re: Saw the Stones tonight for the first time.

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ones, but they're not the Stones without Charlie.

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Although the Velvet Underground are sometimes portrayed as existing in near-total-obscurity totally out of the mainstream of 1960s rock culture, in fact they intersected with—and sometimes even influenced—many major shakers and movers between 1965 and 1970.

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The Rolling Stones: Quite heavy connections were laid between the Stones and the Velvets, albeit mostly via Nico, who met Brian Jones in March 1965 and had a brief affair with him. Rolling Stones manager/producer Andrew Oldham arranged for her to put out her sole pre-VU single, "I'm Not Sayin'"/"The Last Mile," on his Immediate label in the UK that summer. Jones played guitar on the single, and later that year, before the VU had met Nico, briefly met John Cale in New York when Cale somehow managed to get a limousine ride with him and Carole King. Nico would later accompany Brian Jones to the Monterey Pop Festival in June 1967, where Jones introduced Jimi Hendrix at his first major American concert.

Of perhaps more note is that the Velvet Underground are confirmed to have directly influenced an actual well-known late 1960s Rolling Stones recording. As Mick Jagger confessed to Nick Kent of NME in June 1977, "Even we've been influenced by the Velvet Underground. No, really. I'll tell you exactly what we pinched from [Lou Reed]. Y'know 'Stray Cat Blues' [from the Rolling Stones' 1968 album Beggars Banquet)? The whole sound and the way it's paced, we pinched from the first Velvet Underground album. Y'know, the sound on 'Heroin.' Honest to God, we did!"

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