Velvet Underground Trainspotting Question

I really love how it unspooled into chaos post Lou quitting, one of several ways the film says “fuck you” to linear cataloguing of events, which feels like one of its most Velvets qualities. I can get more information elsewhere but this feels like them. Haynes is so right and so committed to the evocation of their milieu. I loved how gay it was, too.

xp god the editing is EVERYTHING

constant reminders Todd Haynes went to an Ivy League School.

Oh no it's really sad that some fancy pant intellectual is the one who directed that this documentary about one of America's great unpretentious gut bustin' blue collar party bands

Lol, exactly.

i went to an ivy league school, and yet i am also one of america's great gut bustin' party bands. i am pretentious as all hell about it though, that's why i was accepted to the school

Oh no it's really sad that some fancy pant intellectual is the one who directed that this documentary about one of America's great unpretentious gut bustin' blue collar party bands

It was so moving to see this at the end of Haynes's film. And Mellencamp gave them their best interview!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rW4YW3YiSWE

I heard that reunion sped Sterling's end. Mistreatment adding to him already having the first signs of cancer anbd so on.

I heard the opposite, that the first signs led to an initial consideration to do the reunion in the first place.

_Oh no it's really sad that some fancy pant intellectual is the one who directed that this documentary about one of America's great unpretentious gut bustin' blue collar party bands_

It was so moving to see this at the end of Haynes's film. And Mellencamp gave them their best interview!

📹

Oh no it's really sad that some fancy pant intellectual is the one who directed that this documentary about one of America's great unpretentious gut bustin' blue collar party bands

Hey there. Johhny's was a coal miner's son, can't get much more blue collar than that.

His grandmother was not too happy about that, apparently.

Disappointed this isn't opening in Toronto (like in Detroit, Chicago, and elsewhere). I don't have Apple TV.

That Armond White review is ridiculous.

Mellencamp was interviewed in the DeCurtis biography:

John Mellencamp, backstage at Farm Aid, hospitably asked Reed if there was anything he could do for him. "What do you think you could do for me?" snapped Reed.

"Lou," said Mellencamp, "it was just a pleasantry."

"Oh," shot Reed. "I was just wondering what the hell you thought you could do for me."

Lol

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lxAUIkLTJU

The Armond White review makes me think of Chuck Eddy on the Velvets: "they weren't so influential, your car mechanic has never heard of them".

Heh, a correct reply might be “Lou, you’re at Farm Aid. I am
Mister Farm Aid!”

"Tell me then, Mr. Farmaid, ever meet someone from Wyoming?"

You guys are reminding me of this classic exchange

i was so knocked out by the editing
it didnt feel like it was ~about~ the Velvets as much as it was ~of~ them

want to rewatch this for the entire rest of my life

Otm. In my mind now trying to construct a bad version of this that might have been, complete with the obligatory four kids from Ireland Bono soundbite.

even the way you have the Reed & Cale backstories running alongside each ogher leading to them meeting, such good movement & context, nothing boring or wasted

*other

and no one talking about them that didnt know them intimately or involved w them directly

MORE OF THIS PLZ

Yes to this last point

Think I may have read somewhere that Todd Haynes was surprised to learn that Jonathan Richman was such a big Velvets fan. Shocked, shocked, shocked and stunned even.

i am a velvets novice so this was also news to me

I wonder how common that is? FWIW, I didn't know much about the VU until I read Robert Palmer's Unruly History, and IIRC Richman and the Modern Lovers were mentioned alongside of them, highlighting how the VU's influence would flourish and grow, so the two were always intertwined for me. (Richman's also in the BBC/PBS series to which the book served as a companion, appearing in the episode spotlighting the VU.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHTyUHOYxSQ

Didn't the Modern Lovers cover a bunch of then-unreleased VU song JR had learned from seeing them live?

"Foggy Notion" was one. A live recording from 1972 at Long Branch Saloon in Berkeley, CA can be found on those live albums compiled from that show and a few others from the Boston, MA area.

