>I'd argue the opposite: the Velvet Underground would never have been
>the Velvet Underground until they hooked up with Warhol; their first
>paying gig (at a NJ high school) was only a few months before Warhol
>became their manager. And they were lousy. But because of Warhol,
>they became a sensation.
Warhol gave them a venue and they played all the time after meeting him. Kind of like the Beatles in Hamburg. And he was definitely a mentor:
http://www.warholstars.org/chron/1966.html
Lou Reed on Andy Warhol:
"The thing is that Andy works very hard. One of the things you can learn from being at the Factory is if you want to do whatever you do, then you should work very, very hard. If you don't work very hard all the time, well then nothing will happen. And Andy works as hard as anybody I know... Whenever he'd ask me how many songs I'd written that day, whatever the number was Andy would say, 'you should do more.'"