With their first album, The Velvet Underground and Nico, released in 1967, the VU was certainly one of the first rock groups to take rock seriously, consider it as something that could be used for more than entertainment. It's one of the first "concept" albums, not just a collection of songs but a complete work.

Because none of their music was played on the radio except for a couple of songs on their last album that were very commercial, most people, I think, were unaware of their existence in the '60s, and of those who were, there was a large measure of hostility. The thing to consider about the VU is they were never didactic, which went against the grain of '60s counterculture music. Whereas everybody else was very preachy, there were no VU songs that told anybody to do anything. They told stories, and because the stories sometimes involved drug abuse, some people thought they were promoting drug abuse. Frankly, there's a thin line between dramatizing evil and glorifying evil, and on their second album it seems like they got carried away. In any case, they always suffered from a public image that didn't cut in the '60s, and they never made enough money to stay in business, no matter how commercial they tried to be.

On their first album, which has been their best seller and biggest critical success, Lou Reed's stream-of-consciousness lyrics suggest the influence of Beat Generation writers Ginzburg and Burroughs, although he said he was greatly influenced by a detective novel, The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler. He said that he only wanted to tell stories on the album without moralizing, and yet, as with detective stories, The Velvet Underground and Nico has a way of moralizing, with its sharp contrast between extremes of despair, hope, and love.