Todd Haynes captures the spirit of The Velvet Underground in an exhilarating new rock doc
The I'm Not There director employs experimental techniques to contextualize the group in a larger artistic movement
Film Reviews The Velvet Underground
“There was always a standard that was kind of set for how to be elegant and how to be brutal,” says John Cale in Todd Haynes’ documentary The Velvet Underground. He’s referring to his collaboration with Velvet Underground frontman Lou Reed, but it perfectly describes the group’s modus operandi during those influential early years when they were fully immersed in New York’s downtown music scene of the 1960s. Cale’s minimalist background meshed surprisingly well with Reed’s rhythm & blues stylings, and that musical combination provided the necessary foundation for the latter’s unconventional, taboo-inflected songwriting to flourish. Together they laid the groundwork for a band that filtered the avant-garde through rock ’n’ roll and cast a long shadow over 20th-century culture, inspiring countless musicians and artists, even if it took some time for everyone they influenced to catch up.
Cale’s statement also rings true for The Velvet Underground, which chronicles the band’s short-lived run by eschewing many traditional conventions of the music documentary. Instead of a purely band-focused archival approach (an impossibility considering there’s relatively little footage of The Velvet Underground on stage) or a more formulaic Behind The Music-style history lesson, Haynes tries out a collage-like method that tells the Velvets’ story while evoking the warm, unsettling feeling of listening to their music.
The sound design, courtesy of regular Haynes collaborator Leslie Shatz, incorporates so many different elements—full Velvets songs alongside edited fragments, interview voice-over, foley cues, and archival material—that it envelops the viewer in a three-dimensional audio space. Through this tactic, Haynes pulls off an amazing trick by making classic, potentially overplayed songs like “I’m Waiting For The Man” and “Heroin” sound fresh and downright frightening. For anyone who chooses to stream The Velvet Underground on Apple TV+, headphones are a must. But those with the opportunity to see the film in a theater should grab it, because it’s best experienced on the loudest possible sound system; the first few notes of “Venus In Furs,” aired at the very beginning, will rattle your entire body.
Haynes employs a similar approach to The Velvet Underground’s visual style. He excavates the cinematic dimension of the band’s sound by drawing from the aesthetics of the mid-century experimental art scene where the Velvets initially thrived. For example, Haynes employs split screen, à la Chelsea Girls or Andy Warhol’s other dual projection work, to constantly keep the eye busy. One side of the frame frequently features talking-head interviews, shot on grainy 16mm, with a small core of Velvet associates, including surviving original members Cale and drummer Maureen Tucker, experimental filmmaker Jonas Mekas (to whom the film is dedicated), and an enthusiastic Jonathan Richman, founder of The Modern Lovers and Velvets aficionado. The other side contains associative imagery from a variety of sources: archival material of the Velvets; clips from commercials and news broadcasts, footage of countercultural luminaries; assorted excerpts from the work of experimental filmmakers Stan Brakhage, Kenneth Anger, and Marie Menken; and Warhol’s Screen Tests of the band (and other notable Factory figures, such as film critic Amy Taubin).
Subsequently, The Velvet Underground is as much a portrait of an artistic movement as it is the story of the eponymous group. In fact, it takes over 50 minutes for Haynes to get to Warhol actually meeting the band. He uses that time to appropriately contextualize the group within an experimental tradition, exploring Cale’s involvement with the Theatre Of Eternal Music, an avant-garde group fronted by La Monte Young whose lengthy drone-based improvisation proved to be influential not just on the Velvets but across the entire art scene. Haynes connects this to downtown filmmakers’ experimentation with duration—like Andy Warhol’s silent short film “Kiss,” which features a series of couples kissing at sustained intervals—as well as Reed’s literary influences, such as poet Delmore Schwartz and the ’50s Beat writers.
The Velvet Underground demonstrates that the band was a multi-disciplinary affair, drawing from all strands of culture, absorbing artistic ideas outside of their own lane. Haynes potentially risks alienating the uninitiated by declining to expound upon certain individuals and movements, but his trial-by-fire tactic has purchase. For one thing, it mirrors the experience of artists and audiences on the ground, who were also expected to keep up despite operating with various degrees of knowledge.
Of course, Haynes dutifully covers the major aspects of the Velvets’ story, all of which are common knowledge for fans but nevertheless presented here with aplomb. The Velvet Underground primarily focuses on the first four years of the group, from Cale and Reed’s first collaboration in the band The Primitives through Warhol’s crucial involvement with the group (his public notoriety, his choice to bring German singer Nico on board for the first album, and his famous banana cover design are basically why the Velvet Underground were a known property) and Reed’s choice to dismiss Cale from the band so that they can move in a more commercial direction.
Haynes does cover the Velvets’ second act, including the hiring of Doug Yule and their appropriately anticlimactic dissolution. But he does so in a hurried, and-then-this-happened way. This passage is a bit of a disappointment compared to the visual feast that comes before it, but it thankfully takes up a relatively small period of the film. Anyway, Haynes makes a smart move to close the film with the band’s breakup, relegating the numerous solo albums and subsequent life events to montage. Per the film’s title, The Velvet Underground is the story. Period.
It’s telling that Haynes never acknowledges Brian Eno’s famous, oft-misquoted line about the Velvets’ first album, how it “sold only 30,000 copies in its first five years…[but] I think everyone who bought one of those 30,000 copies started a band.” Maybe he leaves it out because we’re living in a culture that has fully absorbed the group’s influence, and such a description no longer applies to a once-cult act whose iconography can now be bought at H&M. Instead, Haynes attempts to expand upon manager and publicist Danny Fields’ casually hyperbolic insight that, “You need physics to describe this band at their height. It had entropy within it.”
