Remembering Bob Dylan, Velvet Underground's Pioneering Producer

The Velvet Underground rarely played offices, but Lou Reed and John Cale made at least one exception about 50 years ago. Hauling Reed's guitar, Cale's electric viola, and an amp into Columbia Records' midtown headquarters, the two set up in an executive's office and blasted out two of the band's new, unrecorded songs, "Heroin" and "The Black Angel's Death Song." Any other label executive at the time might have cowered beneath his desk or run screaming, but not this one. "We plugged in and l