This one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPn8SGqH6tE

I actually got Ernie Brooks to sign my copy of this album earlier this year - he's been doing local shows all year with everyone from Steve Shelley and Thurston Moore to members of the Dream Syndicate.

I also was unaware of the extent of Richman’s VU fandom. A friend, who’s watched the doc, says JR saw them “60-70 times”(!?)

I actually didn’t even know they played that many shows in their career…

(Richman's also in the BBC/PBS series to which the book served as a companion, appearing in the episode spotlighting the VU.)

That doc series was formative for me, and that episode (on "Theatrical Rock", starting w/the Doors and running through the VU->Stooges/Iggy->Bowie etc.) might be the best of the lot.

Come to think of it, iirc Richman didn't appear until the beginning of the next episode (Punk), but he did bring up the VU there.

Come to think of it, iirc Richman didn't appear until the beginning of the next episode (Punk), but he did bring up the VU there.

That's probably right. My memory slightly conflates the punk episode with the glam/theatrical rock episode (IIRC Alice Cooper was also in that episode). I'm not sure if it's because they're linked more strongly in the book (for the simple reason that you're reading through the chapters instead of getting a day or week-long gap between broadcasts) or because of Heylin's oral history From the Velvets to the Voidoids, which I highly recommend as well. Regardless, the VU and Iggy/Stooges could have easily started the punk episode.

A lot of the Cleveland Proto-Punk bands also picked up those unreleased tracks from seeing them live and making tapes.

XP, to be fair, more so than any other episodes of the series, those two eps really felt like halves of a whole.

Because almost everything is on YouTube, here's the first 45 minutes of the Punk ep

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugtkNLgUJlc

Richman doesn't bring up the Velvets, but we do see Patti Smith do "Real Good Time Together".

...and here's Pt. 1 (of 6) of the Glam/Proto-Punk one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPvWoEiaEqU

I also was unaware of the extent of Richman’s VU fandom. A friend, who’s watched the doc, says JR saw them “60-70 times”(!?)

I actually didn’t even know they played that many shows in their career…

they played 80 shows in 1968 alone!!

http://olivier.landemaine.free.fr/vu/live/1968/perf68.html

they busted their ass on tour for years, basically

i had no idea they toured that much

it was funny seeing them talk about being booked as art exhibitions and half the auduence leaving = a good show

Xxposts a piece of trivia: when the reunited VU played the gig at Glastonbury they played Jonathan Richman's song "Velvet Underground" right before taking the stage.

really liked Haynes' approach to this and the dense period footage. made something so over familiar seem fresh. feel the heavy Cale involvement made the downplaying of the Yule years inevitable but that's a mistake imo, the 2 eras should be given almost equal weight

That doc series was formative for me

In case any Britisher ILXors need a memory jog, this series was broadcast as 'Dancing In The Street' by the BBC. Well worth a watch.

xp I love how Yule's closeout capsule bio just said he put out one live album, er how about SQUEEZE BY THE VELVET UNDERGROUND, huh? I mean, it exists. If Cale/Reed/Nico at the Bataclan is Velvets canon then an album under the band's name is.
I checked and apparently Yule declined to participate.

Probably another reason for this front loading might be there was no Factory footage for later years, Andy having been fired. Although maybe they could have dig deeper into the Steve Sesnick vault.

_Thought Lou...didn’t need any meetings_


Lester Bangs wrote about seeing him at AA meetings.

I liked almost everything about this but the moment I knew it was going to be good was when they played “The Wind” on the soundtrack near the beginning. I once had a brief conversation with Jonathan Richman before a show he did at The Bottom Line during which he mentioned he had been listening to Nolan Strong a lot.

Steve Sesnick has declined to particpate for the last 50 years tbf.

Lol, I knew exactly which fish that bait would bring.

This movie was like watching an Andy Warhol doc waiting for the Velvets to show up except they are the whole movie.

I learned long ago of Jonathan Richman’s Velvets fetish from an article in Trouser Press about The Modern Lovers. He used to go to NYC and sleep on their couch or couches, iirc. Don’t know if it is on the TP website but it was definitely scanned to their FB page a while ago.