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John Cale's solo stuff...

06:51 / 18.02.04

So why isn't he rated, you know, an awful lot higher ?

14:45 / 19.02.04

He is. Among, y'know, those who matter.

Let's face it, though, with rare exceptions his stuff has never been particularly commercially-oriented; it's been too dark and extreme.

Also--and this may just be a personal thing--the production on many of his records hasn't aged well: they sound very much of their time--the phase-shifting guitars of the 70s albums, the DX7 synths of the 80s. Oddly enough, this problem mostly plagues his self-produced efforts: when he works with an outside producer (Chris Thomas on Paris 1919 springs to mind) the settings are a little more... timeless, I guess is the word.

And the ever-changing cast of sidemen hampered him from developing any kind of consistent sound, the way that, say, Lou Reed or Bowie have done--by developing long-term partnerships with certain musicians: Brian Eno is the only real semi-constant I can think of with John's work.

The result is that a lot of John's records have kind of a slapdash quality to them--well-played, but kind of generic. Take the studio version of "Gun" as an example: the solo is left-field wackiness--Phil Manzanera's guitar running through Brian Eno's mixing console--but the rhythm section is playing a pretty rote 70s bar-band boogie.

But when you strip all that away--as in the solo live disc Fragments of a Rainy Season, or some of his smaller-scaled concert tours--then the songcraft and the personality really shine through. The one time I saw Cale was at Lupo's in Providence, shortly before the release of Walking On Locusts. It was him on piano and acoustic guitar, BJ Cole on pedal steel (!), and a string quartet. An amazing show: no electric guitars, no bass, no drums, but somehow it was still rock'n'roll.

As regards the darkness and the gloom and the body counts: I think John kind of painted himself into a corner in his early career with the psychotic-commando image. A lot of the fans prefer that to his more cerebral recent approach--and he seems to feel a responsibility to deliver the goods. So a pretty, delicate piano version of "Fear" is always going to end in crashing piano noises and screams--but these days it feels rather flat and routine.

Have you read What's Welsh For Zen? Fascinating exsperiment in autobiography, designed and illustrated by comics god Dave McKean. It's a lovely read.

at the scarwash

23:30 / 19.02.04

I would disagree with that take. Firstly, I think that Music for a New Society is anything but generic. How could it be, considering that it's mostly piano and Taffy? Next to Lou Reed's Berlin, it's the most affecting album I own. The Academy in Peril is not quite as kick-in-the-balls intense, but is brilliantly conceived--his fuck off to his classical education, perhaps.Watch the cello love, watch the cello
Mind your boom — for blimey's sake

Another personal favorite is Eat/Kiss, a soundtrack he did for a few of Warhol's dead-dull experimental films. Mostly instrumental, with some beautiful pedal-steel work.

So yeah, he really is (by me) rated a whole hell of a lot higher than wotzitztwalkonthewildside. At the very least, a much better musician than Reed, occasionally a better lyricist (Reed is good at narrative; Cale is good at textures). And Cale is definitely the one I'd invite home to meet mom and dad.

23:53 / 19.02.04

Music For A New Society is obviously an exception. I'm talking more along the lines of his mid-70s work--Vintage Violence, Fear, Slow Dazzle et cetera.

Fun fact about New Society. For most of the songs, Cale used a particular production technique: he would lay down a basic guitar or piano track to serve as the chordal framework of the tune. Then he and the band would overdub instrumental flourishes and sound effects--then Cale would erase the basic track entirely, so that at the heart of each song was this great emptiness.

Compare and contrast the studio and live versions of "Thoughtless Kind" (live on Fragments) for some idea of the effect.

03:53 / 20.02.04

I'll confess to being a bit of a lightweight here, all I've got is a compilation. But it all just sounds, if not modern exactly, then very much up to date, Brian Wilson in hell with a guitar and a notebook, that type of thing. I'd have expected something, you know, a lot more atonal, less lyric, less poetic, but song for song, he seems to shit on Lou Reed from such a great height that it's almost embarassing

lord nuneaton savage

10:59 / 20.02.04

I'd go for 'Sabotage/live' as me' fave it's just an awesome rock n' roll album, despite (because of?) the fact the band sound like they got together an hour before the show. I find the massively loud and tuneless guitar solos rather uplifting and it's got 'Captain Hook' on it, which is one of his best tunes.
As for why he's not rated higher, well, he's a 'cult' artist 'inne? All the people I know who like 'im fuckin' love 'im, all the people who don't could'nt care less. That and his aforementioned habit of choosing very strange collaborators (Little Feat anyone?).

