"European Son" is a song written and performed by the American experimental rock band The Velvet Underground. It appears as the final track on their 1967 debut album The Velvet Underground & Nico. It is also the album's longest song at more than seven and a half minutes.
"European Son" is dedicated by the band to Delmore Schwartz, a literary mentor of singer Lou Reed. Wanting to dedicate a song to Schwartz, "European Son" was chosen because it had the fewest lyrics (rock-and-roll lyrics being something Schwartz abhorred). The first pressing of The Velvet Underground & Nico referred to the song as "European Son (to Delmore Schwartz)".
The song could be seen as a precursor to the band's next album White Light/White Heat and certainly to the song "Sister Ray", a seventeen-minute-long rock improvisation.
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