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Simply watched the Todd Haynes documentary on The Velvet Underground, and it certain leaves a mark. I’m undecided how a lot I want so as to add to the mythology of the VU however, merely put, white fashionable music could be break up into two eras, earlier than the Velvets and all the pieces after. Earlier than them, white fashionable music was at all times protected, someway each too naive and too calculated. The songwriting is perhaps melodic sufficient, however there was by no means sufficient grit. Pay attention an excessive amount of and one may get a bit sick – Haynes makes use of “Monday, Monday” by the Mamas & the Papas as a punching bag a number of occasions to show this level. (The few exceptions to this rule tended to be white musicians attempting their finest with black music, such because the Rolling Stones lastly placing the Diddley again into “Not Fade Away” after Buddy Holly couldn’t fairly get the job executed.) After the Velvets, there was an explosion that ripped fashionable music in a large number of instructions; every of the 4 core albums created complete genres.
Nevertheless, as a result of every of the unique albums was so distinctive, not everybody’s Velvet Underground is similar. Todd Haynes makes his personal model clear from the beginning – the primary phrases we learn are a Baudelaire quote, the primary face we see is John Cale, and the primary sound we hear is Cale’s droning viola lifted out of the Lou Reed’s masterpiece, “Heroin.” Cale is a superb musician however, with the Velvets, he was additionally a real modernist at an progressive peak, with all that entails. Thus, Haynes’s Velvets are the Velvets of Andy Warhol and his Manufacturing unit, of experimental musicians like La Monte Younger, Tony Conrad, and their Dream Syndicate, and – maybe most related to the director Haynes himself – of the numerous avant-garde filmmakers of Nineteen Sixties New York whose works he makes use of to put the Velvets within the context of the modern artwork scene. It’s all very properly put collectively, however it’s in service of a model of the band that I like however don’t love.
The primary two Velvet albums have elegant moments – “Heroin,” after all, and the piano vamp of “All Tomorrow’s Events” which exhibits how Cale’s fearlessness may repay. Nevertheless, they’re troublesome albums to hearken to end-to-end. “European Son” begins off properly however then descends into time-filling noise. “The Black Angel’s Dying Track” now betrays what it at all times was, Reed aping and maybe even satirizing Dylan. A lot of White Mild/White Warmth sounds just like the jokey backing monitor to a long-forgotten experimental artwork movie. Positive, “Sister Ray” nonetheless squeezes out the sparks, however it will possibly’t match its sequel “Roadrunner” by Velvets superfan Jonathan Richman (who claims within the movie, adoringly and adorably, to have seen them 60-70 occasions and apparently opened for them as an adolescent).
If the Velvets broke up when Reed pushed Cale out of the band, then I doubt I might care about them way more than I care about, say, Frank Zappa or Captain Beefheart – attention-grabbing music behind my assortment that I nonetheless often skip when it comes up on shuffle. Within the movie, drummer Maureen Tucker makes it clear that Reed removed Cale so the band may “be extra regular” – which is kind of an announcement to make about Lou Reed! Extremely, after Reed changed Cale with bassist and singer Doug Yuletide, the Velvets someway started making music which was each wild, unhinged, AND listenable. John Cage had magically reworked into John Adams. The songs simply outshone all the pieces being made at the moment: “I Can’t Stand It,” “Pale Blue Eyes,” “What Goes On,” “After Hours“, “Lisa Says,” “Candy Jane“, “Who Loves the Solar“, “Head Held Excessive“, “Rock & Roll“, and the compulsive “Foggy Notion” (which, amazingly, was not launched till 15 years after the band dissolved as a result of that’s simply how it’s with the Velvets).
The distinction was truly fairly easy. Rock and roll is at the beginning dance music. Even when folks aren’t truly dancing, the music is supposed to transfer you, to make you are feeling glad to be alive. Joe Strummer as soon as described rock as the sensation of, after coming throughout a can on the road, kicking that may as a result of it’s proof that you’re alive, and it merely feels good to be alive. Return and hearken to Yuletide’s superb bass line in “Foggy Notion” – it’s six minutes and forty-seven seconds of life, that a lot time with out ache. Reed was now writing songs that could possibly be danced to however that also had a perverse edge, a wild buzz, with the mysterious additional tones that Richman describes within the movie. The guts of what made the Velvet Underground nice was the hopped-up go-go band that also remembered sock-hops. (Contemplate how Velvet successor Pere Ubu’s finest monitor is basically a rave.)
Surprisingly, Haynes appears to concentrate on this important a part of the band’s legacy even whether it is at all times handled as subtext within the movie. He cuts twice to Bo Diddley, as soon as to “Street Runner” when Cale discusses the primary time Tony Conrad added amplification to his musical experimentation and once more when he describes the repetitive beats he loves in rock and roll. (In addition to the apparent musical connections with the Velvets, Diddley was additionally one of many few early rock musicians with a key feminine instrumentalist.) I needed to cease the movie simply to get well when Maureen Tucker described her expertise when she first heard The Rolling Stone’s “Not Fade Away” whereas drive house from college – the sound hit her so laborious that “I pulled off the highway as a result of it was too thrilling to maintain driving.” That’s the second I acknowledged MY Velvet Underground within the movie; I felt the very same manner, the very same manner, that she did after I first heard the avalanche of rhythm in that track. I acknowledged my Velvet Underground once more when Haynes cuts on to “Foggy Notion” – the band’s best track – to introduce Yuletide becoming a member of the group, a pitch-perfect second.