12:25 / 20.02.04

I'll confess to being a bit of a lightweight here, all I've got is a compilation.

Which one? Rhino's two-disc Seducing Down the Door is an excellent overview of his strengths as a writer, but also of the weaknesses of the production...

14:08 / 20.02.04

" Close Watch - an introduction " on Island Remasters. There's a similar thing out for Nick Drake's stuff, which is what got me thinking about the general injustices of the whole situation in the first place - I can't help feeling that if John Cale had OD-ed in the early Eighties,( and I glad that he didn't, ) he'd now be regarded as some sort of god, in much the same way as Nick Drake, not wrongly, appears to be now. Oh well, fame, fickle fame...
Anyway Jack, I don't know about your views on the production - the album I've got is pretty clearly quite cherry-picked, but I still think most of it sounds a lot less dated than say The Idiot does these days, or Transformer, or Low. I mean Paris 1919, Mr Wilson, Ship Of Fools, and I could go on - being this professional posing aesthete snob, I should have heard this stuff years ago, quite aggrieved that I didn't. You know, fucking hell man, I bought an album by The Wedding Present once - I think if I'd got say Music For A New Society at the same time, I might not be sitting here wasting time on the internet, and debating, quite rationally, if the best thing to do isn't to get some more wine, when I basically ought to be getting on with some work. Still, better late than never.
But Music For A New Society is the one to look into, I'm assuming ?

16:34 / 20.02.04

Depends entirely on what you're looking for. If you want the really harrowing avant-garde psychodramatic side of Cale (albeit with less overt violence than, say, "Guts"), then, yeah, New Society is your disc.

If, on the other hand, you want a gorgeous jewel of a pop record, then I'd go for Paris 1919--for my money one of the most perfect albums ever recorded.

For another sort of overview, I'd reommend Fragments of a Rainy Season, which is sort of a greatest-hits-live, just Cale and his piano and guitar. It's far too easy, for good or bad, to get caught up in the sound of a Cale record: Fragments is useful and instructive because it lays bare the essence of the songs and really reveals his strengths as a writer.

The dark-horse pick--my personal favorite--is Wrong Way Up, a pure-pop-for-now-people collaboration with Brian Eno. Endlessly tuneful.

18:09 / 20.02.04

Well I think I'll probably go for Paris 1919, and then take it from there. Incidentally, you're not alone in that assessment - Paul Morley, in his book Words And Music, in one of the three or four lists of his hundred best albums ( he's a fool, Paul Morley, but he knows that you know that, and that you know that he knows - it's a bit arch really, as a piece of work, but the sections on Metal Machine Music, on Simon Fuller, on Kraftwerk, on the Manic Street Preachers, on why Paul Morely is such a goddamn genius, are totally well worth the price of admission, ) has it right up there, and if the rest of it's as good as the titular number, I'd be hard-pressed to argue.
Anyway, salud, cheers, prost and slongivar and so on - Johm Cale WILL pass go, he will not go to jail, and he won't get busted on Park Lane, wherever, he'll cut this or that deal and head off gently into the light. If there's any real justice...

19:32 / 20.02.04

It’s only slightly relevant, and uselessly uk-centric to international ‘lithers, but if you’re interested in all-that-is-Cale, Alex, I bring the amazing news that he’s Dame Sue Lawley’s guest on Desert Island Discs this weekend (Radio 4, Sunday 22nd, 11-15am). Which is to say, he’ll be telling his fascinating life story and picking the records he’d choose to have with him if he was ever to be marooned on a desert island. Er, hence the name.

20:46 / 20.02.04

Or, alternately, he'll conceal his painful shyness by retreating into self-protective monosyllables. I've heard it happen, on US National Public Radio's Fresh Air. The host, Terry Gross,is one of the best interviewers in the business, but Cale just shut himself out. It was every interviewer's nightmare, and just excruciating to listen to.

In the documentary film Words For the Dying, the filmmaker found it so hard to talk to Cale that he ended up just giving Cale a videocamera so he could keep a video journal. There follows a series of sequences wherein Cale, apparently with the best will in the world, turns on the camera, sits down to face it--and sits there, trying to will himself to speak, before giving up in frustration.

Now that's a shy guy: he won't even talk to himself.

21:09 / 20.02.04

(You know, I'm sure I've told someof these Cale stories here before, but damned if I can figure out where--this is the only Cale-specific thread I can find... wasn't there a longago thread on "music that creeps you out," or somesuch? Was it there?)

