Here is a song I have just recorded in my home studio. An old song of mine given a new treatment. All existential angst and swirling accordion, mandolin and guitars. I wrote it when I was 23 and it was a breakthrough for me. Previously my songs had been quite restrained and rather bland. With this I made my voice higher and tried to be more expressive. I developed a kind of method of unconscious writing. I was pleased with the result. It is still capable of shocking some people with it’s raw pessimism. It was inspired by the song “Father of Day, Father of Night” from the New Morning album by Bob Dylan although the meaning of my song is almost the opposite.
Dylan’s lyrics are:
“Father of night, Father of day Father, who taketh the darkness away Father, who teacheth the birds to fly Builder of rainbows up in the sky”.
I kind of reversed it. My favourite verse in my song is:
“Father of Nightmares, Father of Dreams, Show me an answer, say what it means. I have been searching, I could not find, I have been living deep in my mind”
This verse still speaks to me from my subconscious mind.
Vertov’s feature film, produced by the film studio VUFKU, presents urban life in the Soviet cities of Kiev, Kharkov, Moscow and Odessa.[2] It has no actors.[3] From dawn to dusk Soviet citizens are shown at work and at play, and interacting with the machinery of modern life. To the extent that it can be said to have “characters”, they are the cameramen of the title, the film editor, and the modern Soviet Union they discover and present in the film.
Man with a Movie Camera was largely dismissed upon its initial release; the work’s quick-cut editing, self-reflexivity, and emphasis on form over content were all subjects of criticism. In the British Film Institute’s 2012 Sight & Sound poll, however, film critics voted it the eighth greatest film ever made,[4] and the work was later named the best documentary of all time in the same magazine.[5]
Dimitri Kirsanoff, born in Estonia but operating mostly in Paris, was heavily influenced by the theories of Soviet Montage. In his most famous short film, Ménilmontant (1926) – still frightfully obscure in most circles – he adheres to this style strictly, almost obsessively. His preference towards a brisk editing pace carries a unique vitality that is also seen in the work of Soviet masters Eisenstein and Vertov, who pioneered and perfected the technique of montage in the mid-to-late 1920s. But, nevertheless, I don’t think it works quite as well here. The Battleship Potemkin (1925) and The Man with the Movie Camera (1929) – perhaps the two most recognised works of Soviet montage – utilise their chosen editing style to full effect precisely because they place greater emphasis on the collective over the individual, in accordance with traditional Communist ideology. There is deliberately no emotional connection attempted nor made between the viewer and any individual movie character, for that would be contrary to the filmmaker’s intentions (interestingly, however, the montage fell out of preference from the 1930s in favour of Soviet realism).
Ménilmontant falters because it strives to create an emotional connection with the characters (particularly the younger sister, played by Nadia Sibirskaïa), but Kirsanoff’s chosen editing style continually keeps the audience at an arm’s length. The closest he comes to true pathos is with the park-bench sequence, when an old man offers some bread and meat to the famished woman, delicately avoiding eye contact to preserve her dignity. Even in this scene, the montage style intrudes. A director like Chaplin (and I’m a romantic at heart, so he’s naturally one of favourite filmmakers) would have placed the camera at a distance, framing the profiles of both the woman and the old man within the same shot, thus capturing the subtle emotions and inflections of both parties simultaneously. Kirsanoff somewhat confuses the scene, cutting sequentially between the woman, the man and the food in a manner that reduces a simple, poignant act of kindness into a technical exercise in film editing. It works adequately, of course, a precise demonstration of the Kuleshov Effect, but there’s relatively little heart in it. But we’ll cease with my complaints hereafter. I know my own film tastes well enough to recognise that what I disliked about the film – its emotional distance, for example – represents precisely what others love about it. There’s no doubting that the photography (when it’s kept on screen long enough) is breathtakingly spectacular, making accomplished use of lighting, shadows and in-camera optical effects such as dissolves, irises and superimpositions. There are touches of the surreal. Kirsanoff cuts non-discriminately forwards in time, backwards and into his characters’ dreams, fragmenting time and reality into a series of shattered images, their individual meanings obscure until considered sequentially as in the pieces of a puzzle. Most impressive, I thought, was how several shots captured the linear perspective of roads and alleys, watching his characters gradually depart into the distance as though merely following the predetermined pathways of their future. The film ends exactly as it begins – with a bloody and unexplained murder – suggesting the inevitable cycle of human suffering, its causes unknown and forever incomprehensible.
In
meeting Andy Warhol, the Velvets acquired what few fledgling bands have
been lucky enough to achieve: a wealthy patron. In addition, Warhol’s
Factory, populated by an enormous range of people of varying talents,
provided a fertile cross-pollination of ideas and personalities, whilst
also constituting a powerful PR machine.
Enter Nico
For
John Cale, Andy Warhol’s Factory was like entering a fountain of ideas,
with “new things happening every day”; for Lou Reed it was “like
landing in heaven”. Everywhere they turned there were odd characters and
odd situations, and Reed would write down in a notebook fragments of
what he heard and overheard. Many of these fragments would end up in
song; others would suggest a title or a story situation. The Factory
crowd also noticed Reed as well. “Everyone was certainly in love with
him — me, Edie, Andy, everyone,” confessed Factory regular Danny
Fields. “He was so sexy. Everyone just had this raging crush… he was
the sexiest thing going”.
