However, the death knell was the group’s uneasy collaboration with Steve Sesnick. Furthermore, tensions within the group had lead to the dismissal of John Cale, a vital ingredient in the group’s sound. While the band achieved a high level of notoriety and critical praise, they never gained much commercial success. The breakup of the Velvet Underground seemed inevitable for some time. The irony of it all was that neither was the group commercially succesful enough to warrant such treatment nor that the counterfeit resulting album is as terrible as its reputation would have you believe. In many ways, this is what happened to the Velvet Underground. It meant, essentially, an army of musicians all promoting the same record or single. It allowed the group or solo artist to perform in multiple locations at the same time. This practice occurred, especially in the U.S.A, inciting fewer riots than one might imagine. In the early days of records, when visuals of the performers were few to come by and usually of poor quality, managers would unashamedly hire musicians to pose as more famous bands. The talented and cynical leader behind most of the Velvet Underground’s work may have been referencing the fate of his own former group, but also quoting directly from a page in the music industry’s handbook.

Lou Reed joked in an interview taken in the early 1970s that he was considering sending look-alikes out on the road to play live shows for him. Here’s how this strange recording came to be and why it’s all but faded into obscurity. Disowned by critics and fans alike for, among other things, not featuring any of the band’s original line-up, Squeeze is an impersonation, but hardly as bad as you might have been made to believe. The Velvet Underground’s Squeeze would be an anomaly in any band’s discography, let alone one of the most influential groups of the 20th Century.

What is the velvet underground