The Velvet Underground Reunion That Probably Won’t Happen But Still (!)

On December 8th, former Velvets Lou Reed, Maureen Tucker, and Doug Yule will find themselves sitting in the same room at the New York Public Library as part of an event promoting The Velvet Underground: New York Art, an omnibus VU retro out now on Rizzoli. David Fricke will be on hand to interview what are effectively three of four surviving members (John Cale, whom Yule eventually replaced, being the conspicuous absence; founding guitarist Sterling Morrison died in 1995). It’s a conversation, not a reunion, which won’t stop this room from being absolutely full a couple weeks from now. Anyone who’s speculatively attended one of these things knows what a goofy proposition it is when most people are there for something that’s almost definitely not going to happen–everyone in the audience craning their necks, looking for a cache of instruments hidden somewhere; middle-aged men shouting out requests during the Q&A session, etc. Again, this is not a reunion, musically-speaking. But it does seem like the NYPL wants to give that impression, doesn’t it:

Today, the Velvet Underground are the stars they always deserved to be – the Beatles of New York – with a rich and still mysterious story that continues to unfold: in the new visual collection, The Velvet Underground: New York Art, and tonight, in this unprecedented reunion of Reed, Tucker and Yule, on Tuesday, December 8th, LIVE from the NYPL!

For $25 dollars, feel free to ensure that you don’t miss it, should it happen. But prepared for the realization that a rock concert is not suddenly going to break out in the hallowed and not particularly acoustically friendly confines of Celeste Bartos Forum. Unless you count a conversation that will surely employ the words “importance,” “legacy,” “heroin,” etc., ad nauseam, to be a musical event.