Todd Haynes' new film takes us deep into The Velvet Underground
In his first documentary, filmmaker Todd Haynes uses the language of experimental cinema to spotlight the Velvet Underground, a legendary band that flowered within New York's avant-garde art world.
In 1964, Lou Reed was turning out trendy pop singles for the budget label Pickwick records. At the same time, Welshman John Cale was playing viola in minimalist composer La Monte Young's musical ensemble. Pickwick thought Reed's novelty dance song "The Ostrich" had commercial potential, so together they enlisted members of Young's circle to back him at live promotional gigs, where Cale noticed that Reed was tuning all six of his guitar strings to the same note, an experiment in tonality that resembled the way he was layering and extending notes to create sonic drones. Then, Reed showed him some of the other material he was working on, gritty, confrontational songs that
