The Velvet Underground Documentary

Sounds Good!

I was a Lou Reed fan first. I was such a Lou Reed fan. And maybe I had one of the stranger ‘starting points’ there – I was hooked in by 1986 album, Mistrial. It’s often written up as the worst album of his career or at least as one of the ones you needn’t bother with – I still love it. I still reckon it’s misunderstood, or probably just under-played.

Anyway, from there it was to a greatest hits compilation and the New York album and Reed’s collaboration with John Cale (Songs For Drella) and then – a few albums in – I discovered The Velvet Underground.

I didn’t buy the album with the banana on the cover first. In fact, I bought their last studio album first – Loaded. It wasn’t just the first VU album for me, it was the first CD I bought. A whole new era of music and listening and collecting. And this sad, brilliant, perfectly imperfect album is still and forever one of my all-time favourite listening experiences.

A couple of weeks later I had the first VU record. And then the White Light/White Heat album, then the self-titled third album and sometime after a big box-set with rarities and leftovers, the live albums, some bootlegs, the anniversary editions…

I would buy them all on vinyl too.

And now I’m out the other side of such worship. The music all in my brain and so much of it clinging heavy to my heart – but I sold all my CDs many moons ago and more recently I moved the vinyl copies out of the house too. I’m reassessing my music collection and how I hold onto music and how it keeps its hold on me. I’m also a digital listener with the world at my fingertips. Like everyone. So I’m never dry. A hopeful swimmer, always with the fear of drowning.

Anyway, The Velvet Underground and Sonic Youth are the bands that presented a flipside, or, um Another View, from the profound influence of The Beatles and Bob Dylan.

I tried telling my son some of this as I started watching Todd Haynes’ brand new documentary that is simply called “The Velvet Underground”. It started streaming on Apple TV+ over the weekend.

“They’re my Weird Beatles” I said, happy with my explanation. He shrugged, walked out of the room and started writing a story called ‘Smarty Pants’ about a kid that isn’t very bright but one day buys a pair of pants that make him a whole lot smarter when he wears them.

And I settled down into the couch more comfortably, with John Cale’s abrasive viola strikes filling the room.

I’ve watched so many bad music biopics and documentaries. I’ve watched nearly all the concert films. And I’ve read many very bad biographies. The worst are the middling ones that just didn’t need to happen. Two and three star vehicles that run through the timeline like a Wikipedia page put to music.

It was already part of my psyche to absorb as much as I could about favourite and even not so favourite bands. And then when I worked in a video store (right on the cusp of DVD coming in) and also music stores (either side of that), well it really was being given the keys to the kingdom. Access to nearly everything. Hoovering up the best and worst music documentaries and band biographies.

So much so that now it takes a lot for me to care about a documentary feature that carries alleged weight about a musical subject.

Film Festival picks and other apparent “must-see” movies about music have left me cold. Detached. Sometimes it’s far worse than that. Biopics usually get it wrong. Very wrong indeed.

So all of this is swirling in my head as I watch The Velvet Underground. I’m thinking about being a teenager on holiday in Mt Maunganui when I walk into a hybrid music/surf-clothing store and buy a copy of the VU’s Loaded as my first CD. And I’m thinking about how Lou Reed: Rock and Roll Heart from 1998 (which I saw at the Paramount during one of the first Film Festivals I ever attended in Wellington) was probably good enough anyway, right…

I’m thinking, too, about how I never got to see Reed play, but in 2007 I flew to Auckland overnight to catch a John Cale solo gig. And it was worth it just to hear him perform Venus in Furs. And how I looked over at one point and saw Chris Knox and Roger Shepherd in the audience, looking like they were there to worship. And how that made total sense. And made the gig even more enjoyable.

This is what I’m thinking as the documentary starts. A few minutes in and my mind is whizzing through the Cale biographies (and autobiography) I’ve read, all the Lou Reed books, the Nico books, and the Warhol stuff – how my total understanding of Andy Warhol as 20th Century Figure is shaped through my understanding of the music and impact of The Velvet Underground. And how the quote attributed to Brian Eno around not many people buying the first VU album but everyone that did started a band might be one of the things that got me super-interested in Brian Eno; he’s now one of the most important shaping influences on what I listen to.

The song European Son is on a loop in my head some days. Hearing that at the end of the first VU album blew the bloody doors open. Its charming racket was, at first, an anomaly – but on second, third and then every listen after, it’s been the signpost for another way of musical thinking.

So I’m hearing European Son in the doco – even when it’s not playing.

And I’m also thinking about all of the magical work I’ve loved by Todd Haynes. How he’s the type of filmmaker where I’m even intrigued by his missteps. There are misfires he’s made that I still want to spend time with – I don’t think he nailed Velvet Goldmine at all, doesn’t mean I didn’t want to see it. It took me absolutely years to get to I’m Not There. I only did that recently. I’m glad I (finally) did.

Those two films offer his fictionalised take on the worlds of glam and Bob Dylan, respectively. But the music-movie I loved most that came from Haynes’ mind was his appreciation of the Carpenters’ story: the 1987 short-film Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story is a must to seek out. It’s 43 minutes long and features Barbie dolls to act out the story.

As far as I’m aware, The Velvet Underground is Haynes’ first full-length music documentary. And it’s not a subverted biopic, as with his previous musical offerings. It’s a rock doc – but it’s a rock-doc as art-film, as befits the band, the movement, the era.

Split screens and black and white footage and a cacophony of sounds bring to mind the New York of the mid-60s, the Soho boho art movement, the look and feel and grit of the music is there on screen. And of course, Haynes has the two surviving members of the Velvet Underground (Moe Tucker and Cale) on tape. They are there in fresh new interviews alongside a few key surviving Warhol/Factory alums.

But I reckon the masterstroke of this film, interview-wise, is putting Jonathan Richman – band uberfan – front and centre to tell his story. He is so enthusiastic, so sincere. And previously so media-shy, existing without social media presence and agreeing to interviews usually by mail correspondence only. Haynes is showing you what an uberfan he is by going and getting the band’s biggest, best-known uberfan and affording him the time and space he deserves.

So of course I’m now thinking about what a joy and thrill it was to see Jonathan Richman in concert (about five years ago).

The Velvet Underground is a band I always return to – and always will – because what I hear when I listen to those deep musical meditations is a band of idiosyncratic players that did not care about making a sale. They were making art. They didn’t want your approval. They didn’t want your fandom. They wanted to express the idea. Anything else was a by-product. And only if it arrived.

I take heart in that.

But Haynes’ film does get to exactly that heart. And it takes its sweet time to do so – focussing in on the making of the band-vibe as much as it ever does the making of individual records. It is a tone-poem in dedication to the band’s look and feel and flow. It is an art-film celebrating an era and ethos.

So in the last 20 minutes it flicks through the albums that followed and hints at the solo careers that continued – because we can get that information elsewhere if we don’t know it already. Haynes’ plan is to suspend us in a time and place. To celebrate the Velvet Underground for being and to capture it and hold it in that place.

He also shows us – without telling us – that the fire and fire battle of Reed and Cale was what truly drove the band. Haynes knows we probably know that going in.

So I sat watching this story of my “Weird Beatles” and was filled with so many sideline memories. And ready again to approach the music.

That’s what I want from a music documentary. I don’t just want every album or tour ticked off and footage of all of the stories I already know. I want to feel the music come alive and be taken to the place – the heart – the soul – of where and when and how it was formed.

In that sense The Velvet Underground is a triumph. One of the best movies about music you could ever hope to see. And it d happens to be about one of the most important bands I’ll ever hear. And always love.