Warhol and Morrissey had recently been
approached to get involved with setting up a new discotheque in Long
Island; the plans would come to nothing (after seeing the Velvets, the
club owner hired The Young Rascals instead), but at this point Warhol
was actively looking for a rock band to play there. Bizarrely (according
to Victor Bockris), Warhol had actually contemplated forming his own
rock band three years earlier, with LaMonte Young and Walter De Maria.
Seeing
The Velvet Underground at Café Bizarre, Warhol liked the fact that Lou
Reed looked “pubescent”, and that the audience left the gig looking
“dazed and damaged” — according to Reed, Warhol saw them the night they
were fired. Paul Morrissey claims that it was his idea to marry
underground films to rock’n’roll, but that it was a purely commercial
decision to work with the Velvets, rather than an artistic one. At the
time, Morrissey also thought that Reed and Cale lacked presence, and
that what the Velvets needed was a singer with “a bit of charisma”. He
suggested someone who was already a part of the Warhol camp: Nico.
Nico
The suggestion that Nico should join the band
didn’t go down too well with the Velvets, to put it mildly. Morrissey
played them her single on the Immediate label, and according to him Reed
was “hostile to Nico from the start”. What changed Reed’s mind was the
fact that Warhol was offering them an enticing management and recording
deal. There was of course the recognition that his patronage would
bring. In the end, it was too good a deal for the Velvets to turn down.
According to Nico, Reed agreed simply because he lacked the confidence
to refuse — or perhaps, lacked enough confidence in himself as a
vocalist. Still, at his insistence the billing would distance Nico from
the group, making it crystal clear that she was not a band member. They
would be The Velvet Underground and Nico. So Aronowitz was ousted (he’d
only had a “handshake deal” — something he subsequently regretted) and
Morrissey and Warhol officially became joint managers of The Velvet
Underground. In return for 25%, Warhol would invest in new equipment,
get them gigs and a recording contract. In fact, after buying two
instruments from Vox, Warhol got them to supply further equipment for
free, having arranged an endorsement deal (the band would later endorse
Acoustic, and then Sunn).
But a problem remained: Nico wanted to
sing all the songs, which Reed refused point blank to allow. But since
her presence meant that some gentler songs were now needed, Reed wrote
three ballads for her, which suited her unique, breathy singing style
(“like an IBM computer with a German accent”, as Warhol put it): “Femme
Fatale”, “All Tomorrow’s Parties” and “I’ll Be Your Mirror”. The gentler
songs contrasted interestingly with John Cale’s experiments in
drone-like repetition.
Nico and Lou Reed
According to Cale, Nico was deaf in one ear
(from a perforated eardrum), which caused her to go off-pitch from time
to time, much to the band’s amusement. “Lou never really liked me” Nico
later complained — though that’s hard to believe when you listen to
‘I’ll Be Your Mirror’. She and Reed were lovers early on, and even lived
together for a while. Recalling this period, Nico described Reed as
“very soft and lovely. Not aggressive at all”, and even that “you could
just cuddle him like a sweet person”. Sterling Morrison was more
cynical: “You could say Lou was in love with her, but Lou Reed in love
is a kind of abstract concept”. The relationship lasted eight weeks, and
was supposedly ended by Nico. Cale, meanwhile, had been seduced by Edie
Sedgwick within 48 hours of arriving at the Factory, and moved in with
her for the duration (six weeks) of their relationship. Edie had also
had a brief affair with Nico. John Cale has described the material Reed
wrote for Nico as “psychological love songs”, and even Reed acknowledged
her strengths as a performer. Yet after Nico left the Velvets, Reed
would write no more songs for her — despite being asked to by both Cale
and Nico herself.
Nico had little to do on stage when she wasn’t
singing except stand stock-still and play tambourine (usually out of
time), and at times things could get a little tense between her and the
band. Even so, she was a striking vision: dressed all in white in
contrast to the Velvets’ black attire. Her modeling days had certainly
taught her how to strike a dramatic pose. She was also taller than all
the men surrounding her and, inevitably, she captured most of the media
attention. As Maureen Tucker said: “She was this gorgeous apparition,
you know. I mean, she really was beautiful”. Critic Richard Goldstein
described Nico’s stage presence as “half goddess, half icicle”.
Later incarnation of the Velvet Underground with Doug Yule
Singing For ’Drella
However
little Andy Warhol knew about music (and he never expressed any noted
preferences), even he must have sensed that in TheVelvet Underground
he’d found more than just another rock band. “Andy told me that what we
were doing with music was the same thing he was doing with painting and
movies i.e. not kidding around” Lou Reed recalled. He was bowled over by
Andy’s way of looking at the world and once remarked that sometimes he
would spend days thinking about something Andy said. Reed was also
impressed by Warhol’s work ethic: “I’d ask him why he was working so
hard and he’d say, ‘Somebody’s got to bring home the bacon’”. Warhol
would ask Reed how many songs he’d written that day; Reed would lie and
say two. Lou also remarked on Andy’s generosity, pointing out that
though Andy was the first to arrive for work at the Factory and the last
to leave he’d still take them all to dinner: “He gave everyone a
chance”.
But the exact nature of the group’s relationship to their
new manager remains vague. As Sterling Morrison pondered: “Was The
Velvet Underground some happy accident for him, something that he could
work into his grandiose schemes for the show? Would another band have
done just as well? I don’t think another band would have done just as
well. At that time we seemed uniquely suited for each other”.
