Todd Haynes’s “The Velvet Underground”

Kate Wolf, Medaya Ocher, and Eric Newman speak with director Todd Haynes about his latest movie, and first documentary, “The Velvet Underground.”

By LARB Radio HourOctober 22, 2021

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Kate Wolf, Medaya Ocher, and Eric Newman speak with director Todd Haynes about his latest movie, and first documentary, The Velvet Underground, which shows how the legendary rock group became a cultural touchstone representing a range of contradictions. The band is very much of its time, yet timeless, rooted both in high art and in the New York demimonde. The film features in-depth interviews with key artistic players of the 1960s combined with a treasure trove of never-before-seen performances and a rich collection of recordings, Warhol films, and other experimental art. The result is an immersive experience into what founding member John Cale describes as the band’s creative ethos: “how to be elegant and how to be brutal.”

Also, Kelefa Sanneh, author of Major Labels: A History of Popular Music in Seven Genres, returns to recommend Pamela Des Barres’s I’m with the Band: Confessions of a Groupie.