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Enduring musical miracle The Velvet Underground

THEVELVET UNDERGROUND

APPLE TV 7/10

WITHanoeuvre devotedtothe poison,perversity andparanoiaofthe 20thcenturyanda passionfortelling talesofambition, fameandoblivion, youcouldn’timagineadirector bettersuitedtoaVelvetUnderground documentarythanToddHaynes. Butthoughyoumighthavehoped forsomeoccult,oneiricversionof thestorytoldviafabulistcasting, phantasmagoricCGIandalittle puppetry,TheVelvetUnderground: ADocumentaryFilmbyToddHaynes isastoryasstraightasitstitle.

Understandingthechallengeof makingamovieaboutabandthree ofwhosemembersaredead,and wholefalmostnolivefootage, Hayneshascastthenetfarandwide acrossthearchivesoftheworldfor B-roll.Indeedtheflmisdedicated tothememoryofJonasMekas, founderofNewYork’sFilm-Maker’s Cooperative,whodiedduring productionandatwhoseearly-’60s screeningsWarholbegantocast hisFactorysuperstars.Theresultis alovinghomagetotheLowerEast Sideandasplit-screensecrethistory of1960sAmericanunderground cinemafromStanBrakhage,Marie MenkenandMayaDeren,toJack SmithandKennethAnger.

And–overwhelminglyofcourse–AndyWarhol.Theflmopens inasquallofCaleviola,afrenzied, channel-hoppingmontageof 1963,andthenayoungLougazing dreamilyintoAndy’simpassivelens, asthoughseeingclearlythrough thestorm,steadfastlyfocusedon… what?Richesandfame(highschool bandmatesandhissisterrecalla steelydeterminationtobecome “afamousrockstar”)?Literary immortalityaspredictedbycollege mentorDelmoreSchwartz?Or simplyhisownchemicalandsexual oblivion(heseemedcompelled toshockhisschoolandcollege friendswithsqualidadventures insearchofdegradation)?

Thefrstscenefeaturesaspify CaleappearingonI’veGotASecret, theearly-’60sCBSpanelshow,asa tokenavant-gardewacko,freshfrom an18-hourperformanceofSatie. ButifHaynes’earlierinvestigations intorockhistorywerepropelledby genuinemysteryandloss–who killedKarenCarpenter?What happenedtoDavidBowieinthe ’80s?WhoonearthisBobDylan?–TheVelvetUndergroundcanfeela littlelikeadiligent,almostacademic tributetothecross-cultural crosstowntrafcofmid-’60sNYC, ratherthananurgentenquiryinto anenduringmusicalmiracle.

CertainlyUncut-readingVUheadswillbeabundantlyfamiliar withthestoryofLouasPickwick’s jobbingsongwritermeetingthe conservatoirerebelCaleand togetherdiscoveringthenegative zone where Bo Diddley backs La Monte Young and garageband primitivism meets transcendent drone. Mary Woronov and Amy Taubin are on hand to recall the early days of the Factory (there’s some marvellous footage of a wacked-out superstar tarot reading) and Warhol’s ambition to make the Velvets, now incorporating the lunar glamour of Nico, the house band at “the biggest discotheque in the world”. And you’ll know of the dismal sales, disastrous tours and bitter feuds that followed four of the greatest albums ever made. There’s little fresh light cast on the band dynamics. Lou is described as behaving like a nihilistic three-year-old throughout (who Nico and Andy were nevertheless besotted with), and though Mo Tucker admits the band lost something without Cale, she has little perspective on the way she and Sterling Morrison meekly acquiesced to his sacking. Lou, Nico and Sterling are of course unavailable for comment, while Doug Yule seems to have chosen not to contribute.

The flm really comes alive with the input of Jonathan Richman – the St Paul of the Velvets church, still beatifcally mystifed at their majesty all these years later. In truth, a simple two hours of Richman talking about just a few of the “60 to 70” Velvets shows he saw would be a beautifully compelling flm in itself. He’s spied, Where’s Wally-style, in striped T-shirt in a 1968 Boston Tea Party audience he winningly describes as composed of “Harvard professors, fashion models from New York, honest-to-God juvenile delinquents, bike gangs, Grateful Dead fans and nerds like myself…”

In the absence of much other musical or critical perspective, it’s ftting that it’s Richman who comes closest to capturing the magic of the band in full fight (“It was like being in the presence of Michelangelo!”). Very slowly he describes how, at the end of the swirling, roiling storm of “Sister Ray”, the band would abruptly cut of, the speakers would hum and “the audience would be dead silent for f-i-v-e seconds… And then they would applaud. The Velvet Underground had hypnotised them one more time.”

