Documentary Review: 'The Velvet Underground' from Director Todd Haynes

The Velvet Underground was unlike any other band in rock history. Presented like an art show, under the guidance of legendary pop art provocateur Andy Warhol, the band was living art in New York City in the late 1960s. The Velvet Underground with cantankerous and charismatic lead singer Lou Reed, sonic scientist John Cale on piano and viola, glass ceiling busting drummer Moe Tucker, and guitarist Sterling Morrison, were the combustible elements of a genre busting, new kind of rock stardom.

The Velvet Underground are the kind of rock band that needs a documentary. Their style is so foreign and so special that talking about it and analyzing it feels right, even if the band would most likely disagree. Studying The Velvet Underground, examining and experiencing their every sonic experiment feels right. Thus it feels perfectly right that director Todd Haynes has dedicated two hours of documentation, memories and examination to the life and legacy of The Velvet Underground.

The origins of The Velvet Underground are a mixed cocktail of failed bands, friends from college collaborating with nothing better to do, and a desperate desire to make music that didn’t sound like everything else. While Reed bonded with Sterling Morrison at Syracuse, it was in 1964 when Reed met John Cale that the seeds that would grow into The Velvet Underground were planted. Reed and Cale collaborated in a failed band called The Primitives which soon broke up as they evolved their mix of crunchy guitars and Cale’s viola and love for playing long tones under Reed’s astonishing improvised lyrics.

The avant-garde style of The Velvet Underground eventually drew the attention of Andy Warhol who became the band’s manager in 1965 after naming them the house band for The Factory, Warhol’s New York artist enclave and pseudo-nightclub. Warhol and Reed clashed regularly but with Warhol as cover, The Velvet Underground were allowed to make the kind of music they wanted to make, free from the oppressive oversight of a typical record company. Warhol also designed their striking album art that remains iconic today and a strong reason why Velvet Underground remains so well known today.

Eventually, Reed grew tired of Warhol getting credit for the success of The Velvet Underground and the relationship between them soured amid the band finding cult success as part of Warhol’s experimental art tour, Exploding Plastic Inevitable. These jam session shows lasted four hours with the band often playing to dozens of walkouts as scenesters only stuck around long enough to see Warhol before leaving.

After splitting from Warhol, The Velvet Underground began touring and made a memorable trip to Los Angeles where the band clashed with the hippie culture of California. The Velvet Underground members, John Cale and Moe Tucker talk in the documentary about hating hippies for their hypocrisy and the peace and love mantra that seemed to stand in place of actually doing something to make society any better. The Velvet Underground made enemies of Frank Zappa and The Mothers of Invention and famed San Francisco promoter Bill Graham before returning to the East Coast where their legend was born and thrived for a time.

But with combustible elements like Lou Reed and John Cale, it was clear that The Velvet Underground was not meant to last. Cale was unceremoniously fired by Reed in 1968 and replaced by Doug Yule. This version of The Velvet Underground would last into the early 1970s before Reed himself would leave and a zombie corpse of The Velvet Underground continued on with Doug Yule as the band leader and none of the original members.

Todd Haynes tells the story of The Velvet Underground in a series of shifting and molding visuals, split screens, archive footage and traditional talking head interviews, including enlightening insights from Cale and Moe Tucker who today seems more like a kindly grandmother than a pioneer of female rock n’roll. Other terrific talking heads include archive audio of Lou Reed in all his bitter glory and singer-songwriter Jonathan Richman whose love of The Velvet Underground is infectious. Richman’s moments in The Velvet Underground documentary are like watching an obsessed young fan gush about his heroes and not an accomplished musician talking about his contemporaries.

Richman’s love of The Velvet Underground is infectious and he breaks any potential monotony of repeated stories of Lou Reed being a complete jerk eager to destroy his creation as much as he is eager to use it as a vehicle to money, fame and the trappings of such. Indeed, Lou Reed doesn’t come off well in The Velvet Underground and since he’s not here to defend himself, there is certainly an element of unfairness. Then again, when you hear his archive audio, he might just as well tell you himself what a bitter and jaded ass he was at the time.

The Velvet Underground from director Todd Haynes is available on the Apple TV app as of October 15th, 2021.