Mary Woronov

Cult actress/artist Mary Woronov lives and paints in a former dance studio in L.A. where’s she’s been since the 70s. She was born in Brooklyn Hts. in 1943. Her father was a doctor. She was 5’ 11” by the age of 12, her parents divorced, and she was sent to a boarding school at 14. She later attended Cornell in Ithaca, NY, as an art (sculpture) major. She was taken to Andy Warhol’s Factory in 1964 where she met Gerard Malanga. That led to a movie career and her joining a 12 person troupe known as The Exploding Plastic Inevitable and going on the road with The Velvet Underground in 1966 and 67. “And there was my dad in this den of freaks, really trying to be a dad, ‘Now Mr. Warhol, you look after Mary!’ It was stupefying, but what were they going to do with this weird girl they brought up who brought Lou Reed home to breakfast after these crazy nights?” “I could never have gotten through this without them. I always considered my family to be something I could pretend to be rid of. I don’t know how they did it, but what they gave me was a rock. I was not addictive, I always came down, I always went home. My parents also gave me this thing of not being afraid to be different. They were wacky, but in a 50’s way.“ Her whip dancing with Malanga was a major part of the extreme, controversial, ahead of its time audio visual experience. Woronov could be seen on stage in front of the band and sometimes on screen behind them in various Warhol films. The Exploding Plastic Inevitable was treated as a major art happening and received lots of publicity. At the time the 1966 Velvets banana LP, which came out (late) in March 67, was treated as a souvenir of the show.

    “This girl brought in the Velvet Underground and we thought they were great when nobody else did. They couldn’t get airplay and they stuck to Warhol because it was their only means of getting heard. Andy incorporated them into his system. They were all used to drugs and that kind of life where you just do nothing all night, you sleep in the daytime, then get up and do nothing again. It was just a very weird life. Andy incorporated them and made something called The Exploding Plastic Inevitable and we’d go into places and the band would go on stage.

Behind the band would be the movies we had made, and in front of the band would be me, Gerard or Ingrid or Nico. Nico would sing, Gerard and I would dance together and Ingrid would act like an asshole, it was a complete thing. We toured all over with it, then went back to New York where Andy set up shop in the Dom or the Polish Center or whatever it was called on St. Mark’s Place and we used to play there every night.” (The Dom on St. Mark’s Place is now a substance abuse center.)

    “The Velvets? They’re very important. But in New York, they were frowned on in New York. They couldn’t get on the air, are you joking? The only reason they played is because of Warhol. Because he used them sort of as an advertisement, he put on this happening called The Exploding Plastic Inevitable. They had a loop of a film and his band was part of the show. Otherwise they could never have gotten a gig. After a while, they got a following and they left Warhol, but were they successful in their own time? Never! Never, never, never successful, no. Not the way bands can be. I mean if you think Dylan was successful when he played in the Village, well, OK. They played in the Village. They got that successful. But they weren’t successful like records, giant amounts of records. Did you see Oliver Stone’s movie about the Doors? The way they portrayed Warhol? You don’t learn a damn thing about the Doors. But you learn about Los Angeles’ attitude towards New York then. It was evil, it was full of witches and black magic, it was decadent and disgusting, and that’s how they saw us. When we went there as The Velvets, they hated us. They hated us and we were not a hit. But we were sought out by curious minds. Tennessee Williams would show up. Dali would show up. Really famous people would show up without anyone else. We were on the edge and everybody else was asleep. We didn’t like what they liked. But certainly, we didn’t rule the world. They did! No one even knew we were around unless they looked real hard. This was especially because of the homosexuals. Because, I mean, they were outlawed. And they were doing most of the art. Gays did a lot. Try to get rid of that, you get rid of a very, very major part of art.