Top banana!
Kurt Vile spearheads a new track-bytrack tribute to The Velvet Underground & Nico: “It was powerful as hell”
Kurt Vile
Run run run the tape:
Kurt Vile at home in Philadelphia, 2021
St Vincent
Sharon Van Etten and Angel Olsen
HERE’S proof, if any were needed, that John Cale is rock’s all-seeing eye. When Cale invited Kurt Vile to join him to play “Run Run Run” to mark The Velvet Underground & Nico’s 50th anniversary at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in 2017, how else could he have known that this was the very VU number that Vile used to cover in high school? “It was so funny that he picked this song because I’ve been doing it since I was a kid,” recalls Vile – even if not all of its drug lingo immediately sunk in. “I come from a small town called Lansdowne and I’d substitute the words [“Gypsy death and you”] for ‘Lansdowne Avenue’!”