Were they the first formulated pop band?

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I've wondered that exact same thing!!!

I mean, people can say what they will about the Velvet Underground, but in a lot of ways, that band - even in its dissimilarities to all the other music the Sixties birthed (major differences including the subject matter of Reed's writing, a fashion sense that owed almost everything to the Beat poets, and of course, their early fondness for feedback, distortion and drone) - was no different from The Beatles or The Rolling Stones.

To kill my tendency to ramble at this moment, I'll get straight to my point...

In my opinion, nearly everything in modern pop culture IS formulated. Do you think "artists" such as The Partridge Family finished their final concert with a casual family dinner?

Did those Monkees just disappear into a seeming-nothingness of head and drugs, only to pop up from time-to-time at your nearest grocery store or locally-run amusement park? "Hey, kids! Michael Nesbitt will synchronize your Ferris wheel experience to '(I'm Not Your) Steppin' Stone' for only an extra four tickets or two quarters!!!"

NO!!!

They, in fact, do not just move away to towns where nobody knows your name (and, if they actually do, they just don't give a shit).

Those fakes with the gimmicks (The Monkees, Partridges, etc.) resurface in the form of the Backstreet Boys or 98 Degrees, for example.

Those geniuses with the gimmicks (The Velvets had them - in case you never realized that video projection and taboo song topics qualify as this ... well, now you do) resurrect themselves from time-to-time, at first in the form of indie rock and R.E.M. Eventually, these manifestations mutate, the result being garage rock revival, Modest Mouse - and pretty much the entire first ten years of the 21st century.

Can't see this whole "formulated" thing myself with regard to the Velvets. Warhol didn't invent them by any stretch of the imagination, in fact his main contribution seems to have been to team them up with Nico, inspirational certainly, but not a collaboration that lasted. Sure, he got producer credits on the first album but, in reality wasn't it Tom Watson that did all the work? Of course, in a sense that was part of Warhol's genius, other people did the work and he stamped his name on it to give it credibility and turn it into art! Obviously the whole Warhol connection probably helped Lou & Co to get the, fairly tiny, audience they did manage to garner back in the 60s and has turned on a lot of people to their music since then. Still, a long way from the whole idea of formulated pop bands that blight us now. I have this wonderful dream where Simon Cowell is buried alive in quicksand - what a great Velvets song THAT would have made.