In stunning new documentary, Todd Haynes makes the Velvet Underground come impossibly alive
Though the most famous incarnation of the Velvet Underground was only around from 1965-1968, its influence on the direction of rock music is incalculable.
Founded in New York by Long Island-born Lou Reed and Welshman John Cale, and soon joined by Sterling Morrison and Maureen "Moe" Tucker, the quartet and its beguiling sometimes-singer, Nico, served as the house band at Andy Warhol's art space the Factory, where their glorious, drone-heavy din and wild Warhol-created light shows were a magnet for a cross-disciplinary posse of experimental filmmakers, painters, models, musicians and hangers-on.
On Friday, AppleTV+ will premiere "The Velvet Underground," director Todd Haynes' visually stunning, musically mind-blowing documentary on the band's origins, influences and work.
Starting in 1967 with "The Velvet Underground and Nico," which featured as its cover art Warhol's famous "peel slowly and see" banana sticker, the band released four studio albums. Though they were a commercial failure, their transgressive sound on songs such as "Heroin," "All Tomorrow's Parties" and "Venus in Furs," combined with their delicate ballads "Sunday Morning," "Pale Blue Eyes" and "Candy Says," helped crack open a thematic world where countless inheritors now reside.
