(Played at the Midnight Screenings Section at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival)
Coming out of the rock n’ roll music scene in Detroit that would launch such acts as the Amboy Dukes featuring Ted Nugent and the widely influential proto-punk band the MC5 are the Stooges. Consisting of vocalist James Osterberg aka Iggy Pop, guitarist Ron Asheton, drummer Scott Asheton, and bassist Dave Alexander that would later include saxophonist Steve Mackay and guitarist James Williamson. The Stooges from 1969 to 1973 would release three studio albums that many believe helped laid the blueprint and foundation for what would become punk rock in the late 1970s. Like other legendary proto-punk bands such as the MC5 and the Velvet Underground before them as well as the New York Dolls. The Stooges weren’t commercially successful as the group disbanded in 1973 in a haze of drugs and destruction months after the release of their third album Raw Power.
Shot largely in the 2010s before the passing of drummer Scott Asheton in 2014 and saxophonist Steve Mackay in 2015 as they’re both interviewed in the film along with archival interviews from Ron Asheton in the 1980s and 2000s before his own passing in 2009. The film showcases the band’s struggle to get some mainstream success despite being in not just this vibrant music scene in Detroit that wasn’t Motown but also a growing avant-garde music scene in Ann Arbor, Michigan that featured the likes of John Cage. The most prominent talking voice in the film is Iggy Pop as there are scenes with him and Scott Asheton having conversations about their time in the band with Pop and Asheton along with the latter’s younger sister Kathy talking about their early lives. Pop also goes into detail about what makes the Stooges’ music unique where they weren’t just influenced by their environment but also a lot of the underground music that was coming out as well as jazz as the band loved John Coltrane and Miles Davis.
Despite their limitations as musicians, the Stooges were able to come up with ideas that allowed them to grow musically with Pop doing a lot to establish not just what the Ashetons brought to the band but also bassist Dave Alexander who was mastermind for one of the band’s key songs from their 1969 debut album We Will Fall with producer John Cale on viola. Pop also talked about why Alexander was fired from the band in late 1970 as it wasn’t an easy decision with Scott talking about Alexander’s final years that lead to his death in 1975 due to complications relating to alcoholism. Several bass players would come in from 1970 and 1971 with James Williamson joining the group as a second guitarist where a lot of inactivity and being dropped by Elektra Records after two albums lead to a hiatus for the band despite manager Danny Fields’ efforts to help the band find a new label as he is also interviewed in the film. Fields’ loyalty would get Pop to meet David Bowie and his then-manager Tony DeFries where Pop revealed the deal he made with the latter as he described the contract he sign is similar to the one that TLC signed 2 decades later where they have sold 10 million copies of an album and declare bankruptcy.
Though Bowie would use whatever time he had in helping the Stooges in doing additional re-mixing of their 1973 album Raw Power, it wasn’t enough where Pop revealed a lot of sabotaging from DeFries is what stalled the album as well as not having the band do a lot of shows during that time. The film opens with the final months of the Stooges who were playing gigs to an audience that were either hostile or indifferent towards them with Pop, Williamson, and Scott Asheton all reflecting on how these events led to the band’s dissolution. For Jim Jarmusch to open with that story helps set the tone for the chaos on the story of the Stooges as well as little tidbits on Pop’s solo career that was successful which included a rare top 40 hit in the early 90s with Candy featuring Kate Pierson of the B-52s.
It was in the late 1990s when Mike Watt of the Minutemen and fIREHOSE who worked with Ron Asheton in creating music for the 1998 Todd Haynes film Velvet Goldmine for Ewan McGregor’s Curt Wild character is when Ron became interested in playing Stooges music again with J Mascis of Dinosaur Jr. that lead to Scott joining in the project with Mascis and Watt. That eventually led to the Stooges’ reunion in the early 2000s with Watt playing bass for the band where the band played massive festivals including Coachella as it not only gave the band a lot of attention but also money that kept the Asheton brothers from returning to steady jobs while James Williamson was a record producer for a time and eventually an executive for Sony until he returned to the Stooges in 2010 to replace Ron Asheton.
