#walter powers

VU 1971

Doug Yule, Willie Alexander, Maureen “Moe” Tucker e Walter Powers

Lou Reed — left in August 1970, after the album Loaded

John Cale — left much earlier, in September 1968, replaced by Doug Yule

“post-Reed touring band”, the last incarnation of the name The Velvet Underground before its total collapse

Ph Gijsbert Hanekroot

In Cambridge, may 1969 photo Jeff Albertson

“I read a lot, I like to read. I prefer Nietzche of all. Then I like some English poets: William Wordsworth, Lord Tennyson, Lord Byron, Shelley... Shakespeare sometimes, but Tennyson is the best of all. He’s an incredible Romantic, it’s just so beautiful. You find everything there. In Shakespeare you just find death.” — Nico (Interview by Giovanni Dadomo, April 29, 1978)

Nico in London, 1978 Photo by Jill Furmanovsky

𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘝𝘦𝘭𝘷𝘦𝘵 𝘜𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘨𝘳𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘥 𝘪𝘴 𝘧𝘢𝘯𝘵𝘢𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘤. 𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘺'𝘷𝘦 𝘨𝘰𝘵 𝘢 𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘦 𝘴𝘰𝘳𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘴𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘥. 𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘥𝘰𝘯'𝘵 𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘯 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘪𝘳 𝘪𝘯𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘶𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘴--𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘨𝘰 𝘢𝘳𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘥 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘱𝘪𝘤𝘬 𝘶𝘱 𝘢𝘯 𝘪𝘯𝘴𝘵𝘳𝘶𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵--𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘩𝘰𝘸 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝙙𝙤 𝘪𝘵! 𝘈𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘩𝘢𝘷𝘦 𝘢 𝘧𝘢𝘯𝘵𝘢𝘴𝘵𝘪𝘤 𝘴𝘰𝘶𝘯𝘥--𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘪𝘯𝘵𝘦𝘭𝘭𝘪𝘨𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦--𝘪𝘵'𝘴 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦 𝘫𝘶𝘴𝘵 𝘣𝘢𝘯𝘨𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘱𝘰𝘵𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘱𝘢𝘯𝘴. 𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘺 𝘳𝘦𝘢𝘭𝘭𝘺--𝘢 𝘸𝘩𝘰𝘭𝘦 𝘪𝘯𝘧𝘭𝘶𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦 𝘰𝘯 𝘳𝘰𝘤𝘬 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘳𝘰𝘭𝘭--𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘳𝘦𝘭𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘥 𝘵𝘰 𝘮𝘶𝘴𝘪𝘤𝘢𝘭 𝘩𝘪𝘴𝘵𝘰𝘳𝘺 𝘸𝘩𝘪𝘤𝘩 𝘮𝘢𝘬𝘦𝘴 𝘪𝘵 𝘯𝘰𝘵 𝘫𝘶𝘴𝘵 𝘢𝘯𝘰𝘵𝘩𝘦𝘳 𝘳𝘰𝘤𝘬 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘳𝘰𝘭𝘭 𝘣𝘢𝘯𝘥. 𝘐𝘵'𝘴 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨, 𝘐 𝘤𝘢𝘯'𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘬 𝘢𝘣𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘢𝘯𝘺𝘵𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘣𝘶𝘵 𝘢 𝘵𝘢𝘤𝘬𝘺 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘥...𝘪𝘵'𝘴 𝘤𝘶𝘭𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘢𝘭... 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘱𝘰𝘱𝘶𝘭𝘢𝘳 𝘢𝘵 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘢𝘮𝘦 𝘵𝘪𝘮𝘦. - Edie Sedgwick, 1966

By mid-1968, bassist Walter Powers happily watched his old band mates from The Lost find some traction in the trenches of the “Boston Sound” frenzy and figured there must be room for him in there as well. He soon joined a new, local psychedelic rock group called Listening, fronted by Michael Tschudin, the Harvard graduate who had been in The Street Choir with harmonica player Peter Ivers, who himself would later go on to compose the music for the “In Heaven” song in David Lynch’s Eraserhead.* Listening released one record on Vanguard Records in late 1968 which is notable for its complicated psych-jams and the striking front cover showing the band performing live at the outdoor venue on the Charles River Esplanade known as The Hatch Shell (Green Day caused a riot at the same locale in 1994).

Not convinced that Listening was going anywhere special, Powers was still showing up to auditions for other rock outfits. One afternoon in the spring of 1968, Powers drove out to a basement audition at a house in Weston, a suburb right outside the city. The word was that a guy named Van Morrison was auditioning bass and guitar players all day long. “There was an old-fashioned wheelchair in the basement, and I took a seat in it when I got there,” Powers said. “I had my bass in my lap. When Van arrived, we, all of us, joined in jamming on a blues progression. Each of us was given a chance to show what he brought.” When it was Powers' turn to jam, he instinctively stood up, rising out of the wheelchair and visibly shocking Morrison. “Van had a ‘He walks?!’ look on his face,” Powers recalls. After the tryout, he explained to Morrison that the empty wheelchair had just been there when he arrived. Powers did not get the job as bassist of the Van Morrison Controversy. Listening would have to do for him for now (though he’d soon find himself in a post-Lou-Reed version of the Velvet Underground just a few years later).

Listening has one of the stranger footnotes in the entire Boston Sound saga in the fact that frontman Michael Tschudin has since made a truly bizarre claim about his secret life during the years he fronted the band. “I hear that Michael lives in South Florida,” Listening guitarist Peter Mallick told an interviewer in 2011, “and claims to have been a Special Ops Green Beret in Vietnam, during the time he was doing drugs and playing rock-n-roll in Boston.”

Mallick is only slightly incorrect. Tschudin claims to have been a Navy Seal, not a Green Beret. The former psych-frontman was first exposed as a phony Navy Seal in 1987 by, strangely enough, G.Gordon Liddy—attorney and overseer of the burglary in Nixon's Watergate scandal—but Tschudin continued to tell the story in the ensuing decades. “When Michael Tschudin sits down at the Moeller organ at the First Evangelical Lutheran Church in West Palm Beach,” a 2006 Palm Beach Post profile begins, “his days as a Navy SEAL in the jungles and paddies of Vietnam recede.”

"I can show you this certificate to prove I was in, but I can't show you any photos or any other documentation,” Tschudin told the reporter. “If I told you, I'd have to kill you." Tschudin's fabrications are still a topic that upsets actual Navy Seals who devote a section of a Special Operations message board to exposing fakes just like this. They're responsible for calling attention to the 2006 profile which revealed the former rocker’s continued Seal claims, despite the nineteen year old revelation by G.Gordon Liddy that he most certainly was not.  

The December 21, 1968 review of Listening’s debut in Billboard appeared next to a record that was described as a “poetic land of folk-blues and country soul.”

The above text is a section that was cut from Astral Weeks: A Secret History of 1968.