06:00 / 21.02.04

Dunno, man, quite new to this site. Though I seem to remember seeing Words For The Dying, in which I seem to recall he was wearing lots of orange - Is that right ? Was the interview really that painful ? Whatever, Sue Lawley is adamantly NOT one of the best interviewers in the business, I can already picture the awkward silences, the dubious questions about the Velvets and Warhol, as Cale just sits there, not trying to be rude, but just idly wondering, Sue, let's face it, how on earth can I put this in terms you'd even vaguely understand ? Needless to say though, I can hardly wait. There's just something, y'know, so completely refreshing about " unprofessional " performances on radio/TV. If you're an artist, for god's sake, there's no particular reason to be a quote machine too. And the world must seem a bit strange to John Cale these days - he's seen all this stuff and it's just been cancelled, written out of the act. That generation is going, and they're not coming back. And I've got a horrible feeling we're going to miss them badly, the last generation that seemed to do what it wanted, whenever it liked.
Or maybe I'm just being a bit sentimental

--

00:57 / 22.02.04

I've always liked John Cale, even though the only solo stuff of his I've heard was the 3 rock albums he did for Island. I like his voice... "Mr. Wilson" is one of my favorite pop tunes.

10:07 / 22.02.04

Re: Desert Island discs

He handled that pretty well, I thought. All those intrusive questions, particularly the one about how J Cale or the like wouldn't function too well on a desert island, and it didn't really sound like he was batting an eyelid...

18:50 / 22.02.04

Also Re: Desert Island discs

Well, call me Disgusted of Barbelith. Yeah, it was a bit awkward, maybe because Sue Lawley is one of those interviewers who seems so much happier when she’s talking with posh people, but I was most infuriated because his choice of records seemed so bad. I mean, each to their own, but really, who was this guy and what’s he done with the John Cale of legend? The Beatles? The fucking Beach Boys? Elbow??? And really, picking one of your own records is generally considered rather bad form, dude. Where’s the jazz, where’s the avant-garde madness? Yeah, he was chatty enough, but they only really spoke about the Velvet Underground; his solo career was mentioned in passing, reduced to a list of people he’s worked with. In fact, take a few unnecessary words out and the whole interview could be handily compressed into a 3-minute continuous stream of namedropping.

Sorry, I woke up with a bad head. Desert Island Discs doesn’t usually get me so steamed up.

Anyway. I’ve always steered clear of JC’s solo stuff for some reason. Until this thread, in fact: I’m now determined to snatch up the next copy of Paris 1919 to cross my path. Didn’t he do a fantastic twangy soundtrack for Jonathan Demme’s Caged Heat or something? - I have the worst memory in the world, but all I do vaguely remember from that film is going nuts for the soundtrack. Don’t think it’s ever been released, is it actually complete tosh? The closest I’ve got to a Cale record is The End by Nico, which is actually *very* Cale-sounding. Turn it way up when I’m in the very blackest of black moods. Goes well on the rare occasions I drink spirits and, y’know, wallow. Fantastically full, loud, oppressive sound, like an apocalyptic doomy 1970s version of My Bloody Valentine. Not good for dancing to.

m

21:27 / 25.02.04

Howdy, first post here.
I recently went out looking for Cale records so I could see what all the fuss was about. Gotta say that most of what I heard was either wildly mediocre or laughably bad. I was suprised at how much a lot of his records just sound like uninspired classic rock. That record Fear is really good though, and I hear that Paris 19whatsit is pretty good too.

15:25 / 08.03.04

I was suprised at how much a lot of his records just sound like uninspired classic rock.

Dave Davies of the Kinks once said, "It wasn't called 'heavy metal' when I invented it."

m

19:07 / 08.03.04

Man, I don't know if Cale can make any claims to have invented classic rock. Who would want to though.
Anyway, the records I'm talking about (Helen of Troy and Slow Dazzle) feature Cale posturing as some kind of bad assed rock'n'roller. Lots of leather, mirrored sunglasses, and macho lyrics. Not very convincing, I must say. Cale's not very good at playing the tough guy.

As far as Nico goes: I think Cale wrote all the arrangements for Chelsea Girls too. That's a wonderful record! Not as comically maudlin as The End.

20:10 / 08.03.04

...the records I'm talking about ... feature Cale posturing as some kind of bad assed rock'n'roller. Lots of leather, mirrored sunglasses, and macho lyrics. Not very convincing, I must say. Cale's not very good at playing the tough guy.

And "Meet the Beatles" doesn't sound like the kind of thing that would make battalions of teenage girls shriek and faint, either--at the remove of forty years.

