Todd Haynes gives us a first look at his Velvet Underground documentary
Though he may be best known for lush transgressive melodramas like Carol and Far From Heaven, Todd Haynes is certainly no stranger to music world. His outré depictions of glam rock (1998’s Velvet Goldmine) and Bob Dylan (2007’s I’m Not There) put a dizzying, dazzling spin on the very idea of what a biopic could be; even his early avant-garde experiment Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story, which famously recast the soft-pop singer’s life in molded Barbie-doll plastic, went on to become a cult classic.
What Haynes hasn’t done till now, with the upcoming release of The Velvet Underground (due this summer on Apple TV+), is a documentary — though you would hardly expect him to take a traditional route. And you would be correct: “The real opportunity for me as a filmmaker since this is the first documentary I’ve ever made,” he told EW from his home in Portland, “was to really seize upon the visual world that was occurring in the ‘60s in New York that made this band possible.
"Because although there’s very little traditional footage of them playing like you’d see in other rock docs, what you have is the exquisite Andy Warhol films that they played a part in, that he often shot in order to project them on the stage over them while they performed. And so, it really uses the language of those films. It’s just stuffed with the most gorgeous experimental film and photography, and what I hope is that it will take the audience back to that time and also let you hear the music in that context and hear it anew.”
Don’t expect total art-school anarchy, though; there’s still a firm backbone beneath all those shifting aspect ratios and split screens. Underground has the full participation of the group’s surviving members John Cale and Maureen “Moe” Tucker, as well as the papers that singer Lou Reed’s longtime partner, the artist Laurie Anderson, gathered for the official Reed archives now held at the New York Public Library following his death in 2013.
For Haynes, it was also an opportunity to dig into the famously irascible frontman’s more tender side: “There was no doubt Lou Reed was complicated and tough, and a lot of the stories that we share in the movie are about a very complicated and difficult personality who at times could be oppositional and objectional and challenging to the people around him, but also just somebody of such extraordinary wit and clarity and drive.”
“We have tapes from [legendary music manager] Danny Fields that he shared with us of the two of them hanging out and talking,” he goes on, “some of it from the Velvets era and some of it a bit later. In fact, there’s a beautiful interview that Danny shared with me of playing bands for him for the very first time, like The Ramones, and you hear Lou just talking about this experience [and] in the midst of it, he just turns and says, 'Oh my God, John would just go crazy for this’ — John Cale. We know that there was estrangement through that entire relationship and following their years together in the band, and it just was so touching to hear him go right to this person who had such a core role in his creative life at the beginning.”
“We have Jonathan Richman too, who doesn’t do a lot of interviews. He was a teenager in Boston when it really became the band’s new residency, this venue in Cambridge, and he became their mascot. He was a kid and he basically drove them around in his station wagon to parties and he went to every single show, he saw them about 60 or 70 times. He met Andy Warhol, he met Nico. He met everybody right at the time, and then they were gone. And he describes this band who were so lovely to him and so open to him. It’s not the tough, mean, hardcore Velvet Underground that people picture. And so this artist who is so influential in his own right and so articulate, he plays his guitar during the interview and demonstrates what he’s talking about sonically, musically.”
Though the bulk of filming was completed by 2019, certain world events put the brakes on further plans. “During COVID when we were locked up,” says Haynes, “I felt like me and my two editors, Affonso [Gonçalves] and Adam [Kurnitz], were able to just play with all of this amazing source material. Adam was in Brooklyn, Fonsi and I were in L.A. together, and we stayed quarantined together in the editing room. We just got to play and just dive into this incredibly beautiful chapter of American art, and I think you see that in the movie, it’s sort of infectious.”
As we observe the centennial of the first recorded jazz, more freshly minted options abound for navigating the jazz world. And as more digital pathways to jazz seemingly emerge at every turn, the range of online sources for jazz can prove daunting. In this post for the San Jose Mercury News, Richard Scheinin tours the burgeoning digital jazz universe, and points to some well-chosen routes for jazz listeners to explore. The good news is, while navigating the online jazz world has become more complex, the listener’s reach has become global: the riches of jazz have become more instananeously accessible, wherever we have the freedom to log on. So browse away: here at the Daily Jazz Gazette, we’d be happy to guide you further.
-Nick Moy
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Though they have been playing together for over 15 years, Accidental Sky will be the first album to document Nels Cline and White Out’s musical chemistry. The Los Angeles-born Nels Cline is a chameleonic guitar player and writer who, besides writing and recording numerous albums with The Nels Cline Singers and Nels Cline Trio, has recorded and performed with Mike Watt and Sonic Youth, Willie Nelson and Wilco, as well as Alan Licht, William Parker, and My Cat Is an Alien, to name just a few. White Out is the work of New York’s Lin Culbertson and Tom Surgal, who have been improvising in a space somewhere between free jazz, noise, experimental, and rock music since 1995, both as a duo and in projects with Jim O'Rourke, William Winant, and Thurston Moore. In this week’s Listed, they muse over 10 of their favorite records each, from Circle Jerks and Captain Beefheart, to Cage, Xenakis, Rai Rebels, and a head-scratching cover of Ornette Coleman’s “Sadness.”
48 hours only! Joanna Newsom’s new album is novelistic, with recurring musical themes, memorable characters and a preoccupation with the change brought on by passing time.
What Goes On: The improbable story of how Sterling Morrison left VU for UT
A must-read!
[B]efore the final founding member of New York’s most New York band turned the page on the Velvet Underground, UT English professor and member of the TA selection committee Joe Kruppa was thumbing through a large stack of applications when one caught his eye. The name on top, Holmes S. Morrison, seemed somehow familiar, but he couldn’t place it, until he arrived at the “Past Experience” portion.
“For the past six years I’ve been involved with a professional musical organization touring and recording for Verve Records,” it read. “Jesus Christ,” Kruppa remembers thinking. “That’s Sterling. He’s applying!”
Nice interview with Margo Timmins of Cowboy Junkles: http://www.mountainlifemedia.ca/2015/06/laying-it-down-a-conversation-with-cowboy-junkies-margo-timmins/
I think that every person, whether they play music or don’t play music, has a sound – their own sound… You can’t destroy that. It’s like energy. Your sound, your voice, means more to everyone that knows you than how you look tomorrow. You might grow a beard or shave your hair. They say, “I can’t recognize you.” But as soon as you talk, “Oh yeah, it is you!” It’s the same thing. If it’s that distinctive, then there must be something there. It’s amazing that everyone has their own sound.
Nice Limbo you have here @nicelimbo - Tumblr Blog | Tumgag
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