“BLUEPRINT? WE DIDN’T WANT TO KNOW”
UNCUT: You’ve been interviewed for Todd Haynes’ new documentary on the Velvet Underground. Where did those interviews take place? JOHN CALE: The gentrified warehouse section near the Brooklyn Bridge, before the pandemic began.
Has participating in the documentary made you reassess any partIt’s made me appreciate the personalities and the disparate confluences we laid bare in the Factory and through the development of what would become The Velvet Underground. They came from all over the world and opened this Welsh boy’s eyes to the rest of mankind beyond the European experience. It took all these characters to fuel the furnaces. It’s important for everyone to understand the entirety of this band, warts and all, but most importantly the organic nature of its honesty. If there had been a blueprint, we didn’t want to know. Carving our own distorted path was far more important than trying to be the next big thing. Without the competitiveness that grew out of our fierce desire to bend and ultimately break rock’n’roll, we’d have been just another ’60s band.
