldn’t take them unless they dropped these songs, and the Velvets, typically putting ideas ahead of money, just couldn’t live with that. Once again, it neither condones nor condemns the experience, but merely describes it.Īs described in The Velvet Underground: An Illustrated History of a Walk on the Wild Side, songs like “I’m Waiting For The Man,” “Heroin,” and “Venus In Furs” were what kept The Velvet Underground out of a record contract with Atlantic Records. It describes a trip to a Harlem brownstone near the intersection of Lexington Avenue and 125th Street to buy drugs from a dealer, “the man” of the title. Not only does it fit nicely with “Heroin,” it was also on the same album, and was also written by Lou Reed at about the same time as “Heroin,” during Reed’s attendance at Syracuse University in the early 1960s. This is another in the Velvet Underground’s canon of songs about drugs. The song was released in 1967 on The Velvet Underground & Nico album. According to Rolling Stone magazine, Reed said: “Everything about that song holds true, except the price.” The song is about scoring $26 worth of heroin in Harlem. It’s no big secret on what this song is about.
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