The Velvet Underground (2021)

This documentary on the legendary ‘60s rock band—source of Brian Eno’s jokey observation in 1982 that everyone who bought their poorly selling first album started a band—is refreshingly restrained and judicious, basically giving everyone from Andy Warhol to Doug Yule their fair share of the spotlight. It starts with John Cale and Lou Reed, as it must. Reed gets all the credit he deserves, though perhaps not as much as he asserted. Director Todd Haynes traces the Velvet Underground’s most profound roots to the New York world of art and avant-garde music, placing emigrant Welshman Cale in the welter that followed John Cage and La Monte Young. Reed, for his part, was an undergraduate at Syracuse studying under poet Delmore Schwartz. A brief snippet of a Schwartz reading is all we need to hear that influence. Reed and his doo-wop love then went on to house songwriting for Pickwick Records, exploiting the confusion of kids shopping for albums at Woolworth’s (anyone interested in my copy of The Mustang Plays the Beatles Song Book?). Later he would become a student of 2 guitars bass drums. Perhaps most sorely needed in this story, Warhol is given his due as the force behind making that first album, The Velvet Underground & Nico (also called the “banana album” for its famously peelable cover). Warhol sewed up the art bona fides and the aesthetic working ethos. He delivered the vision. He never stood near a soundboard, let alone twiddled a knob, but his producer credit was entirely warranted. Reed and Cale say so too. There’s a good argument, expressed here as well as I’ve seen it anywhere, that Warhol is almost solely responsible for producing the Velvet Underground.

There’s a lot of backstory to The Velvet Underground and it takes some time to get to the music proper, but when it does the picture is as generous as anyone could hope. I’ve always thought “Venus in Furs” and especially “Heroin” are more like overrated novelties, but they have their time and place and they may be best appreciated here. “Venus in Furs” and especially “Heroin” certainly appear to be Haynes’s favorites. But most of mine are in here too, such as “Sweet Jane” and “I’m Waiting for the Man.” Further principals, from Moe Tucker to Sterling Morrison to Nico, are brought in to the documentary essentially as they were brought in to the band. The banana album gets the most attention, but the entire catalog is featured, including the “lost album” set (now the VU album). The only exception is the very last album, when Reed was gone and Yule was trying to bear the standard ... true confession, I’ve still never heard it. The band’s ever-shifting chemistry was amazing, and it was also amazingly unsuited to its commercial times, which is cringingly obvious on their ill-fated tour of the West Coast with the multimedia Exploding Plastic Inevitable extravaganza. West Coast pop aesthetics are unfairly derided here—too much hapless hippie hatred for me, but point taken. The Velvet Underground in many ways left them all eating their dust in the long haul. “Sunday Morning” is as good as anything by the Left Banke or the Mamas & the Papas, for example. This documentary is a good way in for novices (born every day, you know) and it’s a very apt summation for fans, particularly those who resent Reed’s hogging of the show for many decades. He was only part of something very big—an important part, but only part. In a very welcome way, this has made me rethink Warhol’s contribution, which I underestimated. It’s massive. All of it, the entire arc, is massive.