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The Velvet Underground
The Velvet Underground
The Velvet Underground (dir. Todd Haynes)
The Velvet Underground (Todd Haynes) at Royal Festival Hall 9/10/21
Todd and his army of enablers have turned up a treasure trove of material, some going back to the pre-Velvets days for the principals, film from their golden ‘Factory’ period and elucidated by figures as diverse as future music maven La Monte Young, musician, songwriter and Velvets superfan Jonathan Richman and author, painter and actress Mary Woronov.
After a brief run-through of viola player John Cale’s early life in Wales, overseen by his indomitable and proudly nationalistic grandmother, getting him into music at an early age and studying at Goldsmith’s College, we get a detailed picture of his move to the USA on a prestigious Leonard Bernstein classical music scholarship. John’s restless, inquiring mind would lead him into La Monte Young’s experimental Theatre of Eternal Music via a performance of John Cage’s highly challenging avant-garde music. If this all sounding a little too eggheaded, it should be remembered that John was no ivory tower dweller. He appeared on the highly rated 1963 US TV show ‘I’ve Got A Secret’, playing Erik Satie’s music, with a panel trying to guess what his secret was, and the connection to his companion. Lou’s early life was illustrated with some family photographs that show him to have been an average kid of the period, and some fair and balanced comments from sister Merrill Reed Weiner, who recollected their serious, mirthless upbringing by their accountant father Sidney Joseph Reed, and the young Louis’ problems and ‘medical’ treatments that could easily have left him a far more troubled person. The subject of Lou’s mercurial moods come up frequently, often resulting in profound changes to his life and career, and those of other parties. His graduation from barely competent guitarist to hardworking, one-man pop ditty factory was as rapid as it was unexpected to his family, and his efforts for the Woolworths budget Pickwick label under various monikers are now, predictably, rare and much sought after.
Lou and John’s meeting is perhaps one of the most significant events in modern popular music, and all the more so for the sheer improbability of it. The band’s formation is almost classic college band fable, the basic five members being brought together through the common agency of Syracuse University, which Lou had chosen after he lasted only a short time at his parents’ choice. Their eventual meeting with the man who would enable them to make their highly individual music, is arguably another seismic rumble in the body of popular music. Pop artist Andy Warhol’s contribution may have been a passive one, but nevertheless essential, with John recalling that their music would probably never have been recorded without Warhol’s help.
It’s here that we get into the better-known material, and even though Velvets fans may have seen them many times before, the shots of the band playing at Warhol’s Lower East Side residence and art studio, The Factory, still fascinate, the band’s slight awkwardness in front of the ever-present camera all the more endearing. Flashes of Warhol’s famous penetrating Screen Tests are mixed with Gerard Malanga and Mary Woronov’s whip dances, layered with then very new multi-coloured light shows and the Velvet Underground’s rumbling, atonal sounds. Their regular gigs at the ‘Polski Dom’, a former Polish Dance Hall, are now the stuff of legend, but here they are, in vibrant colour and with a cast of Andy’s high society friends and art world bods along for the ride.
The addition of German-born model, chanteuse and, briefly, Warhol muse, Nico (Christa Päffgen) is recalled by John as being mainly for aesthetic purposes, but Moe (Maureen Tucker) mentions that the few songs Nico sang on the legendary first LP were written for her in spirit if not in reality, and that no-one has ever performed them quite like her, since. Drummer Moe’s essential part in the Velvets’ story is sometimes overlooked, but not in this film. The contribution of guitarist Sterling Morrison is also often sidelined, but Haynes ensures fairness by including comments from Sterling’s widow Martha, whose memories of his later life and re-entry to higher education are some of the more poignant and touching in the film.
The Velvets’ wall of sound rumbled out of the Royal Festival Hall’s mighty system, and if I had heard only the thunderous soundtrack in this vast monument to post war Britain’s commitment to the arts, I would have gone home happy.The fevered, speed-driven recording of their second LP, ‘White Light/White Heat’ is touched on, but even at this early point, tension is building in the band and lesions are beginning to appear in the band’s corpus. The myth of the band being a little-known arty combo is easily blown away, with their many appearances at sizeable festivals, and in some highly surprising places. Their trip to California is almost tragi-comic; arriving all dressed in black, like a gang of criminally minded beatniks adrift in the dippy, trippy capital of the flower power movement. John and Maureen recall how much they hated the hippies and their naivety, and uppermost in their minds, the vociferous drubbing and condemnation the band received from the West Coast rock press and stars, couldn’t have helped their morale.
John recalls with painful clarity his sacking by Lou, imposing an ultimatum on the rest of the band, and them settling down into a more conventional rock sound that in no way belittled them. Lou’s capacity to churn out great rock and roll songs, and the solid rhythm section ensured there was still plenty of life in the band, even if that experimental edge had dulled and been put aside. The arrival of Doug Yule is touched on, and polite noises are made by all concerned.
The falling apart of the band was perhaps inevitable, and although Maureen talks openly about it, it’s a painful memory.
‘The Velvet Underground’ is the documentary film that has come, sadly, a little too late, with the untimely deaths of three of the players, but it is a welcome one.
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