John Cale
John Davies Cale is a Welsh musician, composer, and record producer who was a founding member of the influential American rock band the Velvet Underground. Over his six-decade career, Cale has worked in various styles of rock and avant-garde music.
John Cale studied music at Goldsmiths College before moving in 1963 to New York City, where he performed as part of the drone collective Theatre of Eternal Music and formed the Velvet Underground. Since leaving the band in 1968, Cale has released seventeen solo studio albums, including Paris 1919, Fear and Music for a New Society. Cale has worked as a record producer on albums by artists including Nico, the Stooges, the Modern Lovers and Patti Smith.
Early life and career
John Davies Cale was born on 9 March 1942 in the coal mining village of Garnant, Carmarthenshire, Wales to Will Cale, a miner, and Margaret Davies, a primary school teacher. His father spoke only English, while his mother also spoke and taught Welsh to Cale. He began learning English at primary school, at around the age of seven. Cale was molested by two different men during his youth: an Anglican priest who molested him in a church and a music teacher. He played organ at Ammanford church. The BBC recorded Cale playing a toccata he composed, which some commentators compared to the work of Aram Khachaturian.Having discovered a talent for viola, Cale joined the National Youth Orchestra of Wales at age 13. Receiving a scholarship, he then studied music at Goldsmiths College, University of London. While he was there he organised an early Fluxus concert, A Little Festival of New Music, on 6 July 1963. He also contributed to the short film Police Car and had two scores published in Fluxus Preview Review for the nascent avant-garde collective. He conducted the first performance in the UK of Cage's Concert for Piano and Orchestra, with the English composer and pianist Michael Garrett as soloist. In 1963, he travelled to the United States to continue his musical training with the assistance and influence of American composer Aaron Copland, who recommended him for Tanglewood.
Upon arriving in New York City, Cale met a number of influential composers. On 9 September 1963, he participated, along with John Cage and several others, in an 18-hour and 40 minute piano-playing marathon that was the first full-length performance of Erik Satie's "Vexations". After the performance Cale appeared on the television panel show I've Got a Secret. Cale's secret was that he had performed in an 18-hour concert, and he was accompanied by Karl Schenzer, whose secret was that he was the only member of the audience who had stayed for the duration. Cale would later attribute his own "relaxed" artistic outlook to Cage, having hitherto been raised to believe that European composers were obliged to justify their work.
During this period, Cale also played in composer La Monte Young's Theatre of Eternal Music. The drone-based music he played there influenced aspects of his later work with the Velvet Underground. One of his collaborators on these recordings was the future Velvet Underground guitarist Sterling Morrison. Three albums of Cale's early experimental work from this period were released in 2001.
The Velvet Underground (1964–1968)
Cale had enjoyed and followed rock music as well as avant-garde and European art music from a young age.Earlier that year, he co-founded the Velvet Underground with Lou Reed, recruiting his flatmate Angus MacLise and Reed's college friend Sterling Morrison to complete the initial line-up. Just before the band's first paying gig for $75 at Summit High School in New Jersey, MacLise abruptly quit the band because he viewed accepting money for art as selling out; he was replaced by Moe Tucker as the band's drummer. Initially hired to play that one show, she soon became a permanent member and her style became an integral part of the band's music, despite the initial objections of Cale to the band having a female drummer.
On a visit to Britain in 1965, Cale procured records by the Kinks, the Who and the Small Faces that had remained unavailable in the United States and shopped a crudely recorded acoustic Velvet Underground demo tape to several luminaries in the British rock scene with the intention of securing a recording contract. Although this failed to manifest, the tape was disseminated throughout the UK underground over the following eighteen months by such figures as record producer Joe Boyd and Mick Farren of the Deviants. As a result, the Deviants, the Yardbirds and David Bowie had all covered Velvet Underground songs prior to the release of their debut studio album in 1967.
The very first commercially available recording of the Velvet Underground, an instrumental track called "Loop" given away with the Pop Art issue of Aspen magazine, was a feedback experiment written and conducted by Cale. His creative relationship with Reed was integral to the sound of the Velvet Underground's first two studio albums, The Velvet Underground & Nico and White Light/White Heat. On these albums he plays viola, bass guitar and piano, and sings occasional backing vocals. White Light/White Heat also features Cale on electric organ as well as two lead vocal performances: "Lady Godiva's Operation", where he shares lead vocal duties with Reed, and "The Gift", a long spoken word piece written by Reed during his time at Syracuse University. Cale co-wrote the music to several songs and played an electrically amplified viola on early recordings. He also played celesta on "Sunday Morning". Cale also played on Nico's debut studio album, Chelsea Girl, which includes songs co-written by Velvet Underground members Cale, Reed and Morrison, who also appear as musicians. Cale makes his debut as lyricist on "Winter Song" and "Little Sister".
