The velvet underground documentary4/19/2023 Hearing their great infamous song "Heroin" startled even a hardened voyeur like Andy Warhol, who promptly showed his genius for folding other people's talents into his own brand. The Velvets' music was so unwholesome, it made the Rolling Stones seem about as satanic as The Monkees. Theirs was an invasive, often mysterious sound, with throbbing rhythms, slashing strings and Reed's flat voice singing of hooky, stinging lyrics that came steeped in the realities of prostitution, S&M and hard drugs. Once they added guitarist Sterling Morrison and drummer Maureen Tucker - having a woman drummer was characteristically groundbreaking - they began creating music like no other. The two met in 1964 New York, and their sensibilities sparked. At the Velvet's core were two brilliant outsiders - Lou Reed, a spiky, ambitious child of the Long Island suburbs, and John Cale, a viola-playing devotee of avant-garde music who escaped his dreary childhood in Welsh coal mining country. You see why in the new documentary, "The Velvet Underground." Made by exactly the right filmmaker, Todd Haynes, this inventive, immersive movie takes you to the heart of the band's radical black hole magic. Its songs still have the power to get under your skin. Half a century on, the band feels more relevantly alive than nearly all of its better-known contemporaries. It took the passing years to make their reputation and prove their influence. In their day, the Velvets were largely arcane taste, without a single hit song. When I told him the Velvet Underground, he gave a derisive laugh. JOHN POWERS, BYLINE: A few days after I arrived in Los Angeles, an ultra-hip music critic at my newspaper asked me what '60s bands I liked growing up. Our critic at large, John Powers, says that Todd Haynes' film captures what made the group so momentous. GROSS: That's Lou Reed's song "Heroin" from the 1967 album "The Velvet Underground & Nico." There's a new documentary about the band called "The Velvet Underground," which is now showing in theaters and on Apple TV+. And I'll tell ya, things aren't quite the same when I'm rushing on my run, and I feel just like Jesus' son. THE VELVET UNDERGROUND: (Singing) I don't know just where I'm going, but I'm gonna try for the kingdom, if I can, 'cause it makes me feel like I'm a man when I put a spike into my vein.
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