Haynes has cast the net far and wide across the archives

The Velvet Underground will be released in selected cinemas and premiere globally on Apple TV+ on October 15, 2021

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Fabs, WAGs and a guru: The Beatles in Rishikesh

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It’s tempting to blame Woodstock ’99 on Limp Bizkit and other nu-metal pinheads who exacerbated the event’s toxicity. But director Garret Price’s documentary presents the iconic festival’s fameout as the apotheosis of its era’s most putrid aspects, from the greed epitomised by the $4 water bottles to the cynicism suggested by the sight of attendees revelling in human excrement as Kid Rock struts in a white fur coat. Add riots, arson and multiple sexual assaults and deaths, and you have a thoroughly horrifc weekend even without Fred Durst.

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THE BEATLES AND INDIA 101 FILMS

7/10

AS spiritual and musical reawakenings go, it has to be said that The Beatles’ Indian love afair got of to a shaky start. In Richard Lester’s 1965 flm Help!, we see the Fabs become embroiled with a sinister Eastern cult who set out to sacrifce a female Beatles fan to their goddess. While hindsight hasn’t been kind to Help!, it also allows us to get the full measure of the chain of events it would trigger on the musicians at the centre of the enterprise.

As with his 2005 book The Beatles In India, Ajoy Bose’s directorial debut [co-director Peter Compton] suspends current censoriousness to catapult us to a world where it wasn’t unforgivable to get things wrong about other cultures as long as you were trying to get it right. Early on, it’s the blossoming friendship between George Harrison and Ravi Shankar that provides the main source of warmth. What started with George picking up an unattended sitar on the Help! set fast-forwards to a momentous encounter when Asian Music Circle Founders Ayana and Patricia Angani invited The Beatles for dinner with Shankar at their Hampstead home. Decades later, their son Shankara recalls it was Paul McCartney who seemed out of his depth in comparison to George – who, Pattie Boyd noted, must have known Shankar “in a past life”.

Perhaps for George, Indian music ofered a space well away from what must have sometimes felt like John and Paul’s musical fefdom. Certainly, it massively increased his cultural stock, both within and without The Beatles. Had George not spearheaded The Beatles’ rebirth as spiritual seekers, it’s impossible to conceive of the ‘White Album’, most of which was written at the Rishikesh retreat where the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi taught transcendental meditation. Bose manages to locate fellow disciples for vivid recollections set amid the ruins of the once-thriving Ashram, among them teacher Nick Nugent, who excitably recalls a roofop concert on the Ashram bungalow that predated the more famous one on the Apple building a year later.

Elsewhere, there’s a welcome corrective to pernicious inaccuracies that permeate most accounts of The Beatles’ sudden departure from Rishikesh, with eminent Fabologists Mark Lewisohn and Steve Turner both emphasising the Machiavellian machinations of hangeron “Magic” Alex Mardas, who persuaded Lennon that the Maharishi was guilty of sexual impropriety towards a young woman in the Ashram. And even though Lennon wrote “Sexy Sadie” as they waited for their taxis, subsequent interviews with McCartney and Harrison revealed that both were regretful of the manner in which their retreat ended – Harrison even seeking the Maharishi’s forgiveness.

But perhaps the most pleasing harmonic balance established by The Beatles And India only truly reveals itself near the end, as an array of Indian musicians try to express just how the group’s music impacted upon them. What begins problematically doesn’t have to end that way. Over 50 years later, what survives is gratitude on all sides that The Beatles and the Indian musicians, teachers and fans they met got to be part of each other’s story. Others may put it in more forid terms, but none manage to do so quite as resonantly as musician Neil Mukherjee, who attempts to explain the efect that The Beatles had on him thus: “The world would have been,like,soshitwithoutthem.”