John Cale described Warhol as “a catalyst” for the Velvets, that he understood exactly what they were about, how best to bring that out. “I doubt that Lou would have continued investigating song subjects like he did without having some kind of outside support for that approach other than myself” he elaborated. “I think it was just basically Andy and I who really encouraged that side of a literary endeavour”. Morrison echoes the fact that Warhol gave them “the confidence to keep doing what were doing”.
The Velvet Underground with Doug Yule
It’s probable that Reed and Warhol each saw
echoes of themselves in the other. But Warhol had earned the nickname of
’Drella (a combination of Dracula and Cinderella) that Ondine, another
of the Factory crowd, had given him. Warhol had an acid wit that Reed
could seldom match, and his jibes were less malevolent than Reed’s —
they could be bitchy and funny at the same time, whereas Lou was often
just bitchy. But as Malanga states, Warhol also had his dark side: “he
could slice a person with a glance”. In fact, Lou actually came in a
poor third to Nico when it came to put-downs. Meeting again shortly
after their break-up, there was a moment of frosty awkwardness between
the two, followed by a long pause after which Nico came out with the
charmless “I cannot make love to Jews any more.”
In the end, the
Velvets’ relationship with Warhol is best summed up by Mary Woronov,
artist and collaborator: “They were with Andy and Andy was with them and
they backed him absolutely. They would have walked to the end of the
earth for him”. All of the Velvets spoke highly of Warhol ever after,
Cale perhaps most succinctly of all: “He was magic”.
Velvet Underground early 90s
At this point the Velvets had been ordered by
police to stop rehearsing in their West 3rd Street apartment (above a
firehouse), and told to rehearse in the country if they were going to
make that kind of noise. Cale was experimenting with an electronic
“thunder machine” at the time. The same cop had also accused them of
throwing human excreta out of their window. So they began to rehearse at
the Factory every day, accompanying Warhol in the evenings to art
openings, cocktail parties, dinners and nightclubs, as part of his
permanent 10–20-strong retinue. It’s doubtful whether the drug-free
Tucker tagged along, and she must have been somewhat bemused by the
Factory’s denizens. (They in turn liked the fact that she looked boyish,
which fitted right in with all the blurring of gender going on there.)
Later on, Moe worked at the Factory briefly, transcribing tapes of
Ondine’s rantings for Warhol’s book A: A Novel. However, she
refused to type any of the swear words, substituting asterisks instead.
Meanwhile, Ondine had turned Lou Reed on to methedrine, which became
became his main indulgences for years to come.
Factory people
Gerard Malanga
Gerard Malanga
A
poet and photographer in his own right, Gerard Malanga (b.1943) met
Andy Warhol while still a student at Wagner College on Staten Island. He
soon became Warhol’s assistant in silk-screening (where he probably did
most of the actual physical work, and originated at least some of the
ideas), also introducing him to New York’s literary, theatrical and
movie crowds. Malanga also eventually assisted Warhol in his own
movie-making. His habit of carrying a leather bullwhip everywhere led to
his “whipdance” routine on stage with the Velvets during ‘Venus in
Furs’ (Malanga had earlier been a dancer on DJ Alan Freed’s Big Beat TV show). He went on to found Interview magazine with Warhol. in 1983, Malanga co-wrote (with Victor Bockris) Up-tight: The Velvet Underground Story, the first book to appear on the Velvets.
Billy Name
Billy Name
A
photographer and lighting designer who subsidized his artistic work
with hairdressing, Billy name (real name Billy linich) once decorated
his entire apartment with silver foil. Warhol liked the look so much
(“Silvermakes everything disappear”) that he asked Linich to decorate
his new studio — the original Factory — in the same way. Billy also
worked with Gerard Malanga as an assistant on Warhol’s silk screens,
designed the cover for White Light/White Heat, and claims to have
been one of Reed’s lovers. Also a musician, Linich was in LaMonte
Young’s group for a year, leaving them just before the arrival of John
Cale. A genuinely eccentric character, Name was effectively the
Factory’s caretaker, living in one of its black-painted toilets (which
he used as a photographic darkroom) for years, studying astrological
charts and books on the occult given him by Reed; when the Factory moved
home, Billy simply moved into the equivalent space in the new one. In
1968, he sealed himself into this room, and was seldom seen at all
between then and the time he finally left the Factory (in the middle of
the night) at some point in Spring 1970, leaving a note behind telling
Warhol not to worry. Linich subsequently gave up amphetamines, moved
back home to Poughkeepsie and pursued his own individualistic
spirituality. Today, his photographs of the Factory era are much in
demand.
Andy Warhol and Edie Sedgwick
Edie Sedgwick
A
Californian debutante from a rich but troubled Bostonian socialite
background, Edith Minturn Sedgwick (b.1943) had spent her late teens in a
mental institution (as had several of her brothers, two of whom
committed suicide). In 1964, at the age of 21, she moved to New York and
met Andy Warhol in early ‘65; for the following year, they were
virtually inseparable. She dyed her hair silver to match Warhol’s wig
and became a kind of mirror image of him, escorting him to society
parties and appearing in a dozen of his movies. “She had more problems
than anybody I’d ever met”, Warhol later said. Perhaps that was the
appeal of their relationship, which was certainly not sexual (Truman
Capote thought that Andy wanted to be Edie).
