The name was ideal and was adopted right away. One day another college friend, Jim Tucker, came to visit the group at their loft, carrying a paperback book he'd found in the street en route a sexual exposé by Michael Leigh titled The Velvet Underground. With the addition of 'Angus MacLean' as drummer, the Falling Spikes, Warlocks, etc., began making song demos, and playing locally. Morrison soon joined in, and somewhere along the line they began referring to their group, which had no regular name as yet. (Reed had never tried the drug he'd drawn from others' experiences and descriptions.) As Reed and Cale began to write together, one afternoon they bumped into a college friend of Reed's fellow guitarist and anti-authoritarian Sterling Morrison, in Manhattan.
Reed and Cale hit it off, and as The Ostrich lost its plume and the Primitives disbanded, they started to consider more serious musical work, beginning when Reed played Cale a selection of songs they'll never publish, including the unapologetic Heroin. The bassist for the new Primitives was Welsh-born John Cale, classically trained and already experienced in avant-garde and performance art (including playing piano in a relay with John Cage). When Reed's dance-craze parody The Ostrich became a surprise hit in New York (for the non-existent Primitives Reed played guitar and sang with Pickwick studio musicians), a band was quickly assembled to perform the song at local dances and shows. Reed could turn out songs to order in any number, and with days spent writing in an office, and evenings making quickie singles and albums in Pickwick's small studio, he learned his way around the record-making process. Long Island native songwriter/singer/guitarist Lou Reed had gone from college at Syracuse University to a day job as a staff composer and musician for Pickwick Records, whose specialities (besides budget reissues and compilations) were 'sound-alikes' and knockoffs of the latest musical trends. The Velvet Underground had its origins, oddly enough, in the world of manufactured pop music, around 1965.
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