The Velvet Underground Were Punk Rock Artists

Just watched Todd Haynes' documentary The Velvet Underground (2021). As hagiography it's very satisfying, so if you're a fan at all and haven't seen it yet you'll want to. Andy Warhol's 1960s pop art Exploding Plastic Inevitable in all its infamous demimonde glory. The origins of heroin chic and the greatest drug song in rock & roll history. The misty story of Moe Tucker's vocal on "After Hours." John Cale explains the early allure of the Velvets' sound as a combination of R&B and Wagner. Jonathan Richman, maybe their biggest fan, gushes with mysterious awe about various strange essences in the Velvet's music. And the doc is packed with images, found film footage, that many will have never seen before. 

Haynes' does have his own take, though. And I find it persuasive but not entirely convincing. 

In his story the Velvets were a Warhol art project, part of his Exploding Plastic Inevitable. Andy brought all the improbable parts together, Cale, Lou, and Nico. Set them up with his avant-garde pop art light show and took them on their first tour of the West Coast. Under Warhol's creative curation they produced a singular masterpiece, The Velvet Underground & Nico (1967). And then a proto-punk rock reaction to the Flower Power and hostility they encountered on their West Coast tour, White Light/White Heat (1968). 

Bill Graham, the big West Coast producer, hated The Velvet Underground, the doc shares. Tucker attributes this to Andy's superior light show. And clad in black the Velvets couldn't relate much to the colorful sunshine hippies of the West Coast. In this way, White Light/White Heat presages the Sex Pistols crash and burn spectacle in sonic dissolution and mayhem; making a noise fetish into an art move. It doesn't have the "songs" of their other albums but could be their most influential album sound-wise. 

But then that was it, the highly flammable ingredients of  The Velvet Undergound explode apart. Or, actually, Nico drifts away. And, basically, Lou drives everyone else away. He breaks with Andy. And shortly thereafter he gives the rest of the band an ultimatum as to whether Cale or he stays. Cale leaves and so the story of the original Velvet Underground is more or less over, in Haynes' account. 

The third album, The Velvet Underground (1969), the soft one without Cale or Nico, is glossed over. Loaded (1970) is barely mentioned, other than to point out Lou cut Moe out of that one too. A sort of addendum to the Lou broke up the band story. And VU, the lost album that ought to have come out between those two (but wasn't released until 1985) gets no mention at all, or none I can remember now. Not taking anything away from the first two albums, both classic albums, but there is a case to be made that the last three Velvets studio albums, without Nico and Cale, and in one instance even without Tucker, are as good or even better than the first two, or at least not dismissible as such. 

Not to Haynes's story, though. The more puzzling question for me is why Lou was never able to match in his solo career the greatness of even the last three Lou-centric Velvets' albums? And which maybe shows that the greatness of the Velvets five studio albums goes beyond Andy, Cale, Nico, Tucker, or even Lou. Something else that Richman and 1000s of bands since have tried to tap into and reproduce. 

Anyway, seeing the doc reminded me how important White Heat/White Light was to punk rock class of '77 and subsequent noise rock. The Velvets patent a version of art punk based on bleak beauty, violent negation, and rock & roll dissipation; a perfect mean of amateurish racket and avant-garde noise.  

"I Heard Her Call My Name" (1968)

 "Sister Ray" (1968)

"Guess I'm Falling In Love (Instrumental Version)" (1968)

Punk Rock Tuesday.