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Rockman
wish they coulda interviewed
that man Lou was always waitin for ......

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tatters

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RollingFreak
Was unfortunately pretty underwhelmed by this. The obvious sadness is that Lou Reed isn't alive to speak on it. I know thats obviously unavoidable, but listening to John and Maureen reflect on this time now I'd love to hear Lou's thoughts on this official document. I know there's a million interviews of him discussing the Underground, but just feels incomplete without his input. I'd also kinda argue without Lou it put too much emphasis on the John Cale side of things. Not that he wasn't massively important, he was of course. I guess that his backstory and way of talking about the band felt less relevant. Lou could maybe have stayed more on topic.

On that note, I also thought pretty much the first hour was just a huge lead up that didn't super payoff. 30 minutes in it was like "ok, already, get to the band and get to New York!" I thought there was a lot of wasted time there, and less than focusing on the albums once it got there, it was more focused on the scene. It was a choice, and I get it, but I feel there's been more than enough said about that whole Warhol era. It didn't get as into it as other things I've seen, and I know thats part of the story, but just feel like it could have been weaved in differently. Was hoping for more stories like Moe Tucker's random stopping of drumming in Heroin and others of that nature that we may not have heard before.

Lastly, and unsurprisingly, Doug Yule was fairly glossed over, all things considered. They seem to always do that to him, which is sad because he was part of half the band's history. It wasn't the groundbreaking era, but the songs on those two VU albums he's on are fantastic and he sings a lot! Sad that he didn't get any on screen camera time, and in general I thought all the interviews were fairly mundane and oddly chosen. Some people were really interesting and good finds. Others felt sorta random and pointless, especially for an official doc. I also thought the way they conducted the interviews and a lot of the footage and presentation was strange and offputting. Kinda like a knockoff Woodstock. Again, a choice which is to be respected of something of this series (you gotta make it your own) but just didn't think paid off. My dad and I were both fairly underwhelmed, although always good to see Lou as always revered. Just had way higher expectations based on the hype and I thought reviews coming in that were good.

Thanks for the review. I haven't seen it yet. I'm hoping to catch it Sunday at the local "art house" theater here in Ann Arbor. A couple of thoughts: The story of the VU is very much a tale of two bands; the band that made the first two albums with Cale, and the band that made the third and fourth albums with Yule. I consider both versions of the band to be equally great and equally important, so I have to wonder if maybe Cale offered his involvement with this film only on the condition that 1965-68 era be given the far greater emphasis. One of the reviews posted in this thread makes it sound as if Yule was interviewed for the film, but only for voice-over purposes and does not appear in any on-camera interview. Regardless of his environmental commitments, or whatever, it's hard to believe Doug couldn't have found a few hours of spare time to appear in a filmed interview if a certain someone (Cale) had given the okay for it. The other thing I find frustrating is the apparent absence of any decent live performance concert footage. I guess that shouldn't surprise me. If such footage existed it surely would have surfaced before now, but considering that Andy Warhol was a filmmaker (of sorts); it's literally the second thing listed in his bio after "painter," you'd think he might have taken the trouble to shoot a professional quality film of one of his band's performances. It certainly would have been far more interesting than watching the lights flickering on and off in the windows of the Empire State Building for 24 hours.

[www.youtube.com]

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RisingStone
As a side note & FYI —

Lou Reed toured Japan eight times, in 1975, 86, 90, 92, 96, 2000, 03 and 04. 86 and 04 were festive appearances. I saw him eight times, 86-03. All of the shows I attended were superb without exception, the best being 92 (the ‘Magic And Loss’ tour). His last show in Japan was the Friday headliner of Fuji Rock Festival 2004 (I wasn’t there, unfortunately).

