You know, flower power, burning bras, what the fuck is wrong with you? We become anti a lot of things that other people aren’t anti.” “They were hippies,” Warhol Factory actress Mary Woronov says in the film. Graham was ready to feather the Velvets before they even hit the stage, pairing the band with Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention at the last minute. There’s a joie, an esprit, which doesn’t exist in New York, Chicago, Detroit, where everything is pretty nailsy, tar.” In an archival clip, Bill Graham, the famed promoter who booked the Velvet Underground at The Fillmore West, says young people flock to the city of Los Angeles “because people are very nice here. “It was odd, the way it struck us, everybody was very healthy,” Reed remembers in an interview. “Musically, the West Coast was an organized force trying to predominate in the pop scene,”guitarist Sterling Morrison is heard saying in The Velvet Underground. The documentary briefly, but fervently, touches on the battle of the bands, but it exposes a larger gap between the Atlantic and Pacific. “Even if they are both bands and artists who are experimenting and drawing from all kinds of unorthodox traditions and music, and trying to fold that into what’s possible in rock and roll,” he says. Lou Reed’s songs were populated by society’s outsiders, John Cale and Zappa both drank from the well of the Avant Garde sounds of music concrete, and John Cage. Both bands had serious musicians with classical backgrounds. Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention had more in common with the Velvet Underground than other California bands. The feud might not make sense on the surface. “But this is entirely the history, this is well documented.” ![]() ![]() “This comes from them, this doesn’t come from me,” Todd Haynes tells Den of Geek. When The Velvet Underground were playing Los Angeles in 1966 as part of Andy Warhol’s art collective, The Exploding Plastic Inevitable, they ran afoul Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention. This disconnect is glaringly featured in a segment about the band’s first trip to California. While much of the youth of the Aquarius age wanted to let the sunshine in, the band preferred to close the door, so they’d never have to see the day again. In The Velvet Underground, director Todd Haynes expertly captures the outsider quality of the titular band.
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