The Velvet Underground’s Loaded at 50: How being ignored birthed a classic album

When the needle first dropped on Loaded, the fourth album from enigmatic New York art rockers The Velvet Underground, 50 years ago today, their few in-the-know followers must have considered it some kind of situationist prank. After three years of indulging the wayward and provocative ways of Andy Warhol’s musical muses – where the sweetest melodies embraced the harshest feedback, hard drug addiction and perverse sexual peccadilloes were no longer taboo, and drummers played standing up in storms of strobe – they were tuned in to the twists and challenges that would see the Velvets hailed as one of the most influential bands of all time, once the world caught up.