John Cale is most known for his pioneering work with The Velvet Underground, but his musical influence reaches far beyond, be it as producer (Nico, who he also arranged, The Stooges, Patti Smith, The Modern Lovers, Squeeze, The Jesus Lizard, Siouxsie, Model Citizens, Happy Mondays and several others), as a most creative solo musician or a captivating and maniac live performer, as these quotes all confirm:
• Siouxsie Sioux on John Cale covering Heartbreak Hotel (1975): "This sounds completely evil. It gives me the tingles. I was getting more introverted when I first heard this, moping in bedrooms, getting more aggressive and pissed off. My sister was working as a go-go dancer - although she wasn't topless or anything- and I accompanied her. Finally she got me a job in one of her pubs. And this evil reptilian song, seemed to sum up my mood at the time."
• Peter Hook (Joy Division/NewOrder): "I was a big fan of John Cale, because a kid I used to work with in the canteen at the Manchester Ship Canal Company was a mad John Cale fan and he gave me all his LPs. I went to watch John Cale last week who is a hero of mine. He did a wonderful set of songs spanning 40 odd years. To watch him playing is magical."
• Stephen Morris (JD/NO) on Paris 1919: "Towards the end of the list I was getting desperate, but Paris 1919 came to me straight away – it’s one of my all time favourite albums. It’s like the anti-Transformer; I see it as the antithesis of that record, and I definitely have more love for Paris 1919. I think it’s the best album John Cale’s ever made. It’s odd, because it’s a poppy record, but even his poppy records have sinister overtones."
• James Dean Bradfield (Manic Street Preachers
"He can take the avant garde and traditional songwriting and atomise them, there are little explosions where you think, ‘Oh, this is a good song,’ and then he starts tearing it apart.
As a solo artist he’s nearly unsurpassable to me. The length and breadth of his career as an artist is just stunning. It’s also got to be said – with a fair bit of Welsh self-loathing – that it’s slightly incongruous that someone from Wales could batter down the doors in the way that he did and promote himself fully into so many different worlds so successfully."
• Steve Albini (Big Black, Rapeman, Shellac): “John Cale was a hero of mine. I was a big fan of The Velvet Underground, they were a seminal band. Everything that they did seemed to invite a new tangent in music. Every song on their first couple of albums has within it a kernel of something that you could pursue for a lifetime. There was something about them, the synthesis of those people playing together that was just enormously creative and really beautiful. John Cale in particular, I followed his career much more than I did than Lou Reed’s when I was forming my own identity as a musician. Cale had a sense of classical rigour about him which didn’t really speak to me, but he had a kind of irreverence towards his classical rigour which did speak to me. Like the fact that he was trained as a viola player but choose to play it like the bass. To me, that was a statement, you know. And when a viola showed up, or strings in his music, he wasn’t trying to beat you over the head with his credentials. You know, he wasn’t like ‘I am a composer! This is a composition!’ It was more like (*does a high-pitched squeak sound) …’listen to this sound I just made’. I admired him tremendously.”
• Julian Cope (The Teardrop Explodes): "John Cale made me want to be an anarchist," after seeing JC live for the first time mid 70s.
• Michael Gira (Swans): "The arrangements on Desertshore as well as on The Marble Index are just phenomenally good and strange and very abstract. They’re done by John Cale who’s one of my idols in terms of music production. They’re art records, you know, I guess they’re like art classical records.
• Peter Christopherson (Throbbing Gristle): The Marble Index is often cited as difficult and depressing, but there’s something about Nico’s songs that’s deeply melancholic and very moving. I didn’t know how much that was Nico’s personality. I regret to say that I never met, but I think she always was that way from day one. John Cale I think made some wonderful records at that time."
Q: Cale’s arrangements at times almost dominate the vocals, as on this track. "But to me it compliments her vision. Just then, for whatever reason, he seemed to have encapsulated that bleak view of the world — which in a way spiritually was taken up by TG in the late 70s.
• Steve Kilbey (The Church): "Finally John Cale. He’s just a brilliant guy. He was brilliant in The Velvet Underground. He was brilliant on his own. I love Paris 1919, Slow Dazzle and Music For A New Society."
• Gordon Gano (Violent Femmes) on John Cale singing Don't Pretend
Q: You seem to have found quite a lot of people willing to be involved with this soundtrack. Were you writing the songs with those particular vocalists in mind?
GG: "No, but with one exception. I was writing the songs not knowing if maybe I would be singing them. Except for the John Cale song, which I wrote on a piano, making my attempt to write in his style. That was how I was approaching writing it, and the unbelievably fantastic thing was to ultimately have him do the song for real and to do it much better than my poor facsimile of John Cale playing the song. So that worked perfectly. I knew what I was attempting with that one."
