The Velvet Underground, a well-documented comic book, looks back on the tumultuous journey of Lou Reed and John Cale’s group

Meticulously documented and drawn, this new comic returns to the chaotic history of the Velvet Underground. The author examines the mistakes and motivations of its members and exposes the fault lines that fueled the founding of the New York group, the forerunner of punk pioneered by Andy Warhol.

From Jimi Hendrix to Oum Kalthoum or Thelonious Monk – which music legend today doesn’t have his own comic book or graphic novel? In 2021, Prosperi Buri has already given us a hilarious portrait of the Velvet Underground (A History of the Velvet Underground at Dargaud). Even though we know the turbulent journey of the character of Lou Reed and John Cale in general, it remains a joy to read a new version of the story of a group that defined their era and influenced several generations of musicians. Because like a biopic in the cinema, the look is never the same.

Koren Shadmi, author and designer of The Velvet Underground – Into the Effervescence of the Warhol Factory, has a more psychological approach. He examines the flaws and motivations of his characters and exposes the fault lines that will inform creation. He decided to open his comic book with Andy Warhol’s funeral in 1987. A way to highlight the role that the father of pop art played in the rise of the Velvet Underground by presenting them as an innovative group involved in his artistic research avant-garde and the excitement of his famous “factory”.

Two painful souls

He then returns to the parallel abused and painful adolescents of Lou Reed and John Cale, Velvet’s driving tandem, born a week apart in March 1942 but separated by thousands of miles. On Long Island (USA), Lou Reed, a writer whose parents were worried about his marginal behavior (homosexuality, drugs), will think: “fix“By subjecting him to electric shocks when he was a teenager. Across the Atlantic, in Wales, John Cale is abused at the age of 12 by the church organist, whose depression and anger grows under the cover of his experimental sound research. Music will be your outlet.

We follow the meeting of these two tortured souls in New York in the 1960s and how their personalities feed into the Velvet Underground, which they founded after some trial and error and which was named after a book about it “sexual depravity”. A non-conformist group with perceived darkness, led by a shared desire to shock and document the margins in words and sounds, with “Portraits, news, experiences. As Last exit to Brooklyn [le roman choc de Hubert Selby Jr paru en 1964] but in song. I want it to penetrate. Pooh!”, explains Lou Reed in the comic. Andy Warhol will impose on them his new muse, the blonde German singer Nico, the fourth character at the center of the comic.

An uncompromising portrait

Soon, as their group continues to languish, Lou and John tear each other apart, vying for leadership like the worst of feuding brothers, sometimes coming to blows. Lou defends the rock side, John the experimental side. “This tension between pop and avant-garde quickly bears fruit.writes the author, who shows what opposites and contradictions are at work in this group and what made them hatch and invent.

With a classic style that offers an abundance of detail while favoring purity, the author favors muted twilight tones and amazing violet grays. A design that fits like a glove with the pioneering group of punk, whose characters he skilfully sketches, with Lou Reed even showing a faux Frankenstein aspect every now and then.

Without complacency, Koren Shadmi does nothing to make its characters likeable. Lou Reed is particularly unpleasant: paranoid, eruptive, aggressive, he is towards everyone, but especially the women around him, starting with Nico, whom he verbally tortures at every opportunity. “This is my way of saying I love you.he admitted wryly when he met John Cale in 1987, years after their breakup.

A wealth of little-known anecdotes

The author knows how to use all the details he gained from his documentation to carefully advance the story. Packed with information and little-known anecdotes, his scenario is a pleasure to read. With small details he manages to say a lot about each person and even the era. For example, Warhol called the tandem Lou and John “l.”“Audio sadists”. Moe Tucker, the Velvet’s drummer, felt so uncomfortable at Warhol’s Factory that she hid out of sight in a closet, where Nico happened to find her in a poignant comic book scene.

Another pleasant detail: When a journalist in Los Angeles in 1966 collected the audience’s impressions after a Velvet concert (as part of Warhol’s multimedia show “Exploding Plastic Inevitable”), the musician David Crosby replied: “It feels like eating banana soap.. Singer Cher believes that “They will not replace anyone, except perhaps suicide.” This is a reminder that while the Velvet Underground has had a cult following for decades, it took a long time to be appreciated.

“The Velvet Underground – In the excitement of the Warhol Factory” by Koren Shadmi, with script and drawings (Edition La Boîte à Bulles, 26 euros) was published on February 15, 2024.