Serious Velvet Underground fans may disagree about the finest album of the band’s brief career, but there’s no question that the group is best known for its debut 1967 record, The Velvet Underground & Nico, which sported a banana print design by Andy Warhol on the cover.
Fast-forward 45 years: the band’s cofounders Lou Reed and John Cale are still rocking, Warhol is long dead, and the Velvet Underground is locked in litigation with Warhol’s estate over the iconic banana print that helped propel the band to fame. On Sept. 7, the Andy Warhol Foundation scored an early victory in The Velvet Underground v. The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, 12-cv-00201,, when a judge in New York ruled that Reed and Cale can’t seek a ruling that the foundation doesn’t have a copyright on the banana image.
