It was an extraordinary time, but not exactly a golden age. Haynes has too much respect for art to idealize artists or impose a retrospective fit on their dissonance. The blatant brutality and menace of the music—the buzz and distortion behind lyrics about addiction, sadism, and sexual exploitation—came from nowhere.
Film critic Amy Taubin, who starred in a Warhol movie about “the most beautiful women in the world,” clearly remembers that Warhol’s headquarters, The Factory, was a bad place for women who valued their looks rather than their talent. One aspect of Warhol’s genius was his ability to use people and often use them. Reed, who passed away in 2013, is a beloved figure after his death, but many of his contemporaries would not describe him as a good person.
And courtesy, however, was the opposite of what Velvet Underground was trying to do. “We hated this peace and love crap,” Tucker says. Artist Mary Woronov, who toured the West Coast with the Velvets, describes their hostility to the California counterculture: “We hated hippies.” It was never a political group, yet it expressed a strong protest against the sentimentality, stupidity, false consciousness and positive thinking that would sow the seeds of punk rock and subsequent rebellions. Evidence of their influence is provided by singer-songwriter Jonathan Richman, who estimates that he saw them live in Boston 60 or 70 times as a teenager, and whose enthusiasm has not faded more than half a century later.
Stick a pin on any Velvet Underground recording – or queue up a playlist if you’re spinning around like that – and what you hear will be new, frightening, and full of possibilities, even at the thousandth listen. “The Velvet Underground” will show you where this constant innovation comes from and will connect sonic points with other contemporary artistic explosions. As a documentary, it’s wonderfully informative. It is also a rough and powerful work of art in itself that turns archeology into prophecy.
Velvet Underground
Rated R. “Heroin”, “Venus in Fur”, “Sister Ray” — do the math. Working time: 1 hour 50 minutes. in theaters and on Apple TV+.