Jarmusch’s direction is largely straightforward as many of the interviews he shot with cinematographer Tom Krueger have Pop, Scott and Kathy Asheton, Steve Mackey, James Williamson, and Danny Fields in unique settings with Pop and Scott having their conversation at Pop’s home. Even as Jarmusch brought in animator James Kerr to create some animated sequences in some of the stories including a phone conversation between Ron Asheton and Moe Howard of the Three Stooges where the latter told him “as long as you don’t fucking call yourself the Three Stooges”. There is also some visual effects work from Chris King that help play into the animation including a scene where Pop is talking and the film gets fuzzy like the old TVs back then. Much of the work that Jarmusch does comes from archival footage thanks in part to the work of editors Affonso Goncalves and Adam Kurnitz who help cultivate as much archival footage from the band in the early 70s as well as rare footage of the Ashetons’ lives following the Stooges’ dissolution including interviews with Ron in the 80s through early 2000s.
Sound designer Robert Hein does superb work in not just capturing many of the audio archives but also some of the interviews and the way the music is presented as much of its music soundtrack features not just music from the Stooges but also other artists including some such as the Sex Pistols, the Damned, the Dictators, Sonic Youth, and David Bowie covering Stooges songs. It shows exactly the vast influence the group had as they were inducted into the Rock N’ Roll Hall of Fame in 2010 though it was a bittersweet moment considering that it happened a year after Ron Asheton’s passing.
Gimme Danger is a tremendous film from Jim Jarmusch. Not only is it a great documentary about one of the most dangerous acts in popular music but also one of the most influential in terms of their raw approach to rock music. Especially for a band that didn’t get their due during their prime but eventually would receive a lot more in the 21st Century while Iggy Pop continues to have an illustrious solo career. In the end, Gimme Danger is a sensational film from Jim Jarmusch.
Jim Jarmusch Films: Permanent Vacation - Stranger Than Paradise - Down by Law - Mystery Train - Night on Earth - Dead Man - Year of the Horse - Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai - Coffee and Cigarettes - Broken Flowers - The Limits of Control - Only Lovers Left Alive - Paterson - The Dead Don’t Die - (Father Mother Sister Brother) - The Auteurs #23: Jim Jarmusch
© thevoid99 2023
Formed in 1964 by Lou Reed and the Welsh musician John Cale that would later include Sterling Morrison and Maureen Tucker, the Velvet Underground was a band that were part of Andy Warhol’s art scene known as the Exploding Plastic Inevitable as the band would also include the German model/actress Nico. Through four studio albums from 1967 to 1970, the band would make music that was considered dangerous, avant-garde, and extreme in comparison to the music in the American west coast as they were never commercial successful initially. Yet, the music they made as well as some of the solo recordings from Reed, Cale, and Nico would prove to be influential to many as it laid the ground work for punk, post-punk, alternative music, indie, noise-pop, and all kinds of music.
The film chronicles not just the band’s formation but also the art culture they were in that also included forms of art, cinema, and music as if it was a scene onto its own. Featuring interviews with surviving members John Cale and Maureen Tucker as well as Lou Reed’s sister Merrill Reed Weiner and Sterling Morrison’s widow Martha plus several of Reed’s childhood friends, actress Mary Woronov, musicians Jackson Browne and Jonathan Richman, music industry figure Danny Fields, film historian Amy Taubin, avant-garde artist La Monte Young, filmmaker John Waters, and experimental filmmaker Jonas Mekas in one of his final interviews before his passing in January 2019. The film doesn’t showcase the art world as well as the emergence of avant-garde music in the 1960s that was prevalent in New York City. It also showed the background of its four core members with Reed and Cale being the two dominant forces as the former lived in suburbia following a move from the city as Merrill said it affected him emotionally. Cale was from a small town in Wales where he had a grandmother that hated the English and hated the fact that her daughter married an Englishman and Cale didn’t learn English until he was 7.
The film also talked about Reed’s struggle to succeed as he did have bits of minor success where, through audio archives, he claimed that the one royalty check he had for less than $3 was more than everything he made when he was with the Velvet Underground. Cale talked about how he met Reed and they were part of a band called the Primitives where they had local success in Long Island with a song called The Ostrich though it was clear that Reed wanted to do more as the songs he was writing were much darker such as Heroin. Cale would play a role in helping those songs develop even though he barely knew how to play bass and guitar as he was more accomplished in piano and viola with his classical background. The two would bring in Sterling Morrison whom Reed knew back in Syracuse while Morrison brought in Maureen Tucker after original drummer Angus MacLise left the group. Much of the film’s first half is about their formation and how they became part of Andy Warhol’s social circle where they were the house band at his home base known as the Factory.
