Scepter Studios — The Velvet Underground & Nico sessions

The Velvet Underground & Nico was recorded over approximately four days in April 1966 at Scepter Studios at 254 West 54th Street in Midtown Manhattan — sessions financed by Andy Warhol and recorded by engineer John Licata. The recording was fast, the budget minimal, and the results were one of the most influential debut albums in the history of popular music: 'Sunday Morning', 'I'm Waiting for the Man', 'Femme Fatale', 'Venus in Furs', 'Heroin' — a record that sold barely 30,000 copies in its first five years and influenced an incalculable number of bands thereafter.

Scepter Studios was primarily associated with the girl group pop of the early 1960s — the Shirelles and Dionne Warwick had recorded there — which made it a characteristically unlikely venue for the Velvet Underground. The studio's professional infrastructure gave Licata the tools to capture something genuinely dangerous: 'Heroin' with its tempo shifts and viola drone, 'Venus in Furs' with its tuned-down guitar and Cale's mesmeric repetitions, the whole album with its willingness to describe drug use, sadomasochism, and street life without the protective irony that pop music conventionally required.

The building at 254 West 54th Street subsequently became the home of Studio 54, the disco nightclub that defined a later era of New York nightlife with almost perfectly opposite aesthetics to the Velvet Underground's. The studio where the album was recorded no longer exists. The album was released in March 1967 on Verve Records. Warhol's cover — the peelable banana — made it one of the most recognisable objects in rock history.