THE VELVET UNDERGROUND

In the summer of 1966, while the rest of America was still deciding what rock & roll was allowed to become, the Velvet Underground carried the Factory experiment to Provincetown. Lou Reed, John Cale, Sterling Morrison and Moe Tucker set up inside the Chrysler Art Museum, bringing New York’s collision of music, film, art, sexuality and beautiful noise into a town that had been welcoming cultural outsiders for generations.

Provincetown was not simply an unlikely stop on the itinerary—it was exactly the kind of place where the Velvet Underground made sense. What happened there connects Warhol’s underground, Boston’s emerging counterculture and the strange new world about to take shape at the Boston Tea Party. Boston Babylon follows the Velvet Underground from the end of Cape Cod back into the heart of Boston.