The Last Days of the Velvet Underground

ON AUGUST 23, 1970, Lou Reed played his last ever show with the Velvet Underground, the band he had led since its formation as psychotic anti-pop theater, five years before. Fittingly, the group’s final shows, like their first, was in New York; the city that bred the band, informed their earliest music and – a two year midlife estrangement notwithstanding – remained their spiritual centre throughout their existence.