"John Cale’s Musical Journey Knows No Limits"

[Sheila Klein]

Today's New York Times includes a fine new feature article on John Cale by Lindsay Zoladz, a career summary cum P.R. for his new album Mercy. Most significant are Chantal Anderson's stunning new photos, as well as one I've never seen before taken backstage at the Vexations performance in 1963.

To get around the paywall, I've posted a PDF of the piece to https://tinyurl.com/JohnCaleNYT

[peppergomez]

That was great many thanks for sharing it

[DavidH]

Thanks so much for sharing this, Phil. That great photo of John studying the Vexations score backstage is from the original NY Times article which is reproduced in Up-Tight (P12 in my copy). But that is faded and grainy,while this is obviously a print from the original image in their archives, and is wonderful to have.

[I am the table!]

On a related note, here are the most interesting parts of Cale's New Yorker interview (anybody would think he's got a new record out!):

I’ve heard you say that with the Velvet Underground you guys wanted to challenge Bob Dylan in a way, or wanted to up the ante. Why was he the focus of that particular challenge for you?

Lyrically, he was the apex. He was doing a lot of the lyrical stuff that I heard Lou do. For Lou, it came out in dribs and drabs—it didn’t come out in a slam-bang kind of way. And I thought it could, and I thought it should. But, you know, they just had different styles. With Dylan, he was a poet and he’d write really stirring verses, and eventually it did come out of Lou, too, I think.

There’s a story about Reed bringing in the words to “Sunday Morning,” then refusing your offer to help flesh out the song, saying that he didn’t think of you as a songwriter. How much did that hurt, and how much did it motivate you to prove him wrong?

Well, there was an element of truth to it. I was very busy seeing how far I could push the instrumental side of it. But, that being said, I don’t think it was an alleyway Lou wanted to go down.

In what sense?

In the sense that I’d become a songwriter. I don’t think that was something he was really interested in.

A few weeks ago, I went to the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts and took a walk through the Lou Reed exhibit they have up. In one room they have a couple shelves of the records he owned, and there were a few of yours that I spotted.

Oh, really?

Yeah. I guess I’m wondering if you guys kept track of each other’s work over the years—if there was an appreciation of each other’s work, or if there was just too much baggage there.

I think the baggage was pretty heavy. I think he was very happy once “Walk on the Wild Side” happened; he was content to just let that ride. And, I mean, I don’t think he was fascinated or inspired by whatever I was doing at the time.

Were you inspired by any of the work he was doing? It feels like you’re both doing something worlds away from each other.

Exactly. It was completely different.

[...]

How do you feel about the legacy of “Songs for Drella,” an album that saw you and Lou reunite, in 1990, to pay tribute to Andy Warhol? It only seems to grow in appreciation.

It has grown. “Songs for Drella”—I think we had three weeks to finish it, and we got to the end and I said to Lou, “You’ve left Andy out. So we’ve gotta go back in and put another verse in there about us and the band.” And he did. It was very refreshing.

[...]

I don’t know if you want to discuss this, but I’m curious whether things were left in a positive way between you and Lou before his passing? And do you think about him often?

I do. I do. I think a lot of good things about him. But it was an awkward parting of ways.

Does it ever bother you that your legacies are kind of tethered to each other?

No, not really. I mean, I think he has his way of doing things, and I have my way of doing things.

[peppergomez]

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-n ... -new-again

[I am the table!]

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-n ... -new-again

I much prefer my version.

[peppergomez]

And I preferred reading the full article

[bobbydriver]

Also an equivalent article in the LA Times from the same week (apologies if already posted and I missed it)
https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-a ... nderground

With some more Lou/Velvets reflections

A new Lou Reed album came out a few months ago, “Words & Music, May 1965.” It’s you and Lou doing very folk-rock demos of “I’m Waiting for the Man” and “Heroin,” among other songs. At what point did you and he start incorporating aggression and atonality?

I think that started in ’65. See, I met Lou and I got the impression that the songs he was writing contained a lot of honest, argumentative positions, and that was important to me. I was more interested in that than in the folk side. That’s where I got the idea that the strength of Bob Dylan’s prose was also possible with Lou. I don’t like to say that, because Lou’s style was his own — sacrosanct.

I’d run back and forth to London, see my old friends from college and ask what was going on in music. They unloaded a whole bag of, like, the early Who, Daddy Longlegs, Small Faces. I came back to New York and said, “Lou, we’ve got to wake up! These guys are doing what we should be doing. What are we waiting for?” I guess that’s one of the things that came back to haunt me.

What do you mean?

Later on, it was pointed out to me by somebody in our group — it may have been our manager, but let’s not mention his name — that I was not a straight shooter. I was not welcome in the band anymore as a representative of the avant-garde. I said, “Now is not the time to back off from what we’ve done.” They said I was pushing it too far. So I backed off quietly.

Have you listened to the third and fourth Velvet Underground albums, and what do you think of them?

I probably listened to them a couple of times and didn’t listen to them again. It was important to me to get more songwriting done, produce some bands and focus on the future.

Interesting that he says he only listened to those post-Cale Velvets albums a couple of times. He played quite a few songs from them during the 1993 reunion. I guess they weren't that hard to learn

[gazatthebop]

I know who could play Warhol in the next movie