Walter De Maria was best known as a lauded visual artist. But buried within his impressive resume is an experience that helped define the future of avant garde rock: Walter De Maria played played drums in Lou Reed and John Cale's first band, the Primitives, a group that would morph into the Velvet Underground.



Walter Joseph De Maria was born in 1935 in Albany, California. He studied music — first piano, then percussion. By 1946 he had joined a musicians' union.



In 1965 Walter De Maria became the drummer in the New York-based rock group The Primitives and an artist/musician collaborative group called The Druds. The group included Lou Reed and John Cale and was a precursor to The Velvet Underground.



In 1964 and 1968 Walter De Maria recorded two conceptual pieces of music, which were released as 'Drums And Nature' in 2000.