Nico toured Japan twice, in 1986 and 88, around the final years of her life. In 86, I attended the first of the two sets she played at a small club in Kyoto, the tour opener, watched the legend singing and playing the harmonium in awe. After the show, as I entered the art book shop on the ground floor in the same building that housed the venue, I encountered James Young, keyboardist of Nico’s group Faction and future author of the memoir of his tour days with her, browsing a picture book. He told me, “We played in bad sound,” which I didn’t notice at site. Sometime afterwords I heard she sang Femme Fatale in the second set (which she didn’t in the first), which made me cringe. 88 was a double headliner advertised as John Cale and Nico. Saw them at a 900 seater in Osaka, that was the last date of the tour (and would later turn out to be Nico’s last ever live performance in Japan). Nico took the stage first, with Faction now augmented by an added guitarist. She finished her set with the encore, Famme Fatale, I felt the unfinished business completed. In his book, Young reflects their second Japanese tour was not as good as the first one, but that’s not how I felt back then — I thought the show was equally good in a different measure. Can’t remember Cale’s set that much as I don’t have his solo albums, except that he played Dying On The Vine and I’m Waiting For The Man. Many of us expected Nico would join Cale and perform together, but it wasn’t to be — and left me with another unfinished business, which would never be fulfilled this time.

Only four months after, I heard Nico had died in Ibiza. I was sad but not surprised that much to be honest — not unlike when I heard the news of Amy Winehouses’ passing.

These are my quasi-VU experiences. Thank you for reading, and sorry if you are bored with my ramblings — or ‘memoirs’ on my part.

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drwatts
Don't be sorry. Your ramblings are anything but boring. Quite the opposite. I can't imagine sitting in the same room as Nico, let alone hearing her sing.

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RisingStone

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drwatts
Don't be sorry. Your ramblings are anything but boring. Quite the opposite. I can't imagine sitting in the same room as Nico, let alone hearing her sing.

Thank you, drwatts!
A few anecdotal episodes to add to my ramblings;

On April 8, 1986, the day before Nico’s Japanese debut, the then popular pop idol, an eighteen-year old girl, topped herself, jumping from the seven-story building in Tokyo. This, of course, was widely publicized in the media and became a national topic. James Young picks this incident in his memoir, Songs They Never Play On The Radio, but mistakenly recollects that it happened during their second Japanese visit, 1988. [en.wikipedia.org]

At the same time as Nico’s first Japanese visit, Starship were touring Japan, their first ever in the country including Jefferson Airplane days. On April 10, the day after I saw Nico in Kyoto, I attended their Osaka show. Okay, most of the original members had left by then, but Grace Slick, at 46, was still stunningly beautiful. It was after they “built this city”, but I was glad anyway to see and hear her singing Somebody To Love and White Rabbit with all that psychedelic light show intact. Nico and Grace — I saw ‘Yin’ and ‘Yang’ of the 60’s on two consecutive nights!

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crholmstrom
I'm sorry you had to hear "We Built This City" live.

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Paddy
I listened to the “Max’s Kansas City” & “1969: The Velvet Underground live” back to back last night, I can’t quite explain the difference Mo brings to a song like beginning to see the light live compared to Billy Yule. It might just be the sonic quality of the recordings but the Version with Mo thunders at the end whereas the Billy Yule version has more skip at the end, it’s snappier maybe. It may be down to the way Mo setup her kit...

[m.youtube.com] Billy Yule

[m.youtube.com] Mo

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RisingStone

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Paddy
I listened to the “Max’s Kansas City” & “1969: The Velvet Underground live” back to back last night, I can’t quite explain the difference Mo brings to a song like beginning to see the light live compared to Billy Yule. It might just be the sonic quality of the recordings but the Version with Mo thunders at the end whereas the Billy Yule version has more skip at the end, it’s snappier maybe. It may be down to the way Mo setup her kit...

[m.youtube.com] Billy Yule

[m.youtube.com] Mo

Contrary to what you put, to my ears, Yule’s drumming sounds more “thunderous” than Tucker’s TBHWY — or am I missing something here?
I don’t own Max’s Kansas City myself and haven’t heard 1969 for umpteen years. Listening to these sonically imperfect recordings has jogged my distant memory.

Ages ago, I exchanged comments on the internet forum with an avid bootleg collector. When we discussed VU, he remarked, “I don’t feel like collecting their bootlegs somehow.”
I replied, “Neither do I. Possibly because the very existence of the group, the Velvet Underground, is in itself like bootleg.”
He responded, “You nailed it.”

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Paddy
Mo’s is more pounding maybe? Shamanic