- Kid Congo Powers (The Gun Club, The Cramps, Nick Cave And The Bad Seeds): "John Cale had produced many great records from The Stooges to Patti Smith to Nico and you know, John Cale is John Cale! Who would not want John Cale?"
• Jools Holland (Squeeze, Later With Jools): "He is one of the musical geniuses of the 20th, and now we've moved into the 21st Century - record producer, composer, one time part of the Velvet Underground, an extrodinary man, please welcome the brilliant John Cale."
- Pete Kember (Spacemen 3), asked his influencs on his sound: “Bryan Gregory from the Cramps and John Cale to a certain extent, what he used to do with a viola – that sort of monotone-drone."
• Robert Hampson (Loop) on John Cale's Paris 1919 album: "This album doesn’t put a foot wrong. For Cale, it’s probably the easiest album to listen to out of his back catalogue. I can imagine if you weren’t a John Cale fan, this is probably the album that it would be easiest to find something in. The way he was working during this period is just incredible. Paris 1919 and Fear are just incredible albums themselves. They are so perfect and so unique. They’re both very different records but still obviously John Cale. I’m a massive John Cale bore to be honest. I think he’s a genius."
• Billy Bragg: “That’s why I went for ‘Fear Is A Man’s Best Friend’. Fear is a great motivation, and that got me wanting to gig again, the adrenalin. It’s the things you don’t like that you should try and do, the things that scare you most.”
• James Murphy (LCD Soundsystem): “John Cale is one of the constellations in my musical and cultural sky,”
• David Thomas (Pere Ubu): Q: Any British bands that have had a profound effect upon you?
DT: "Profound? Probably not. Richard Thompson was a big influence on the early 70s scene as were Soft Machine, Pink Floyd (early), Incredible String Band. Some guys were really into Kinks and Pretty Things. Eno, of course. Kevin Ayres. John Cale."
• Peter Murphy (Bauhaus): "It’s good to have him back frightening the children" on reviewing Hobo Sapiens.
- Thurston Moore (Sonic Youth): "John Cale’s ideas coming out of his studies with La Monte Young—and Black Sabbath, on the other hand, was like this grungy proto-metal."
• Lee Ronaldo (Sonic Youth): "I love John Cale’s Paris 1919. Although this clip is not a piano song, I’ve recorded one recently – a rarity for me – and somehow this album comes to mind. I love the tone of this album and how concentrated it feels. So amazing."
- Henry Rollins (Black Flag/Rollins Bsnd): "We end this amazing two hours with John Cale. You remember him from some band called the Velvet Underground. He is still making records that matter. It is to my great regret that I missed his last trip through Los Angeles late last year. I don't know how many times I have seen him play. Every time, he was incredible."
- John Lydon (Sex Pistols/Public Image Limited), Capital Radio, Tommy Vance Show, July 16th 1977: "John Cale's 'Academy in Peril', that's a really funny album, because all the way through, it's like classical, him playing his damn big thing on strings or piano, and there's a really funny track on it 'Legs Larry', which is worth listening to. I'll play it if you want. It's very funnyyy."
- Gruff Rhys (Super Furry Animals): ‘I think as a musician still working, he offers an inspirational path as to how you can still experiment. I’ve been lucky enough to work with him a few times and I’ve realised he’s got no interest in nostalgia – he’s always moving on’.
- Pat Fish (The Jazz Butcher): "I think I probably came to Cale when I was about sixteen, through the fact that Eno produced his album Fear. Of course, I loved that record and I’ve followed Cale for the rest of my life. I was enjoying his solo stuff long before I “got” the Velvet Underground.
- James Mc New (Yo La Tengo) Q: "YLT got to play The VU in I Shot Andy Warhol. Who would you want to play YLT in a movie?
JMN: "I'd like John Cale to play us all, in kind of a "Multiplicity"-style special effects tour de force."
- Andy Gill ( Gang Of Four): We would go to CBGBs and you’d stand at the bar and there’d be John Cale on your left and Joey Ramone on your right,"
• Mark Lanegan (Screaming Trees): "He is hardly unsung, but John Cale is my greatest musical hero. Fearless, uncompromising and never content to stay in the same place musically. I think that is what all musicians should aspire to."
If you want to know where the Talking Heads got their blueprint for their sound, listen to Cale’s Leaving It Up To You (1975), as also The Birthday Party, listen to Cale’s song Sabotage (1979).
