Directed by Todd Haynes, 1998, 118 minutes

Journalist Arthur Stuart (Christian Bale) investigates the career of pop idol Brian Slade (Jonathan Rhys Meyers) and recalls his own adolescent experience as part of the glam rock scene during the 1970s. He follows Slade’s rise, his tortured relationships with his wife Mandy (Toni Colette) and creative partner Curt Wild (Ewan McGregor) whilst attempting to explain Slade’s melodramatic disappearance at the height of his career.

‘Velvet Goldmine’ is a heartfelt love song to pop culture. It is inspired by music that soundtracks a turbulent decade which saw the collapse of sixties counterculture and the relentless reassertion of cynical authoritarianism in the Thatcher/Reagan years. The phrase ‘Glam Rock’ provides convenient taxonomy for a musical era that encompasses a variety of musical styles and performers. English dandies like David Bowie and Marc Bolan collide and merge with the harsher sounds of US proto-punks Lou Reed and Iggy Pop. The seventies are dismissed by many right-thinking cultural commentators as a period of moral decline defined by shallow hedonism, grotesque overconsumption (both sexual and narcotic) and sartorial excess but beneath the shimmering surface glamour and self-indulgence of this music the listener can also find lyrical wit, social commentary and emotional resonance.

Haynes admires pop culture’s ability to create a heightened reality where everything is mutable and surface image is paramount. ‘Velvet Goldmine’ explores the intense relationships formed between listener and performer during the formative years of adolescence and the role that music plays in the development of self-image and sexuality. Artists like David Bowie encouraged their youthful audience to challenge class convention and gender stereotypes: A factory worker’s son or daughter can become a princess by the application of glitter makeup and a little eyeliner.

Although ‘Velvet Goldmine’ feels like a David Bowie biopic, it is more of an alternate history. Bowie was a jealous guardian of his own meticulously constructed image and refused to become involved in the project, perhaps recognising too many painful biographical details in the screenplay. Haynes re-wrote, dramatizing facets of Bowie’s cultural persona as different characters. Although forced by circumstance this device is an incisive biographical tool and Haynes refined this form, using it more confidently in ’I’m Not There’ his 2007 study of that other mercurial icon, Bob Dylan. Fiction allows Haynes freedom to examine Bowie’s art and cultural impact without having to worry about the constraints of biographical accuracy. The film’s oblique approach is a more successful attempt to penetrate pop than more direct biographies like Oliver Stones ‘The Doors’ (1991) or James Mangold’s ‘Walk the Line’ (2005). Despite all attempts at disguise the portrait remains recognisable: Slade’s uncertain start parallels the early years of David Bowie’s career as he flirts with and then rejects hippy culture to create his flamboyant stage persona Maxwell Demon (Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust period). The film also recreates Bowie’s transition into the austere electronica of the Berlin period with its formal, synthetic soundscapes and hints of totalitarianism.  Haynes effortlessly captures the idioms and imagery of Bowie’s music with its androgynous alien visitors, star ships, painted libertines and demonic lovers so we never notice the absence of Bowie’s music (the film’s punning title is the only direct quote from Bowie’s lyrics).

Carter Burwell’s score brilliantly evokes the period. Better known for lyrical orchestral work like ‘Miller’s Crossing’ (Joel and Ethan Cohen, 1990) here Burwell works with a generation of musicians who are clearly influenced by and in love with seventies pop. Radiohead’s Thom Yorke and Jon Greenwood, Suede’s Bernard Butler, Sonic Youth’s Steve Shelley and many others create a perfect pastiche of glam rock, alter-Bowie that sounds uncannily like songs that have always been there. Burwell combines his new material with period music from Brian Eno, T-Rex, Brian Ferry and Steve Harley to form a seamless alternate pop history. The soundtrack album ‘to be played at maximum volume’ (a nice nod to ‘Ziggy Stardust’) is a testament to eccentric and fertile artistic collaboration.

‘Velvet Goldmine’ is more concerned with the way that we use popular culture to construct our own personalities than with historical veracity. Haynes portrays this musical past as a lost golden age defined by self-discovery and experimentation, a stark contrast to the uniformly drab world that followed in the 1980s when market forces and authoritarian politics prevail. ‘Velvet Goldmine’s nostalgia is endearing despite being a gross over-simplification of reality but in painting this period as a land of lost content Haynes misses an essential truth of pop culture: As we age the past always shines brighter than the present. Listeners who grew up to the sounds of eighties pop now, in turn regard that as their own golden age. David Bowie celebrates the ability to adapt and move forward as an essential survival skill in his song ‘Changes’ (1971). He continued to create until his death, producing work of varying quality but marked by a consistent capacity for re-invention. Nostalgia is a trap, it can suck the artist into a loop where he or she must trade on past glories until they fade and tarnish with repetition; the Rolling Stones may continue to fill stadiums, but they are creatively sterile. In contrast, Bowie continued to mutate throughout his life and the album that he left behind as a farewell (‘Blackstar’ 2016) is as challenging as anything he recorded in the seventies.