She became the face of young Manhattan; Vogue
magazine dubbed her a “youthquaker”, and she seemed the archetypal poor
little rich go-go girl. Reed wrote “Femme Fatale” about her (at
Warhol’s request) and, according to some, Bob Dylan’s “Just Like A
Woman” and “Leopard Skin Pillbox Hat” are both about her. But though
undeniably beautiful and pursued by innumerable suitors (including John
Cale), Edie was not so much a femme fatale as a femme catastrophique.
She might have been a mainstay of Warhol’s movies and danced on stage
with the Velvets during their first couple of gigs, but most of the time
she was out of her head on a cocktail of drugs of every description,
many prescribed by the legendary “speed-doctor” Dr Roberts (immortalized
by the Beatles as “Dr Robert”). She later blamed Warhol for her
condition. “Warhol really fucked up a great many people’s — young
people’s — lives”, she once complained. “My introduction to heavy drugs
came through the Factory. I liked the introduction to drugs I received.
I was a good target for the scene. I bloomed into a healthy young drug
addict”. “Edie never grew up”, Warhol responded, probably accurately.
However, comments of his such as “a girl always looks more beautiful and
fragile when she’s about to have a nervous breakdown” don’t show him in
too sympathetic a light. When Edie left him in 1966, Warhol joked
bleakly to playwright Robert Heide: “When do you think Edie will commit
suicide? I hope she lets us know so we can film it”. After Warhol, Edie
attempted to carve a career as an actress (but didn’t really have the
talent) and a model (but her reputation as an unreliable druggie
preceded her), without much success. She died in 1971 of an overdose of
barbiturates, at the age of 28.
Paul Morrisey
Paul Morrissey
Underground
filmmaker Morrissey (b.1938) had made his own movies ever since his
teenage years. As well as managing Warhol’s business affairs for many
years, from 1966 Morrissey worked closely on numerous movies with him,
eventually making several of his own movies under the Warhol banner. The
best known of these are the trilogy of Flesh (1968), Trash (1970) and Heat
(1972), all of which starred hustler Joe Dallesandro. Morrissey parted
company with Warhol in the mid-1970s, after two final exploitation
films, Flesh For Frankenstein (1973) and Blood For Dracula (1974), made with Warhol’s backing. he continued to make movies into the late 1980s.
Ondine
Ondine
Real
name Bob Olivo (b.1939) he was also nicknamed “the Pope”. Ondine was a
manic and charismatic actor and writer, the hub of the
amphetamine-driven “Mole People” gay crowd at the Factory. he had
nothing to do with the fashionable new York nightclub Ondine’s — Olivo
had adopted the name of the lead character in Jean giraudoux’s 1939 play
Ondine, which had been played on Broadway by the iconic Audrey Hepburn. He appeared in numerous Warhol movies, beginning with Batman Dracula (1964), and Warhol’s A: A Novel
was simply a transcription of tape-recordings of Ondine’s speed-fuelled
rantings over a 24-hour period. he toured the college lecture circuit
during the 1970s, talking about Warhol and screening his performances in
Warhol’s S&M movie Vinyl (1965) and Chelsea Girls
(1966). In the 1980s, he appeared in numerous off off-Broadway plays,
until ill health forced him to retire. After Ondine’s death from liver
failure in April 1989, his mother burnt all his writings.
Brigid Polk and Andy Warhol
Brigid Polk (Berlin)
Brigid
Berlin (b.1939) and her sister Richie, who also hung out at the
Factory, were heirs to the Hearst publishing empire. Brigid created
montage “trip books” — scrapbooks of anything that took her fancy, the
most extraordinary containing the impressions of the scars, genitalia,
breasts or navels of anyone willing to contribute. She appeared in Chelsea Girls (1966), and also with Edie Sedgwick in the film based on the Factory crowd Ciao! Manhattan
(1972). She tape-recorded pretty much everything she encountered, from
phone calls to orgies. This led to her taping Lou Reed’s last concert
with The Velvet Underground in 1970 — eventually released commercially
as Live At Max’s Kansas City in 1972. Her “Polk” nickname evolved
from Factory slang — “taking a poke” meant shooting up with a needle.
Berlin gave up amphetamines and alcohol in the 1980s.
Mary Woronov
Mary Woronov
Mary
Woronov (b.1943) was an art student at Cornell University when she met
Andy Warhol and became involved with the Factory. She was one of the
principal dancers with The Exploding Plastic Inevitable, accompanying
Gerard Malanga’s whipdance to ‘Venus In Furs’. Having appeared in
Warhol’s movies Hedy The Shoplifter and Chelsea Girls, Woronov moved to Los Angeles and acted in a zillion B-movies, of which the most notable is probably Roger Corman’s Death Race 2000 (1975). She revealed herself as a talented comedy actress in Rock And Roll High School (1979), and Paul Bartel’s black comedies Eating Raoul (1982) and Scenes From The Class Struggle In Beverley Hills
(1989), as well as making cameos in mainstream Hollywood movies. Liver
damage caused her to give up all drugs and alcohol in the 1980s. She has
been a writer-director for the TV show The Women’s Series and is the author of four volumes of fiction: Snake, Niagara, Blind Love and Wake For Angels, which also contains some of her paintings, and Swimming Underground (a memoir of her time with the Factory).
Excerpted
from The Rough Guide to the Velvet Underground, publishing 1 September
2007 by Rough Guides, a division of Penguin Group International.