With tensions between Reed and Cale growing, Reed gave an ultimatum to Morrison and Tucker, declaring that unless Cale was fired, he would quit the band. Morrison and Tucker reluctantly went along with the scheme.
In September 1968, Cale played his final gig with the Velvet Underground at the Boston Tea Party. According to Tucker, "When John left, it was really sad. I felt really bad. And of course, this was gonna really influence the music, 'cause, John's a lunatic. I think we became a little more normal, which was fine, it was good music, good songs, it was never the same though. It was good stuff, a lot of good songs, but, just, the lunacy factor was... gone." After his dismissal from the band, Cale was replaced by Boston-based musician Doug Yule, who played bass guitar and keyboards and would soon share lead vocal duties in the band with Reed.
Michael Carlucci, who was friends with Robert Quine, has given this explanation about Cale's dismissal, "Lou told Quine that the reason why he had to get rid of Cale in the band was Cale's ideas were just too out there. Cale had some wacky ideas. He wanted to record the next album with the amplifiers underwater, and just couldn't have it. He was trying to make the band more accessible."
Some commentators argue that frictions between Cale and Reed influenced the band's early sound. The pair often had heated disagreements about the direction of the band, and this tension was central to their later collaborations. When Cale left, he seemed to take the more experimental tendencies with him, as is noticeable in comparing the proto-noise rock of White Light/White Heat to the comparatively dulcet, folk rock–influenced The Velvet Underground, recorded after his departure.
Cale has favorably compared the dissonance of his Velvet Underground compositions to the indecipherable lyricism of certain strains of Southern hip-hop: "If I can use out-of-tune stuff, don't need words to make sense. There's definitely a lineage".
Cale briefly returned to the Velvet Underground in 1970, albeit in the studio only: he played organ on the track "Ocean" during the practice sessions to produce demos for the band's fourth studio album Loaded, nearly two years after he left the band. He was enticed back into the studio by the band's manager, Steve Sesnick, "in a half-hearted attempt to reunite old comrades", as Cale put it. Although he does not appear on the finished album, the demo recording of "Ocean" was included in the 1997 Loaded: Fully Loaded Edition CD re-issue. Finally, five previously unreleased tracks recorded in late 1967 and early 1968 were included on the compilation albums VU and Another View.
Solo career
1970s
After leaving the Velvet Underground, Cale worked as a record producer and arranger on a number of studio albums, most notably the Stooges' highly influential 1969 self-titled debut and a trilogy by Nico, including The Marble Index, Desertshore and The End.... On these he accompanied Nico's voice and harmonium using a wide array of instruments to unusual effect. While meeting with Joe Boyd, he came across Nick Drake's music and insisted on collaborating with the fledgling artist. He appeared on Drake's second studio album, Bryter Layter, playing viola and harpsichord on "Fly" and piano, organ, and celesta on "Northern Sky".In addition to working as a record producer, Cale initiated a solo recording career in early 1970. His debut studio album, Vintage Violence, incorporated elements associated with roots rock and has been compared by critics to work by the Band, Leonard Cohen, the Byrds, Phil Spector and Brian Wilson. The more experimental Church of Anthrax followed in February 1971, although it was actually recorded nearly a year prior to its release. While his explorations in art music briefly continued with 1972's The Academy in Peril, he would not compose in the classical mode thereafter until he began working on film soundtracks in the 1980s.
In 1972, he signed with au courant Reprise Records as a recording artist and staff producer. The Academy in Peril was his first project for Reprise. The subsequent Paris 1919 steered back towards the singer-songwriter mode of Vintage Violence with a backing band that included Lowell George of Little Feat and Wilton Felder of the Crusaders, as well as the UCLA Symphony Orchestra. Composed of highly melodic songs with arcane and complex lyrics, it has been cited by critics as one of his best.
While affiliated with the label, he produced studio albums by Jennifer Warnes, Chunky, Novi & Ernie, and the self-titled debut of the Modern Lovers, which Reprise chose not to release; it subsequently appeared on Beserkley Records, the latest in a series of important Cale-produced proto-punk records. In 1974, he signed a recording contract with Island Records as an artist, while continuing to produce a variety of artists, mostly for other labels, including Squeeze, Patti Smith and Sham 69. He worked as a talent scout with Island's A&R department.