Consider the times--the early to mid-70s. This was before the Pistols brought toughness back to rock'n'roll. The pop landscape consisted mostly of the institutionalized wimpery of Dan Fogelberg, James Taylor, America, Seals & Crofts et al on the one hand, and the mindless meatloaf boogie of Grand Funk Railroad and their ilk on the other--the tunes had plenty of muscle, but the lyrics were mostly banal.

In that company, in that context, Cale was a stiletto.

It was only a phase, to be sure--albeit a phase that he's still trying to live down (or live up to, depending who you ask)--and, as I said, the records haven't aged terribly well: but you have to consider the context, when you're assessing the importance of these records.

Would the Pistols have been possible without John Cale? Yeah, probably. But the Clash? Maybe, maybe not.

at the scarwash

21:20 / 08.03.04

Chelsea Girls was written by all of the Velvets who got to sleep with Nico, I think.

m

00:39 / 09.03.04

So how do Vintage Violence and Paris 1919 compare to the late seventies stuff? Liked Fear pretty well, should I give one of those earlier ones a try?

Trying to find out anything about Cale's kind of strange, because he seems to above any criticism. A lot of his stuff really hasn't aged well, like you said, but I've been hard pressed to find anyone else that'll say so. Most reviews just go on about "brilliant" this, "genius" that.

20:58 / 10.03.04

Yeah, Paris 1919 is great. Particularly Andalucia and the deadpan and bittersweet lushness of A Child's Christmas in Wales, plus you've got Lowell George collaborating on Macbeth. Cale is generous and inventive in using his invited guests.

I really liked some of the stuff on Slow Dazzle. There's a smashing Hammer Horror cover of Heartbreak Hotel from the time before iconoclastic covers were de rigueur. More collaboration egging him on with Brian Eno, the Imp of the Perverse.

I'm Not The Loving Kind is plangent and powerful, seems sincere and penitent. And The Jeweller and Mr Wilson evoke some of the Velvets' great vignettes.

My favourite of his solo albums (though, admittedly, I haven't heard much of his more recent stuff) is Fear. Not a bad track on it and it would be invidious to single one out.

I'm just wondering now what "invidious" means. And he was far too polite to that smug sow, Sue Lawley.

And I never did work out why he pronounces "orgy" with a hard G in The Man Who Couldn't Afford to...

at the scarwash

22:13 / 21.03.04

Has anyone heard the newest, Hobo Sapiens? It's not his best but is definitely a return to strong form. He has certainly benefitted from exposure to protools in a way that I've never heard before.

13:35 / 26.03.04

And I never did work out why he pronounces "orgy" with a hard G in The Man Who Couldn't Afford to...

It took me forever to figure out what he was trying to say. I thought perhaps everybody Welsh (he is Welsh?) says it that way. Cale's one of those guys who can sound unexciting if you hear people rave about him before you hear the music. Part of what makes him important is who he preceded, if you place his albums chronologically you get a better sense of that. Laying that aside however, many of his songs are really beautiful. His cover of Hallelujah on 'Fragments' is better than the original, I think. I listed to several of his albums on a plane ride recently and a couple of songs seemed to capture a certain plaintive tone that suited the experience: 'Do not go gentle', 'Dying on the Vine', 'I keep a close watch'. I can't imagine these songs ever becoming just something that I used to listen to back when I was ____.

lord nuneaton savage

14:22 / 07.10.05

Well hello there...
Bumping this one up to rave about the Cale-meisters new single (download/scented pot-pourri dispenser etc) "Perfect". It is, quite simply, monstrously rocking, like a lost Modern Lovers outtake. Cranking three chord velvets riff, Cale's big ol' warm barritone to the fore. It rocks, it rocks, it rocks.

Has anyone heard his new album "Black Acetate" yet? I am intruiged enough to want to buy it, but would appreciate a decent critical response. Let's face it he's a "Boutique Artist" now and every record is "The best he's done since..." so it's difficult to get any real perspective.

I mean, I'll probably buy it anyhoo but, y'know...

LET'S KEEP TALKING ABOUT JOHN CALE, HE MAKES ME SHIT!!!

lonely as a cloud...

14:12 / 10.10.05

At the scarwash - Chelsea Girls was written by Reed & Morrison...

02:51 / 24.10.05

i've got Vintage Violence & i was really disappointed with it, really not what i expected from Cale. I stopped there however. Can someone recommend some really good Cale stuff for me?

lonely as a cloud...

08:05 / 24.10.05

Anth - any time anyone asks me to recommend some Cale, I always point them to Close Watch - An Introduction To John Cale. From it, you can just figure out what Cale albums you'd like most, and take it from there.