Copyright 2007 by Rough Guides. All rights reserved.velvet undergroundrough guidesnicoandy warhol
The Velvet Underground and Nico embodies a seldom realised idea: that music really can change the world. A financial failure in its time, the loose collection of these New York artists’ self-titled debut took a decade to sell 100,000 copies.
However, despite its commercial failings, The Velvets’humble flop was a primitively bright conceptual spark. While simultaneously hitting the bargain bins, greater forces were at play. Ripples of inspiration were subtlety mutating the face of popular culture. A powerful influence, the group’s deep-seated creative forces unified into something truly iconic.
Over a prolonged period of gestation word of mouth built in the musical underground. The innovative album passed hands while outspoken critics like Lester Bangs lionised the group’s achievement. To cite Brian Eno’sfamous remarks to the LA Times in 1982:
“I was talking to Lou Reed the other day, and he said that the first Velvet Underground record sold only 30,000 copies in its first five years. Yet, that was an enormously important record for so many people. I think everyone who bought one of those 30,000 copies started a band!”
The Velvet Underground and Nico embodied the ultimate album ideal: how the creative influence of five musicians could inform the next twenty years of music.
A central reference point in seemingly every shake-up in rock music since its release, generations of unrelated musical movements drew something different from between the vinyl grooves. Post-punk, glam rock, art rock, new wave, noise, and even industrial can trace their twisted lineages to the iconic album. Its influence still courses fluidly throughout modern music, and remains a seminal name-check for anything primal and completely outside the norm.
Commercial pressures, powerful personalities and creative impulse can often lead to compromise in a band. The Velvets were by no means immune to these factors, but what is remarkable is how true each creative contributor remained to their individual inspirations. Take a moment to profile the unlikely constituents which gave rise to the sonic schizophrenia of the band.
Lou Reed was the cantankerous black sheep of a middle-class Jewish family. Informed by literary studies and a stint in a mental institution at age 17, Reed looked to expand the idea of what popular music could entail. Musically the young songwriter cut his teeth churning out Motown, surf rock and bubblegum pop sound-alikes for the unscrupulous Pickwick Records.
Yet the Long Island native sought to follow in the steps of the visceral literature of William S. Burroughs and his beat generation forbears. Hidden behind the clichés of rock and roll, Reed saw an unlimited potential to accommodate a broader range of meaning.
Breaking down the barrier between rock music and poetic narrative, Lou injected sleaze and degradation into rock. At a time when puritanical values and obscenity laws could still place a chokehold on the avant-garde, Reed sang about heroin, transvestites and rent boys. Yet the band didn’t kick off as some grand artistic endeavour. Looking to capitalise on a more contrary sound Pickwick encouraged Reed to bring together a mock rock group to perform single Ostrich live. Known as The Primitives, the group started gigging live; securing a fortuitous residency at New York’s Cafe Bizarre in 1965.
Playing alongside Reed at this time was John Cale. A Welsh emigrant, Cale was an acolyte of the avant-garde. After finishing his study in London he relocated to New York in 1963 where he made a name for himself playing alongside influential neo-classical musicians like John Cage and Terry Riley. The young artist was probably just as happy to play a single piano chord 50 times with his elbows as anything else, but after meeting Reed at a party, he agreed to join his group.
Sterling Morrison was a Syracuse University graduate who was invited to play with The Primitives after a chance meeting with Reed, his old high school acquaintance, on a Manhattan subway. Contributing a more conventional grounding to his counterparts, he provided both rhythmic bedrocks and duelling solos to ground Reed’s more obtuse fretwork. Leaving the band in the early 70s, Morrison would evaporate from popular music entirely until a brief return in the early 90s.
Filling in for Primitives’ drummer Angus MacLise, Maureen “Mo” Tucker’s biting percussive edge kept the group together. Like Cale, Tucker looked to music from further afield when informing her self-tutored approach. While MacLise had introduced ideas from eastern music into the band’s sound, Tucker made an even greater impact with her appetite for the African beats of Babatunde Olatunji and the economic rhythms of Bo Diddly. The metronomic Tucker provided a viciously pervasive thump. She would only play standing.
Indirectly Andy Warhol remains one of the great unacknowledged influences in popular music. Although he did little in helping the group sculpt its sound, few would deny his influence in fostering their attitude and style. “The Velvet Underground was part of Andy’s group, and Andy wasn’t part of anything,” Reed told Spin in 2008.
Even prior to meeting The Velvets, Warhol shared many links with the group. Andy was familiar with avant-garde musicians La Monte Young and Marian Zazeela, both of whom had played with Cale in the Theatre of Eternal Music. This aristocrat of the New York scene also had associations with artist Walter De Maria, a drummer from an early iteration of The Primitives. Introduced through a shared acquaintance, Warhol quickly extended his patronage to the fledgling Velvets.
As art took an interest in popular culture and the mundane, pop and art collided with the Velvet Underground. Trashy could be classy. Ugly could be beautiful. He deconstructed consumer culture and captured unfiltered depictions of modern life. Like Warhol, Reed and company were particularly engrossed with that which was ignored or glossed over by the mainstream. As manager of the group, Warhol impressed into The Velvet Underground the idea that everything and anything could be art.
It was with Warhol’s patronage that the group was brought into the nexus of New York’s underground scene. The group transplanted from Cafe Bizarre to The Factory. With Warhol’s encouragement they become a house band and the sonic centrepiece of Warhol’s multimedia phenomena the Exploding Plastic Inevitable.
