Do What You Fear Most: The History of the Velvet Underground
This is the definitive history of the Velvet Underground, complete and more fully researched than any before

Do What You Fear Most is the authoritative tome on the band that changed music, fashion and culture forever.

Blending new archival insights and first-hand accounts, Richie Unterberger illuminates the band’s radical global impact on New York’s progenitors of punk, who bridged pure rock’n’roll, avant-garde experimentation and literary songwriting to take rock music into previously uncharted territory. Beginning with each member’s path to the band, it details their influences, successes and (many) failures, the whirlwind with Warhol, the triumph of the Banana album, the fractured and strained relationships and egos, and beyond to the end of the Velvets and the beginnings of various solo careers.

Rigorously researched and packed with previously undocumented insights, this book features first-hand interviews with the group’s associates, as well as a substantial amount of material newly unearthed from the Lou Reed Archive and the Andy Warhol Archive, as well as never-before-seen images and ephemera.

An entertaining and exhilarating narrative, Do What You Fear Most vividly captures the grit and uninhibited creativity of the 1960s New York cultural scene and is an essential portrait of one of the 20th century’s most visionary and influential bands.

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Do What You Fear Most: The History of the Velvet Underground
This is the definitive history of the Velvet Underground, complete and more fully researched than any before

Do What You Fear Most is the authoritative tome on the band that changed music, fashion and culture forever.

Blending new archival insights and first-hand accounts, Richie Unterberger illuminates the band’s radical global impact on New York’s progenitors of punk, who bridged pure rock’n’roll, avant-garde experimentation and literary songwriting to take rock music into previously uncharted territory. Beginning with each member’s path to the band, it details their influences, successes and (many) failures, the whirlwind with Warhol, the triumph of the Banana album, the fractured and strained relationships and egos, and beyond to the end of the Velvets and the beginnings of various solo careers.

Rigorously researched and packed with previously undocumented insights, this book features first-hand interviews with the group’s associates, as well as a substantial amount of material newly unearthed from the Lou Reed Archive and the Andy Warhol Archive, as well as never-before-seen images and ephemera.

An entertaining and exhilarating narrative, Do What You Fear Most vividly captures the grit and uninhibited creativity of the 1960s New York cultural scene and is an essential portrait of one of the 20th century’s most visionary and influential bands.

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Do What You Fear Most: The History of the Velvet Underground

Do What You Fear Most: The History of the Velvet Underground

Do What You Fear Most: The History of the Velvet Underground

Do What You Fear Most: The History of the Velvet Underground

Hardcover

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Overview

This is the definitive history of the Velvet Underground, complete and more fully researched than any before

Do What You Fear Most is the authoritative tome on the band that changed music, fashion and culture forever.

Blending new archival insights and first-hand accounts, Richie Unterberger illuminates the band’s radical global impact on New York’s progenitors of punk, who bridged pure rock’n’roll, avant-garde experimentation and literary songwriting to take rock music into previously uncharted territory. Beginning with each member’s path to the band, it details their influences, successes and (many) failures, the whirlwind with Warhol, the triumph of the Banana album, the fractured and strained relationships and egos, and beyond to the end of the Velvets and the beginnings of various solo careers.

Rigorously researched and packed with previously undocumented insights, this book features first-hand interviews with the group’s associates, as well as a substantial amount of material newly unearthed from the Lou Reed Archive and the Andy Warhol Archive, as well as never-before-seen images and ephemera.

An entertaining and exhilarating narrative, Do What You Fear Most vividly captures the grit and uninhibited creativity of the 1960s New York cultural scene and is an essential portrait of one of the 20th century’s most visionary and influential bands.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9781913172992
Publisher: Omnibus Press
Publication date: 05/12/2026
Pages: 816
Product dimensions: 6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x (d)

About the Author

Richie Unterberger is the author of around a dozen rock history books, including Unknown Legends of Rock’n’Roll; Won’t Get Fooled Again: The Who from Lifehouse to QuadropheniaTurn! Turn! Turn!/Eight Miles High. His book The Unreleased Beatles: Music and Film won a 2007 Association for Recorded Sound Collections Award for Excellence in Historical Recorded Sound Research. He has contributed to numerous publications, including Record Collector and MOJO. He’s written liner notes for several hundred album reissues, including the extensive notes for the super deluxe edition of The Velvet Underground & Nico and Why Don’t You Smile Now: Lou Reed at Pickwick Records 1964-65. He gives regular presentations on rock and soul history throughout the San Francisco Bay Area and teaches courses at several universities in the US.

Dean Wareham was born in Wellington, New Zealand, and moved to New York City at age 14. He formed the bands Galaxie 500 (in 1987) and Luna (in 1991). After Luna played their "final shows" in 2005, Wareham released three albums as Dean & Britta with Luna bandmate (now wife) Britta Phillips. The pair also score films, most notably Noah Baumbach's The Squid and the Whale and Mistress America, and Andy Warhol's Screen Tests.
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