Before record sales collapsed, everyone made most of their money from selling music. The idea of licensing your music for a commercial was considered the height of selling out. Today, though, this is considered to be a normal and necessary way of surviving as a musician.
But someone had to be first, right? But who?
It’s generally accepted that the Velvet Underground was the first true alternative band. And fifteen years after Lou Reed left the band, he might have been the first even alt-rock artist to “sell out” by licensing a song to a TV commercial.
In 1985, he appeared in an ad for a Honda scooter with his song “Walk on the Wild Side” in the background. He took some stick for it—that sort of thing just wasn’t done back then—but he did help start the destruction of the stigma of using actual songs in TV commercials.
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