I never said that "Velvet Goldmine" was historically accurate. I knew watching it the first time that it was a highly fictionalized version of the relationship between Bowie and Iggy. However, I still enjoyed it mainly because it was so visually stunning, which is very fitting for a movie about glam. I loved the soundtrack as well, including the songs that were meant to sound like Bowie songs from that era. On a side note, Barney Hoskyns did hint in his book, "Glam: Bowie, Bolan, and the Glitter Rock Revolution," that Bowie may have had a fling with Marc Bolan, so maybe Todd Haynes took that idea and turned it into a gay romance between Kurt Wild and Brian Slade.
Here how "Velvet Goldmine" got me into garage rock...A few months after the movie played here in Pittsburgh, a local music writer named Ed Masley wrote an article about glam rock, and he mentioned an upcoming glam rock tribute show that would be held at the Decade. I went to the show, which consisted of a house band named Spaceball Ricochet and a series of local performers singing their favorite glam songs. Michael Kastelic of the Cynics was one of those performers, and he sang "Search and Destroy," "Ziggy Stardust," and "Rock'n'Roll Suicide." At that time, the Cynics were on hiatus, and Michael was singing in a band called HoneyBurst. I saw HoneyBurst later on, and I liked them, and I also saw Michael perform at a second glam show, along with a David Bowie tribute show in which he sang the entire "Ziggy Stardust" album. I became friends with him during this time, and I saw him perform with the Cynics for the first time in June 2000, which was my first exposure to garage rock.
BTW, when I first listened to the Underground Garage, Little Steven played "Lookin' for a Kiss" by the New York Dolls, which delighted me, and more recently he got me into Prima Donna, a very cool glam revival band. That is why I like the UG, because they play old stuff that I like (The Dolls are my favorite glam band), along with turning me on to new stuff. Since I was fairly new to garage rock at the time, I really didn't have any preconceived notions of what he should or shouldn't play. That is why I view these things differently than you.
Dana V. Hatch said:
MikeL said:BTW, I like all of these suggestions for making movies about real bands, but then you run into the problem of people being such sticklers for accuracy, along with how the story itself is told, i.e. it was too sugar coated, too dramatized, to hokey, too grim, too much emphasis on one thing or another, too little emphasis on one thing or another, etc. Maybe this is the reason why producers and directors prefer to make movies about fictional bands.
BTW, did anyone here ever see "Velvet Goldmine"? If so, tell me what you thought of it. That movie led to my discovery of garage rock, and I'll tell you that story if you're interested (Hey, stop snoring back there! This is my life I'm talking about).
Yeah, I saw that lie of a movie. Todd Haynes changed the names of Bowie and Iggy so he could film his fantasy of their relationship but all concerned say Bowie and Iggy were friends not lovers (Angie B. says "my question would be, who'd be the bottom?"). Not only that but the Iggy character's lines don't sound like anything the Ig would ever say. The character is much more similar to Kurt Cobain or some emo pussy. Still, hearing "Needle Through a Camel's Eye" blasting in Sensurround was great and if the movie led you to dig garage rock, that's awesome.
