Special Edition: Rob Norris

On December 11, 1965 at the Summit High School auditorium a band took the stage that would leave an indelible mark on the world of music. They weren’t the headliner. They weren’t like The Beatles or any of the bands of the British Invasion that dominated the pop music scene at the time. They were Lou Reed, John Cale, Maureen Tucker and Sterling Morris – collectively known as The Velvet Underground – and it was their first show together. They were loud, dark and scary. “Evil had arrived,” said Rob Norris, who was a kid from New Providence in the auditorium’s crowd that night. Norris, who became part of a later lineup of the Velvet Underground, talks with Jay Lustig of njarts.net about that night, time he spent with Lou Reed, and the bands he played that once marked Hoboken’s music scene.