Jim Reid of The Jesus and Mary Chain discussing the legacy of The Velvet Underground in a 2024 interview.
"They’re culturally as important as The Beatles. How many bands have started because of the Velvets? And the way they looked in 66/67 was it. That was how all indie bands were going to look forever after that. And the music was just so fucking amazingly uncompromising. I mean, to sing a song like ‘Heroin’ in 1967, it’s just incredible.
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The whole idea of the Factory scene just seemed to us to be absurdly glamorous. I’ve always felt that pop music could be too saccharine at times, and that people ought to take a lot more chances than they appear to. And I think The Velvet Underground was a band that just didn’t give a shit what anybody had to say about what they were singing about. The subject matter was just something that people didn’t do at that time. It was light years ahead of everything else. The Velvets and the Stooges were just like a road map. It was like we were receiving little signals from a parallel universe in the shape of Velvet Underground records."