The group’s immersion within the polaroid art world of Warhol’s Factory placed them within a surrealistic scene where hustlers, transvestites, socialites and living theatre converged. Warhol would also help co-finance their debut album along with Norman Dolph, a Columbia Records sales exec.
Chanteuse Nico was a late addition to the band. Thrown in by Andy Warhol, it was his belief that the chic actor, model and vocalist could provide the group with some extra edge. In his on words the group were lacking a much needed “charisma.” Noted for her acting in French drama La Dolce Vita, the femme fatale’s icy persona belied a burgeoning (if moth-like) creative impulse. In line with Warhol’s fetish for film, she lent a detached and cinematic quality to the group.
Her injection into the band was far from a smooth transition. The German expat struggled to find acceptance amongst her peers. She would often clash with her bandmates due to her partial deafness and general eccentricity. But with her addition the cards were stacked; recording the album in early 1966 the group had few creative restrictions other than what the ubiquitous clarion call of “no blues.”
The deceptively tranquil Sunday Morning opens the album with sweetened pop. A crooning Reed embodies an effortless cool. Jangled guitar and beguiling innocence provide a moment of alluring misdirection, while subtly paranoiac lyrics anticipate the album’s darker undertow.
Things take a turn towards the more abrasive with Waiting For a Man. The second track’s lyrical world is intended to be real. Relating the details of a drug exchange, it weaves outsider depictions of the stark realities of street life and subterranean culture. A jilted piano echoes the Tucker’s juddering pulse.
With all the defiant deviance the group can muster, I’m Waiting For The Manconflates drugs and sexuality. The song lives within a reality aligned against the prevailing values of the day. It conveys a sense of moral decay which would see the record banned from major retailers and banned from radio airplay. Reed is the model of passivity and dependence. As raunchily as the song resounds, its feeling is voyeuristic.
While earlier tracks exude desperation and the idea of living on the edge, Femme Fatal swirls into gentle fantasy. The track places Nico in central focus. Her alluringly deadpan vocals are carried above a baroque chord progression.
The velour S&M fantasy of Venus in Furs verges on hypnotic. While the band averted themselves from the lysergic ripples of West Coast counterculture, it’s difficult to classify the paradoxical Venus in Furs as anything but psychedelic.
Run Run Run raggedly demonstrates the group’s celebration of stupidity and ugliness. Musically they revel in circular-minded banality. All Tomorrow’s Partiesmakes musical sketches of Warhol’s Factory scene.
Despite Reed’s contentions that he wasn’t glorifying anything in his music, Heroinprovided a directness and frankness about substance abuse which made the missives of counterculture seem childish in comparison. Cale’s sound experiments drone over the ostinato of a two-chord motif. Tucker’s percussion imitates a pulsing heart before inexplicably dropping out. Out of tune, primitive and never far from falling apart, here the group remain vital at every moment.
The punchy There She Goes Again situates itself as a straight ahead rocker, albeit one incorporating elastic time signatures. I’ll Be Your Mirror shimmers, while The Black Angel’s Death Song teeters into formless noise. Closer European Son pays homage to poet Delmore Schwartz while distortion and feedback dominate the album’s dissonant conclusion.
The black-clad Velvets would not last long. The group quickly parted ways with Warhol and exited The Factory scene in ’68. Nico and Cale would also depart. After dropping another two albums the group had all but disintegrated. 50 years onward the beauty and rawness of the group’s untamed innovation continues to resound throughout popular culture.
Much of music’s modern history has crossed currents with these New Yorkers’ commercial folly. It provides proof of concept that a group of individuals can instil music with a sense of intelligence and meaning. The Velvet Underground and Nico remains an enduring cornerstone of popular culture, echoing through time with an unwavering magnetism.
Making the Scene: Yorkville and Hip Toronto in the 1960s
Stuart Henderson
University of Toronto Press, 2011
394 pages, Paperback and ebook $29.95, Cloth $70.00
Stuart Henderson’s Making the Scene: Yorkville and Hip Toronto in the 1960s is an adventure back in time to Yorkville at what many would consider the pinnacle of its cultural history. Fifty years ago, the Yorkville Coffee Mill opened, among the first of many to become a hub for youth exploring counterculture through music and mysticism. Henderson’s book, which stemmed from his doctoral dissertation at Queen’s University, is rich with oral histories and underground press coverage of the day.
Personal experience drew me to Henderson’s work. I grew up in London (Ontario) in the 1990s. My father worked in Toronto for a time and stayed in an apartment on Bay Street near Bloor. Visiting on weekends, my mother and I would wander the “Mink Mile”. By then, Yorkville was a hub of elite consumerism, with couture boutiques and flagship stories. It was cultured, rather than counterculture.
Making the Scene tells the stories of the Toronto neighbourhood of Yorkville and the hip culture that pervaded the district in the 1960s. Henderson argues that, for roughly a decade, Yorkville served as the site in Canada for youth seeking an alternative to the dominant Canadian culture. He asserts that being part of a counterculture – defined as a subculture with values and practices that deviate from mainstream culture – involves the performance of identity. “A hippie,” he notes in the introduction, “does not, never can, exist wholly outside his or her cultural process” (5). In short, counterculture is a negotiation of identity, with cultural hegemony in play.
