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From the Velvet Underground to Wal-Mart and back again
In 1965, twenty year old Maureen Tucker was banging along to Rolling Stones records in her New York bedroom on a cheap snare drum and a cymbal ‘the size of a sandwich plate… It was just for fun’ she says. 'I never had any intention of playing with anybody’
But a friendship between her bother and Lou Reed, through their time at Syracuse University led to Tucker passing an audition that got her a seat behind the drum kit of the Velvet Underground, not that she used it. Moe played standing up, with mallets instead of sticks and but for the next five years, it was her primitive, sparse, steady, thudding beats that underlined Lou Reed's dark tales of junkies, transvestites and the underbelly of life in New York City.
Tucker was never going to rival Nico in the glamour stakes, she wasn’t a poster girl but she was a musician. And she was cool, dressing like a boy, cropped hair and hiding behind the ever present black sunglasses. Her appearance made her sweet vocals all the more surprising, ‘I’m Stickin with You’ is the perfect example.
The four landmark albums the Velvets made from 1967 to 1970 were commercial flops. But they survived as crucial influences for some of the most vital rock of the '70s, '80s and '90s. Patti Smith, Talking Heads, Bowie, R.E.M, The Violent Femmes and Sonic Youth among many others, took important cues from the Velvet Underground.
After the Velvets split in the early 1970s, Moe Tucker got married and had five children (Kerry, Keith, Austen, Kate and Richard), the settled family life wasn’t to be though and she divorced and moved to Douglas, Georgia to start a job that she learned had gone to somebody else. "I had five kids, I hadn't worked in a year and a half. Desperate wasn't the word. I'm not a pushy person, but I leaped out of my seat screaming. I can't tell you how pissed I was."
The startled secretary made another call, and Tucker was hired.
And so she left Andy Warhol's Factory to start living real life in another. She became a billing clerk at the local Wal-Mart and settled into life as a single parent raising five children on minimum wage.
One day, Tucker’s eldest daughter Kerry went to her teacher's house for a science project, 'When Kerry opened the door, 'Heroin' was playing' recalls Tucker. 'Kerry said, 'That's my mom!' and the teacher was flabbergasted'
Andy Warhol's death in 1987 was a turning point for Tucker. She wrote a song to mark Warhol's death and that was her breakthrough as a songwriter.
It wasn't long before Tucker traded in her drumsticks for a guitar and began making a string of albums for an indie label owned by Penn Jillette of Penn & Teller fame. As a testament to her enduring credibility, Velvet Underground fans Sonic Youth and Gumball's Don Fleming played on those records.
Playin' Possum," had been a collection of covers, but the 1989 release "Life in Exile After Abdication" featured her own material. A fanzine called Moe Works at Wal-Mart popped up in Florida and renewed interest in Moe Tucker led to an offer to tour Europe, solo and later with the reunited Velvets. When Tucker learned that the tour would net her $10,000, more than a full year's wages at Wal-Mart, she returned to performing full time.
"Between what I could earn when I toured and Velvet royalties, I could support my family," she said.
The success of the reunited Velvets led them to think about recording together again, but old frictions returned and what had been an open-ended revival was cut short, leaving a bitter feud between Cale and Reed.
‘It's especially sad, because we really had a wonderful time on that tour, being together, seeing each other every day," Tucker said. "To have come out of that not friends again, that was a shame.’
‘People think the Factory was this constant whirl of drugs and sex and lunacy. It wasn't at all. It was like sitting in your living room, partying. We had a great time, but the great time was just drinking beer and talking with a lot of intelligent and funny people who hung around there.’
Tags: the velvet underground moe tucker lou reed heroin andy warhol the factory new york sonic youth
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