In contrast to Cale’s fascination with experimental music, the young Reed survived suburbia by latching on to commercial pop and rock. Reed was tormented by his sexuality, his addictions, his psychology, and his society-but Haynes emphasizes how, beneath it all, ambition burned. The documentary seems to ask, might Reed himself have caught Cale’s provocation on TV? Perhaps, between visits to gay bars and heroin dealers. So did everyone he would run with.Īs the game-show segment plays, Haynes intercuts video of Lou Reed, Velvet Underground’s singer, staring into a camera. This footage makes culture clash and generational change feel visceral: Cale, who fled a dreary Welsh upbringing via the New York avant-garde classical scene, twisted against postwar mass conformity. The show was called I’ve Got a Secret, and Cale’s secret, he tells some perplexed-looking contestants, was that he once performed a piano piece for more than 18 hours. Interviews serve more as texture than as narration, so that, as Haynes told Rolling Stone, “the music and the images lead us, not the words.”Īfter opening with squalling distortion set to a black screen, Haynes zaps far away from rock and roll to a peppy 1963 game show featuring the future Velvet Underground member John Cale. Told largely with archival footage presented in split-screen, it is a swirling, 110-minute collage with a consistent, humming rhythm. Haynes’s movies to date, including the queer costume drama Carol and the Bob Dylan non-biopic I’m Not There, have elegantly bridged entertainment and experimentation, and The Velvet Underground does that too. Read: HBO’s Woodstock ’99 documentary is a dark warning The seemingly straightforward title is a feint: While the group took its name from a 1963 book on sexual fetishes, the documentary subtly suggests that velvet underground could refer to a particular type of subculture-one in which the lowbrow and the highbrow, the outsider and the careerist, the hater and the pleaser, challenge society in a manner that succeeds in changing it. To understand the nature of the band’s endurance, and the nature of niche cool in any era, turn to Todd Haynes’s bewitching new documentary, The Velvet Underground, out now on Apple TV+. Wearing black and looking jaded never seems to go out of style-and you can hear echoes of the Velvet Underground’s hazy, lurid songs when exploring rebellious music scenes today. But the most obscure band to ever be called “iconic” still has a claim to coolness. The Velvet Underground has not entirely escaped aging into banality: Replications of the Andy Warhol image of a banana that graced the group’s debut album now grace junk at the mall.
Everyone who wasn’t at Woodstock is all too aware that they’ll never go to Woodstock. The flower children’s children grew up in a world in which their elders’ revolutionary artworks had become wallpaper, trinkets, and ad fodder. It also indexes the variety of media constructions that the group endured through the years and how these affected Cale, Nico and Reed Member ofĬataloging source MERUC Witts, Richard Dewey number 782.421660922 Index no index present LC call number ML421.Part of the backlash now facing Baby Boomers-seen in all those memes and essays blaming grandma for the state of capitalism-may simply stem from overexposure. This work examines the musical influences of the Velvets on punk, post-punk and subsequent rock movements, culminating in the group's reunion of 1993. Language eng Summary Analyses the music of The Velvet Underground. Rock musicians - United States - Biography.Rock music - United States - History and criticism.Label The Velvet Underground Title The Velvet Underground Creator
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