The book is organized chronologically in sections. Within each section is two chapters, one providing a political and cultural history of the period and the other assessing how the cultural identities in Yorkville were performed at the time. The book’s chronological organization makes Henderson’s argument easy to follow. However, there exists a strong historiography on counterculture-as-performance. Henderson does not especially take advantage of this material, and unfortunately relies on his readers to be familiar with the literature. For example, the performativity of “making the scene” requires the crossing of a threshold. Henderson even states that “as a geographic location, Yorkville was … metaphorically cut off,” and that Toronto was a divided cityscape, with Yorkville a zone of local “foreignness” (17)– both a cultural attraction and a destination. As a historian caught up in the meaning of place, this excited me until I realized that Henderson was not going to explore from where these people were being attracted, and how Yorkville was situated in the context of a rapidly expanding Toronto. In particular, it struck me that there were opportunities for the use of historical maps to tell these types of stories and to better illustrate the growth of the Yorkville coffee houses, followed by their retreat.
While Henderson situates Yorkville very well within its chronological context, the book seemed geographically isolated. The relationship between countercultures, identity, and place has been widely explored, so why not make better use of New York’s Greenwich Village or San Fransisco’s Haight-Ashbury to show what made Yorkville unique? Here, again, I think that the general reader may be disappointed that Henderson expects a high level of familiarity with the themes. Early in the work, I found myself asking questions about other countercultures in other cities and about the history of the 1960s counterculture phenomenon more broadly.
Similarly, the act of performing an identity that Henderson claims is part of “making the scene” requires the crossing of a boundary. Henderson states that “as a geographic location, Yorkville was metaphorically cut off” (268). I interpreted this to mean either that it was fully autonomous or that it had to be filled with people coming from elsewhere—by those who needed to cross the threshold from the dominant culture to the counterculture. Bloor Street between Yonge Street and Avenue Road remains, to this day, a cultural border best crossed under the right economic or social circumstances. I had hoped that Henderson would explore this idea further. Where were the people coming from? How was Yorkville situated in and affected by its geographic context of a rapidly changing and growing Toronto? Most of the images in the book are taken from underground press. There is one map, at the beginning, which shows the streets of Yorkville and their coffeehouses. Indeed, Henderson refers to Yorkville as “tied to a map of meaning which treated it as a circumscribed island of difference within the wider cityscape” (268), but we aren’t shown what exists around the island.
Henderson relies on dialogue from the film The Big Lebowski (1998) to describe the legacy of hip Yorkville:
‘Your revolution is over,’ counsels the conservative figure, as the bemused [Jeff] Bridges turns away. ‘My condolences. The bums lost. My advice is do what your parents did: get a job, sir. The bums will always lose. Do you hear me?’ But he doesn’t. Do we? (273)
The end of a rebellion is nothing new. The 19th century French statesman Francois Guizot has been attributed with the following: “Not to be a republican at 20 is proof of want of heart; to be one at 30 is proof of want of head.” What makes Yorkville and the 1960s counterculture unique, according to Henderson’s conclusion, is that it influenced the mainstream culture that we see today. That may be the case. He also suggests that the struggle for physical space was ultimately insignificant. This statement ignores the post-1970 gentrification of Yorkville that occurred, in part, because of the displacement of youth from this space.
It felt at times like Henderson was writing for those who were there, or who wished they could have been there. There were moments throughout when I felt like I had to have been there to understand why the event or place being described was important. The writing, much of which is done in first-person narration, is at times valourising in its tone. The book’s strength lies in its archival research and oral histories, and from reading it came some interesting debates about the nature of culture and place in the city of Toronto. I would recommend it for readers interested in the history of the Yorkville neighbourhood, Canadian culture in the 1960s, or youth culture in Canada. I will no doubt return to it for projects that reference these subjects. It would be a good supplemental work for those interested in counterculture, the history of Toronto, oral history, and underground media.
Kaitlin Wainwright is a graduate of Carleton University’s Public History program. She’s currently the Plaques and Markers Program Coordinator at Heritage Toronto.
The venues, schools, record labels, stores, and other landmarks that have created the sound of our city and shaped its music history.
The 1960s was the decade in which Toronto’s music scene took shape. With twin focal points in Yorkville and along the Yonge Street strip, the city produced highly regarded folk, rock, and R&B-influenced sounds. Though many of the venues from the decade are long gone, acts that developed their reputations in them, such as the Band and Gordon Lightfoot, became known around the globe.
1 Village Corner (174 Avenue Road, north of Davenport)
Another early folk venue, one where music duo Ian & Sylvia launched their career. As a member of the duo the Two Tones, Gordon Lightfoot recorded his first album here in January 1962.
2 Rockpile (northwest corner of Yonge and Davenport)
For a time in the late 1960s, the main space of the Masonic Temple (now home to MTV Canada) was a Fillmore-style concert hall. It is usually associated with Led Zeppelin, who played there twice in 1969. Before their August 18 gig, manager Peter Grant noticed the extensive lineup outside and threatened to cancel the show if the band didn’t get more money. The burly former bouncer got his way, but the amount handed over played a role in the venue’s closing soon after.
3 Penny Farthing (112 Yorkville Avenue)
Far more respectable than its next door neighbour, this spot specialized in blues and jazz. Veteran bluesman Lonnie Johnson played for several weeks in 1965, resulting in an album with one the venue’s regular acts, Stompin’ at the Penny with Jim McHarg’s Metro Stompers, featuring Lonnie Johnson. Johnson enjoyed playing in Toronto and spent the last five years of his life in the city.