Haynes’ previous work explored mid-century rock music in unconventional ways: His Velvet Goldmine was a ’70s glam-rock version of Citizen Kane, while kaleidoscopic Bob Dylan biopic I’m Not There cast six different actors, including Richard Gere and Cate Blanchett, as the legend. Here, Haynes simply uses the tools at his disposal to get the job done. Ultimately, he captures the inspiring spirit of The Velvet Underground, a band built on the principle that marching to the beat of your own drum is a righteous, rebellious artistic act.
29 Comments
I wonder if this doc acknowledges the one time the Lawrence Welk band had a little too much caffeine and covered the Velvet Underground. Until it surfaced on YouTube, lore is that the episode was never aired and locked away in a vault lest their squeaky clean reputation be sullied from this performance of a little undergound rock’n’roll.
That clip always makes me smile. I’m like 99% sure it was actually linked to from Lou Reed’s website like 10 yrs ago. They had a bunch of clips of Lou, VU, and covers. If looking for a not-funny but still awesome clip, check out The Black Crowes covering Oh! Sweet Nothin. It’s great (and made the cut on Lou’s site).
With the banjo, I’d expect a dubbing of I Hate You by The Monks.
Lol “popularity charts”.
I’m always amazed watching obviously skilled musicians performing music in such an unmusical way.
Welk was ahead of his time. Like I remember as a kid when he had GG Allin on as a guest. That dance routine was groundbreaking.
I’m confused. It sounds like there isn’t an opening scene of an aging Mr. Underground about to go on stage, only to stop and flashback to an earlier, formative period in his life that would define his career. I mean, how are audiences even supposed to know what’s going on, then?
Goddamit, this is a dark fucking period!
“You don’t want this heroin, Velvet. Get out of here!”
Most of the Mr. Undergrounds are dead.
And nobody likes the surviving Mrs. Underground after she joined the Tea Party.
That was Mr. Pinkham Floyd’s biopic.
The Dom – the club on St. Mark’s Place here in New York where, in 1966, Andy Warhol first promoted the Velvet Underground in his Exploding Plastic Inevitable show – is now a Chipotle.
an Inevitable Explosion of a different kind!
The Dom – the club on St. Mark’s Place here in New York where, in 1966, Andy Warhol first promoted the Velvet Underground in his Exploding Plastic Inevitable show – is now a Chipotle. Could have been worse – it could’ve been turned into a Duane Reade pharmacy… although that might have been more fitting for the Velvet Underground.
We are asymptotically approaching a future where everything once cool is now a Chipotle. Stonehenge is next.
Why do you want to hurt me?
I need to see this as soon as possible. That’s a shame about Haynes downplaying the Doug Yule period though, the self titled 3rd album is brilliant and Loaded is at least a very good album if not a masterpiece. Plus the best live documentation of The Velvet Underground, The Quine Tapes, is all from the post-Cale period and those concerts are absolutely ferocious
Agree. Doug Yule is awesome and it’s a shame he not only wasn’t invited to participate in 93 but also snubbed by the Rock Hall of Fame.
He was in a band called American Flyer post-Velvets. It’s very mid 70s mellow rock (I guess yacht rock now), but still really good. George Martin produced their first record. It’s on spotify to check out.
More than a shame, honestly. “Candy Says”, “Jesus” were sang by Yule. His bass and his brother, Billy, on drums … Morrison’s lead … this is what made the Velvets good. Cale and Warhol??? Good Lord!!! How many more times do we need to hear this story …? Ugh, I’m pissed.
Loaded and The Velvet Underground are my two favorites.
for me it’s White Light/White Heat, Velvet Underground.
Ok, you’ve said every single thing I came to say.
Word. Most of my favorite VU is from the post-Cale period.
No Yule? No thanks … Sounds like more “the Velvet Underground Experience mahnnnn” stuff. Plenty of it on YouTube already.
Apple TV, eh?
Guess I’ll be skipping this one.
I’ll catch it on DVD, unless it shows up on Netflix.
Meh. It’s no worse than the other services. At $5/month it’s cheaper too. This is worth a month of it. Servant is pretty good too.
JJ Cale is by far the most interesting, entertaining, enjoyable musician to come out of the Velvet scene. People admire Reed for being obnoxious basically: oh look I’m so counter-cultural and strange and abrasive; Cale went to blues and Americana with a soft, subtle feeling in both instrument and voice. My own opinion of course, but I expect Cale’s legacy to be greater then Reed’s.
Been waiting on this man for a while now, and I was not disappointed. Well, almost. The beginning kinda suckered me into thinking this was going to be another rockumentary and I got a whiff that the filmmaker was saying Reed and Cale were these two pretentious hipsters who stumbled onto some musical magic, but I was pleasantly surprised by the end. It lets you ease into what made them so special by highlighting how cringey each of them were as young artists. I felt like I matured along with them during the documentary. I was not surprised that I found myself easing back into the VU that I loved and not so much the earliest stuff that I found kinda artsy for artsy’s sake. Once they got away from Warhol, (and ironically when Cale left) their music really started to dig into me like a tick.
Favorite quote, and I have to paraphrase it, is from Lou Reed’s sister. Basically she said that you’ll never know the full Lou Reed, but everybody thinks they do just because he was a drug user and explored his sexuality. That isn’t all there is and never is, but we love to dive in the mud with our prurient interests. I’m glad this doc didn’t do that. His sister is lovely by the way, and quite the dancer.