The Velvet Underground's Image And Audience

  As well as musically influencing current Indie artists, The Velvet Underground's image and audience can be compared to indie artists past and present. The influence that their image had/has can be seen in the below pictures - there is a striking similarity between Sterling Morrison of The Velvet Underground (far left) and Liam Gallagher of Oasis (centre) because of their similar hair and sunglasses.

  In general though, The Velvet Underground's plain, smart and dark image has been adopted by many indie artists since; the two examples below being Chapel Club and The Smiths.

  Although not recognised as much until after their time together as a band had ended, The Velvet Underground's audience can be comparable to that of indie artists. They were seen as too obscure for the mainstream - a principal quality of indie music, it seems, is to purposely go against the grain - and their music was appreciated mainly by critics and students. This conforms to the idea of indie music being for a 'refined' taste, but also as a way of "sticking it to the man", hence why students are attracted to the genre because of it being portrayed as rebellious, therefore appealing to teenagers. However, a lot of teenagers are likely to cave in to peer pressure and therefore listen to whatever music is deemed most socially acceptable at the time. This raises another point regarding the audience for Indie music, the one of it being for 'the outsider'.