4 Riverboat (134 Yorkville Avenue)
Opened in October 1964 and run by Bernie Fielder for 14 years, the Riverboat was usually considered the top venue in Yorkville thanks to a steady stream of high-level blues and folk acts. Sometimes timing worked in the Riverboat’s favour: in order to book bluesmen Sorry Terry and Brownie McGhee, Fielder was pressured by their agent to also slot in a rising folk duo named Simon & Garfunkel. By the time the pair was to perform in early 1966, their songs were rising up the charts. The duo wanted out of their commitment, but a compromise was reached, and Torontonians had what proved to be a rare opportunity to catch the pair in an intimate setting.
5 Mynah Bird (114 Yorkville Avenue, at Hazelton)
Named in honour of owner Colin Kerr’s pet, who could be found at this coffeehouse’s entrance, the Mynah Bird loved drawing attention to itself. For a period, it trotted out the latest innovations in topless entertainment, including Wyche, “the world’s first topless folksinger” (though her long hair covered her bosoms). Kerr also managed a rock group named after the venue, fronted by Rick James—after they separated from Kerr, Neil Young was among the musicians who passed through the group’s ranks.
6 Varsity Stadium (Bloor Street and Bedford Road)
Two major music festivals were held here in 1969. The bill for June’s Toronto Pop Festival ranged from southern soulsters (Carla Thomas) to Quebeçois chansonniers (Robert Charlebois). Local favourite Ronnie Hawkins managed to get a teenager named Jeanne Beker to jump onto the stage. September’s Toronto Rock and Roll Revival went down in history for being the live debut of the Plastic Ono Band featuring John Lennon and the Alice Cooper “chicken incident.”
7 Bohemian Embassy (7 St. Nicholas Street)
Situated at various places around the city over its history, and not to be confused with the condo bearing the same name, the venue founded by Don Cullen called the Yonge-Wellesley area home from 1960 to 1966. One of the city’s first major coffeehouses, it offered up a mix of folk, jazz, comedy, and literary readings—among those whose careers were boosted by appearances at the Bohemian Embassy were Margaret Atwood and Sylvia Tyson.
8 RCA Studios (225 Mutual Street)
Once home to CHUM radio, 225 Mutual Street became one of the city’s busiest recording studios. Operated by RCA during the 1960s and 1970s, then McClear Place, the studios saw acts ranging from Rosemary Clooney to Rush use its facilities over half a century of sound recording. The building was demolished in 2010.
9 Club Blue Note (372A Yonge Street)
A key venue for developing the mix of rock and R&B that came to be known as the “Toronto Sound.” As George Olliver, who sang with the house band The Five Rogues (later Mandala) told the National Post last year, “so many of the hit artists who used to work at the Maple Leaf Gardens came here after hours—people like Stevie Wonder, The Righteous Brothers.”
10 Hawk’s Nest (above Le Coq D’Or, 333 Yonge Street)
Having proven a popular attraction at Le Coq D’Or, Ronnie Hawkins made a deal with its owners: in exchange for free use of the building’s third floor (which ended up housing an office, gym, and after hours parties), he would run an all-ages club on the second floor. The Hawk’s Nest proved a blessing for music fans too young to go into the other venues along the Yonge Street strip.
11 Friar’s Tavern (283 Yonge Street)
Now the Hard Rock Café, the Friar’s Tavern was another stop for bands gigging along the Yonge Street strip. A plaque inside commemorates the morning of September 15, 1965, when Bob Dylan caught a performance by Levon and the Hawks, Ronnie Hawkins’ former backing band. For the next two nights, Dylan and the group that became the Band rehearsed at the Friar’s before going out on Dylan’s first electrified tour.
12 Colonial Tavern (203 Yonge Street)
Situated between two historic banks across from the present-day Eaton Centre, the Colonial Tavern attracted a steady stream of blues, jazz and rock acts during its existence. A parkette currently graces the site.
13 Electric Circus (99 Queen Street East) Opened in December 1968, the Electric Circus was intended by its backers to bring a New York–style trendy nightclub to Toronto. Partner Jerry Brandt told the Globe and Mail that “we think a person should be free to do what he wants. He can dance, he can watch, he can disappear for a while into an environment room…We have set up the facilities for you to have an experience. It’s not what you do, but how you do it.” After its run as a club/music venue, the site was used as the original studio for Citytv, who later resurrected the name for its dance show.
14 King Edward Hotel (37 King Street East)
Between their afternoon and evening performances at Maple Leaf Gardens on August 17, 1966, the Beatles attended a press conference at the venerable King Eddy. John Lennon refused to apologize for his recent statements that the band was more popular than Jesus. They also admitted that the scariest fans they encountered so far on what proved to be their final tour were found in Cleveland.
15 O’Keefe Centre (Yonge and Front)
This all-purpose concert hall, now known as the Sony Centre for the Performing Arts, was one of the most versatile venues of the decade in terms of performers. The pre-Broadway tryout of the musical Camelot, starring Julie Andrews and Richard Burton, opened the O’Keefe in October 1960. Acts that trod its stage during the 1960s ranged from grand opera to the Grateful Dead.
Additional material from Before the Gold Rush by Nicholas Jennings (Toronto: Penguin, 1997) and the December 21, 1968 edition of the Globe and Mail.
Kenny Wilson's Blog 