Born in Garnant, Wales, in 1942, John Davies Cale played piano and violin from an early age. As a promising student at London University, he often chafed at the limitations of the classical hierarchy , and was drawn to the work of such avant garde composers as John Cage and La Monte Young. When Cale moved to New York in 1963, he fell in with each of these influences in turn, eventually playing viola in Young's Theater of Eternal Music (a.k.a. The Dream Syndicate).
The next phase of Cale's career began when he met Lou Reed; after performing on street corners as a duo, they formed the nucleus of the Velvet Underground. The rock and roll milieu gave Cale a chance to unleash the fierce improvisational skills that classical music had no use for. "Velvets shows were pretty riotous. When we went to the West Coast, we'd end up playing in big clubs with a lot of the acidhead bands, and we found we could fit in there by improvising a little harder than what the acidhead bands were doing."
Breaking away from the group after their second album, Cale worked in
production (Nico's The Marble Index, The Stooges) for a few
years before returning with some subdued but elegant solo albums. His 1973
classic Paris 1919 established his penchant for writing allusive,
emotionally compelling songs linked to historical and political
concerns
The mid-'70s found Cale back in the UK, fronting a series of rock bands that
assaulted audiences with a stage presentation that drew as much from Antonin
Artaud's Theater of Cruelty as from Phil Spector. His three albums from this
period— Fear, Slow Dazzle and
Helen of Troy
In 1975, Cale produced Patti Smith's first album, Horses. Smith
explained her choice of Cale as producer to writer Dave Marsh in1976:
["Her Horses Got Wings, They Can Fly", Rolling Stone, January 1, 1976]
Some links:
Eoin Ryan's John Cale site in Ireland
My picking John was about as arbitrary as picking Rimbaud. I saw the cover
of Illuminations with Rimbaud's face, y'know, he looked so cool, just
like Bob Dylan. So Rimbaud became my favorite poet. I looked at the cover of
Fear and I said, 'Now there's a set of cheekbones.' ...In my mind I
picked him because his records sounded good. But I hired the wrong guy. All
I was really looking for was a technical person. Instead, I got a total
maniac artist. I went to pick out an expensive watercolor painting and
instead I got a mirror. It was really like A Season in Hell, for both of
us. But inspiration doesn't always have to be someone sending me half a
dozen American Beauty roses. There's a lotta inspiration going on between
the murderer and the victim. And he had me so nuts I wound up doing this
nine-minute cut ["Birdland"] that transcended anything I ever did before.
After touring for a while as Patti Smith's opening act, Cale resettled in
New York City and settled into the scene. His extreme behavior contributed
to his wild man reputation, but it never obscured the quality of his work.
His albums are varied and eclectic, but they are unified by the originality
of his concepts. Cale took a break from recording and performing in 1985, a
move inspired by the birth of his daughter Eden. He re-emerged in 1989 with
a renewed energy that has produced several classical albums, a live disc
(Fragments Of A Rainy Season), a collaboration with Brian Eno
(Wrong Way Up), another with Lou Reed (Songs For Drella), and
the much-heralded, if short-lived, Velvet Underground reunion. Most
recently, he composed the score to the film I Shot Andy Warhol. A new
John Cale album is due out in the fall of 1996.
Patti comments on differences between John Cale
and Jack Douglas as producers
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