Pop has a magpie sensibility, it seeks novelty but nothing is ever really new: Elvis Presley repackaged the sounds and posture of black rhythm and blues for white, middle class audiences; Bob Dylan subverted the sham ‘authenticity’ of the sixties folk scene with songs that simulate the patter of nineteenth century vaudeville. ‘Velvet Goldmine’ begins with Oscar Wilde who was, in turn influenced by the Symbolists of the later nineteenth century, particularly the fin-de-siècle decadence found in the graphic art of Beardsley or the writing of Arthur Symons. Haynes also acknowledges glam rock’s debt to music hall particularly its penchant for gender-reversal and camp humour in a sequence featuring Lindsay Kemp, the dance master who taught Bowie mime and helped to create the stage persona of Ziggy Stardust. Brian Slade rifles the toy box of cultural history to achieve ascension. We see him as a toddler, aping Little Richard and as a teenage Mod. Everything is borrowed, from the flapper fig of F Scott Fitzgerald’s twenties to thirties Hollywood glamour. Slade’s trademark sexual ambiguity is inspired by audacious gender pioneer Jack Fairy (Micko Westmoreland).

‘Velvet Goldmine’ is not a cautionary tale of pop excess like ‘Stardust’ (Michael Apted, 1974) but Haynes acknowledges the high personal costs of celebrity and the dangers of rampant hedonism. Narcotics can heighten and extend creativity, but addiction can smother it. Musicians strive for creative freedom, but pop is primarily a business and the pursuit of profit encourages imitation and repetition. Haynes captures the unpredictability of live performance and the obsessiveness of fan culture; followers are fickle, and adoration can turn quickly to loathing. The creation of multiple successive dramatic personae erodes Slade’s sense of self and he becomes monstrous; unable to maintain stable relationships he can only damage those who seek emotional commitment.

Jonathan Rhys Meyers’ performance as Slade matches the androgynous swagger of the Ziggy era perfectly. Ewan McGregor’s channels Iggy Pop, he gleefully trashes his mother’s boy image, brandishing his privates as he writhes onstage in baby oil and glitter. Monstrous male egos dominate the film. Toni Collette (as Mandy) and Emily Woof (as Shannon) influence Slade’s career and we glimpse a female rocker (possibly modelled on Suzi Quatro) all too briefly. Women like Quatro and Kate Bush were challenging masculine domination of the music industry in the seventies, but women remain in the background here. Christian Bale’s role as investigative journalist attempts to provide a narrative frame but unfortunately his performance is not strong enough to hold the attention and his leaden delivery is unconvincing.

The mystery narrative as Bale pursues his fallen idol feels strained and predictable but ‘Velvet Goldmine’ becomes a much better film when it returns to the passionate relationship between listener and artist and explores pop culture’s potential to redefine social norms. Haynes argues that freedom to dream and play are essential parts of growing up; the world becomes a sadder place when we suppress these liberties. In the words of the Thin White Duke himself “…these children that you spit on as they try to change their worlds are immune to your consolations, they’re quite aware of what they’re going thru”.  ‘Velvet Goldmine’ reminds us that despite the grimaces and guffaws of the old and the tired we need to nurture youth’s capacity to push against convention because it offers our best hope for social renewal.

Quotes

“for once there was an unknown land, full of strange flowers and subtle perfumes, a land of which it is joy of all joys to dream, a land where all things are perfect, and poisonous” Narrator (Janet McTeer)

“make a wish, and see yourself, on stage, inside out, a tangle of garlands in your hair” Curt Wild (Ewan McGregor)

Connections

Film

‘The Man Who Fell to Earth’ directed by Nicolas Roeg (1976)

‘Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story’ directed by Todd Haynes (1988)

‘The Doors’ directed by Oliver Stone (1991)

‘I’m Not There’ directed by Todd Haynes (2007)

Television

‘Cracked Actor’ directed by Alan Yentob (1975)

Music

David Bowie, ‘Hunky Dory’, (1971)

David Bowie, ‘The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust’, (1972)

Carter Burwell, ‘Velvet Goldmine’, (1998)

David Bowie, ‘Blackstar’, (2016)

Reading

David Buckley: Strange Fascination: David Bowie: The Definitive Story, Virgin, 2005