The Unexplainable Velvet Underground Explained

How the band that was so far ahead of its time ended up being a direct reflection of their time

I was always confused by the Velvet Underground. They came to me via their hits and I backed up into them as I learned more about their incredible influence on every other band alive, so I was lead to believe.

The accepted PR on the VU was, not everyone liked them, but everyone that did started a band. To me, they were a ball of confusion. I heard they were the brainchild of Andy Warhol-an artist whose art made a lot of sense to me. The early sound of the Underground did not. Warhol was a complicated artist whose art was simple. A soup can. Brilliant. How else to make a statement of art than to emphasize the commerce of it all. Warhol was a kooky-looking guy to a white suburban boy in the late 1970s, but he was also easily interpreted. I ‘got’ his art right away.

Not so with the Velvet Underground. As such as Warhol was simplicity made complex, the VU was complexity made simply. The polar opposite presentation of Warhols’ art. It didn’t make any sense to me. It confused me. Was I supposed to like this music? Was my ear not as trained as my eye? I could understand the appeal and sophistication of Warhol’s paintings. The VU’s music elected a big uhh? from me. What is this?

Then, it seemed to get better or perhaps more accessible. I tried to be cool and almost pretended I liked the band without really indulging myself. Then Lou Reed’s Rock and Roll Animal live album came out. The album you can not physically play loud enough. The album featured glorious reworkings of four seminal VU tunes and gave them a hard rock edge that seemed less complex than the studio recordings. Lou Reed and his stellar band for this recording (primarily featuring Steve Hunter and Dick Wagner) made the complex simple. And I got it. I understood the Velvet Underground and all their early machinations.

I circled back to the VU with a new appreciation and an awareness of what future musicians might hear in their music. Like the Rolling Stones when they first heard those driving blues chords coming out of Chess Record factory, they heard the future. To young artists like The Modern Lovers’ Jonathan Richman, the VU represented what was possible.

I bring this up because the Rockumentary now streaming on Apple TV “The Velvet Underground” had the exact same impact on me. The big difference was instead of the transformation evolving over years, it happened in two hours' time. The Todd Haynes’ directed film begins in aa a visual nightmare of senselessness. You find yourself asking: What is happening here?

In the opening cacophony of images, you get confused and curious as to why you are spending your time viewing. The first fifteen minutes of this film are like nothing you have ever seen. Symbiotic of the VU’s early recordings. You keep watching, because you sense something but your nerves and patience are tried. And then you get it. The music, the art the cultural touch points of the era begin to take shape and the larger picture emerges as all elements come together. The discordant audio that starts out trashing against the dissonance of the video eventually coalesces into a masterful cultural statement fussing art and music into something called beauty. And I have not even gotten to Nico yet.

The Velvet Underground’s legacy might be considered confused. After viewing this homage to the avant-gardism of one of Rock’s most misunderstood outfits in its entirety you begin to grasp the message. The appreciation builds. The video comes across much like a histogram of the VU’s three albums. Haynes is masterful in matching video to audio all the while sharing insights that have aged well.

The VU may or may not have inspired a thousand kids to start a band. They may not have been what they set out to do, however, through this film we get at the heart of their mission. Their music and art have become a timepiece reflecting back from a certain touchpoint in New York City’s cultural maturation process. I thought I understood the VU. After watching Haynes’ film, I feel I now understand them about as much as you can ever understand art. And that’s not very much. However, you can still appreciate the Underground for their contribution to knowledge and beauty on this planet. They may have been ahead of their time back then, however now, they appear as a direct reflection of their time. Watch this film all the way through and turn it up.