Personally I don't really see any legitimate reason for Bowie to cite the Velvets as an influence in the first place. He used to do "White Light/White Heat" at live shows in the '70s but as regards his own material I don't hear ANY influence at all.

I think he was more a fan of Warhol. He said that one of the things he always wanted to do was go to New York & meet him.

To be fair to Bowie he was covering Velvets songs long before anybody else was even aware of them.

I guess. Thats one of the things that always gets me about Alex Chilton. Theres that Velvets cover on Third and that was in 1978 when the Velvets were still pretty unknown.

I like what you said about everyone perceiving the Velvets differently. To me they'll always be the noisy as hell band with seven minute songs with one minute of melody in them.

"Queen Bitch" is a straight Lou Reed ripoff (sounds like it could have been on Loaded and I mean that in a good way). When it came time to promote Bowie in America, his manager Tony DeFries brought him to Warhol's Factory so he could fall into that crowd and get attention from it like VU did. He even wanted Warhol to act as a personal groupie of sorts and follow Bowie around. Defries allegedly hoped Bowie would become "the next Velvet Underground". So he was exposed quite a bit to the American Proto-Punk scene in general. Janye County (Who was involved in several minor glam-punk bands in the British and American early punk scenes) said the following:

"Of course we influenced David to change his image. After us, David started getting dressed up. ... David started shaving his eyebrows, painting his nails, even wearing painted nails out at nightclubs, like we were doing. He changed his whole image and started getting more and more freaky.

So I think it was proto-punk in general that played a big role launching him into what he became.

Sounds like you've only heard The Velvet Underground & Nico and White Light/White Heat. True?

I've heard songs off the other two but never really bothered buying them.

A really great record that casts them in yet another light is Live 1969: Volume 1. On that theyre a dance band. The version of "What Goes On" on that album is intense as hell.

The Velvet Underground
 

How many people agree with Lester Bangs' quote "modern music begins with the Velvets".

I personally agree with him. I think that the Velvets are one of the top 5 greatest bands of all time and there song "Heroin" being the greatest song of all time. No band before or since has come close to sounding like The Velvet Underground (just listen to Venus In Furs). What are other people's thoughts on this album?

Vastly over-rated. I give them credit for two good songs, "Venus in Furs" and "Rock n Roll". Pretentious art rock that misses about 80 percent of the time. Their albums deserved where they wound up...in the Cut-Out Bin.