Vicious

Album: Transformer (1972)
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Songfacts®:

  • Andy Warhol is best remembered as the iconic forerunner of pop art. He was also for a time Velvet Underground's manager and it was he who suggested the song's first line. "He said, 'Why don't you write a song called Vicious?'" Reed told Rolling Stone in 1989. "I said, Well, Andy, what kind of vicious? 'Oh, you know, vicious like I hit you with a flower.' And I wrote it down, literally - I kept a notebook in those days."
  • The song, like the rest of Transformer, was produced by David Bowie with his Spiders from Mars guitarist Mick Ronson. Bowie also supplied backing vocals for the track.

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