The first half talked about how Nico came into the group as she was known largely as a model/actress that was part of Warhol’s circle as she was used mainly as someone the band could bring in to help give them visibility. Yet, Nico proved to be a vital contributor to the band despite only being in the band for nearly a year as she left wanting to do her own music and other things as her departure is what had the Velvets break up with Warhol though Cale admitted that he didn’t know about it and didn’t want to break from Warhol. Cale and Tucker revealed that the second album White Light/White Heat was made mainly from their experience on the road where they had some horrendous shows in California as the band admitted they hated the hippies and they hated Frank Zappa. Jonathan Richman saw the band during the shows promoting the second album as he met the band and was given guitar lessons from Morrison while also being aware of the tension that was happening in the band that lead to Cale’s departure in September of 1968.
The second half does cover the second album but also brief insight into the third and fourth album with Cale’s replacement Doug Yule who is only heard through audio interviews along with Morrison before his death in 1995. Notably as it play into Reed’s desire to be successful as well as the fact that the band did have a loyal following in the American east coast despite their lack of commercial success. The frustration over the lack of success as well as tension in the band eventually led to Reed’s departure while they wisely talk about the fact that the band lead by Yule and other musicians made one more album that many say isn’t a Velvets album and never should be considered to be a Velvets album.
Haynes’ direction is stylized in not just using a lot of the experimental films from that scene into some stylish montages with the help of editors Affonso Goncalves and Adam Kurnitz but also in showcasing rare footage from those shows the band played during the time. Some of the editing montages is played in the style of the avant-garde films from Mekas, Stan Brakhage, and Warhol where Haynes also showcase that world where the Velvets were part of this world that included whip dances with Mary Woronov and Gerard Malanga while there’s a bunch of films playing around them. The interviews are straightforward as they’re shot from 2017 to 2019 as Haynes and cinematographer Edward Lachman have the people in a room as they’re relaxed with Merrill doing a dance to The Ostrich as it adds to Reed’s genius as a songwriter as it made his sister dance.
Sound designer Leslie Shatz help cultivate many of the audio interviews as some came from other documentaries and such as it help tell the story but also in some of the sound collages including the demos of those songs by the Velvets. Music supervisor Randall Poster compile not just a lot of the music of the Velvets including the individual work of Reed, Cale, and Nico but also some of the avant-garde music that came before them from John Cage and La Monte Young as well as some of the rock n’ roll and classical music that Reed and Cale were into as well as some of the music in the Mamas & the Papas that the Velvets didn’t like. It all play into the world that the Velvets and Warhol came from and what Bill Graham was trying to present in San Francisco as the latter definitely seem to envy what Warhol did where Tucker stated that Graham just tried to ruin them.
The film also play into the impact the group had in the world of music but also through art following Reed’s departure as there were brief reunions in the early 70s such as a legendary show at the Bataclan in Paris with Reed, Cale, and Nico as the members kept in touch. Even though Andy Warhol died in 1987 with Nico following a year later, the band minus Yule reunited in 1993 for a successful reunion tour that was supposed to go to the U.S. only for tension between Reed and Cale ended things. Following Sterling Morrison’s death in 1995, Reed, Cale, and Tucker reunited for 1996 Rock N’ Roll Hall of Fame as well as performing a tribute to Morrison. Reed would die in October 2013 leaving Cale and Tucker as the surviving original members along with Doug Yule.
Through the records they made, the Velvet Underground would prove to have a lasting influence in popular music as their debut album was inducted into the National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress in 2006. Musician/producer Brian Eno stated that when the album only sold 30,000 five years into its existence upon its release, those people who bought those 30,000 copies started a band as it proved the influence they would have on popular music. In 1991, the album was certified gold in the U.S. having then sold 560,000 copies proving that the band did indeed have an impact.
The Velvet Underground is a tremendous film from Todd Haynes. It is a documentary film that doesn’t just cover one of the greatest and influential bands of the 20th Century but also the art culture they were from as well as the individuals who made the band so special. It’s a film that does sort of play by conventions in terms of its narrative yet the presentation is anything but conventional as it play into the spirit of what made the Velvet Underground so unique in their time. In the end, The Velvet Underground is a spectacular film from Todd Haynes.
Todd Haynes Films: Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story - Poison - Dottie Gets Spanked - Safe (1995 film) - Velvet Goldmine - Far from Heaven - I'm Not There - Mildred Pierce (2011 TV Miniseries) - Carol - Wonderstruck - Dark Waters (2019 film) - The Auteurs #3: Todd Haynes
© thevoid99 2022
