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All Tomorrow’s Parties

"All Tomorrow's Parties"
All Tomorrow's Parties--I'll Be Your Mirror.JPG
Single b/w "I'll Be Your Mirror"
Single by The Velvet Underground and Nico
from the album The Velvet Underground & Nico
Released July 1966 (1966-07)
Format 7-inch single
Recorded April 1966
Studio Scepter, New York City
Genre Psychedelic rock
Length
  • 2:55 (single)
  • 5:55 (album)
Label Verve
Songwriter(s) Lou Reed
Producer(s) Andy Warhol
The Velvet Underground and Nico singles chronology
"All Tomorrow's Parties" / "I'll Be Your Mirror"
(1966)
"Sunday Morning" / "Femme Fatale"
(1966)
Audio sample
Beginning of 3rd verse, with Nico's double-tracked lead vocals

"All Tomorrow's Parties" is a song by the Velvet Underground and Nico, written by Lou Reed and released on the group's 1967 debut studio album, The Velvet Underground & Nico.

Inspiration for the song came from Reed's observation of the Warhol clique; according to Reed, the song is "a very apt description of certain people at the Factory at the time. ... I watched Andy. I watched Andy watching everybody. I would hear people say the most astonishing things, the craziest things, the funniest things, the saddest things." In a 2006 interview Reed's bandmate John Cale stated: "The song was about a girl called Darryl, a beautiful petite blonde with three kids, two of whom were taken away from her." The song was Andy Warhol's favorite by The Velvet Underground.

The song has notably lent its name to a music festival, a William Gibson novel, and a Yu Lik-wai film. The song also appears prominently in the horror film The Lords of Salem.

The song was recorded at Scepter Studios in Manhattan during April 1966. It features a piano motif played by Cale (initially written as an exercise) based largely on tone clusters. The repetitive keyboard part was inspired by the style of his friend Terry Riley, with whom Cale had played in LaMonte Young's mid 1960s group in New York City. It was one of the first pop songs to make use of prepared piano (a chain of paper clips were intertwined with the piano strings to change their sounds). The song also features the ostrich guitar tuning by Reed, by which all of the guitar strings were tuned to D. Drummer Maureen Tucker plays tambourine and bass drum while guitarist Sterling Morrison plays bass, an instrument that he hated, despite his proficiency as a bassist.


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