Whereas Haynes does acknowledge Yuletide’s contributions, it’s also unclear if he tried to interview him for the movie. Certainly, Doug Yuletide has at all times occupied an odd place within the Velvet’s orbit. He’s usually seen as probably the most light-weight member of the band – a journeyman drafted to switch the irreplaceable Cale – however I can’t assist feeling that, with out his arrival at simply the precise time, the Velvets would have by no means hit their peak, by no means turn into the band that I really like. Cale makes a surprising admission within the movie – that he has by no means met Doug Yuletide. Though authentic guitarist Sterling Morrison lobbied for his inclusion, Reed and Cale didn’t embody Yuletide of their 1992 reunion, underlining that he was someway not part of the “actual” Velvets. Effectively, Doug, in case you ever someway learn this, you’re completely a part of my Velvet Underground.
I first heard of the Velvets as an adolescent when thumbing by means of the elegant third version of the Rolling Stone Album Information, which described them as “probably the most influential rock & roll band of the final 20 years – no contest.” That was an intriguing assertion, however how would I even hear their music? The few music shops of my hometown of Centralia, WA, actually didn’t inventory them, and even journeys to close by Olympia didn’t produce something. They actually weren’t performed on our native radio stations, which was mockingly within the full throes of early 90s various music on the time, a direct descendant of the Velvets. MP3s shared over the Web had been nonetheless a couple of years away and never one thing I may even think about on the time.
Surprisingly, the primary time I heard the band was on the soundtrack to Oliver Stone’s The Doorways, which I had borrowed so I may dub Carmina Burana onto one of many camcorder films my associates and I produced throughout highschool. (We used Carmina Burana as a musical punchline as a result of, even then, it was a cliché for overwrought path.) The monitor instantly earlier than that one was “Heroin” which to a sheltered teenager rising up in rural Washington state sounded prefer it may as properly have come from the moon. I barely knew who the Speaking Heads or the Conflict had been, and I actually had no thought who Tv or Gang of 4 had been. I had by no means heard something so audacious, one thing so propulsive and unnerving on the identical time. How may one thing this disturbing additionally sound so good?
Nonetheless, it took years and years for me to listen to extra Velvets. I caught up shortly on music earlier than them, falling laborious for Little Richard and Bo Diddley, whereas additionally lastly getting ahold of their progeny comparable to Horses, London Calling, Marquee Moon, and Extra Songs about Buildings and Meals. I seen that considered one of my Columbia Home catalogs lastly had one – ONE! – Velvet Underground album, the compilation The Better of the Velvet Underground, which was a revelation when it lastly arrived within the mail. For the primary time, I heard “Candy Jane” and “I Can’t Stand It” – songs which, once more, gave the impression of nothing else I had ever heard.
In fact, I wanted to get my arms on their precise albums, and in case you grew up within the age of both iTunes or Spotify, it will likely be laborious to explain to you simply how troublesome that was again then. Loaded, for instance, was truly out-of-print within the US and solely accessible through import. In different phrases, People needed to pay foreigners to fabricate albums from one of many best American bands after which ship them on boats to us as a result of, apparently, we had dangerous style in music or one thing. I lastly discovered my very own copy of Loaded in a London CD store within the spring of 1997 whereas spending 1 / 4 at Oxford, costing me 20 kilos of my meals stipend. Thus, I lastly heard “Who Loves the Solar” whereas sharing a room with Christopher Tin on the moveable CD participant and mini-speaker I had full of me from house. It was all price it.
Years later, one of many perks of main the design of Civilization IV was that I bought to pick the music for the sport’s soundtrack, from the medieval Giovanni Palestrina by means of the fashionable John Adams. When it got here time to choose music for the video of the Rock & Roll Surprise, a brand new addition for the collection, I knew precisely which band I wished. I requested Take-Two, a bit sheepishly, if we may get ahold of The Velvet Underground or, not less than, their label. I actually had no thought what to anticipate, whether or not they would even contemplate it or how a lot it may cost. To Take-Two’s credit score, they humored me and contacted Common to seek out out. Seems, we may get “Rock & Roll” for $5K, which gave the impression of a cut price to me.
The track selection itself was maybe a bit too on-the-nose; I in all probability thought having the track share its title with the Surprise would assist distract my superiors from noticing that I used to be licensing a track from the individuals who had introduced us the very family-friendly “Heroin.” Subsequent time, I’ll simply ask for “Foggy Notion” as an alternative as a result of it could be one of the best ways to introduce an adolescent residing in rural Washington to the Velvet Underground.
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