John Cale
Info
John Davies Cale (born 9 March 1942) is a Welsh musician, composer, singer, songwriter and record producer who was a founding member of the American rock band the Velvet Underground. Over his six-decade career, Cale has worked in various styles across rock, drone, classical, avant-garde and electronic music.
Info
Songs for Drella is a 1990 album by Lou Reed and John Cale, both formerly of the Velvet Underground; it is a song cycle about Andy Warhol, their mentor, who had died following routine surgery in 1987. Drella was a nickname for Warhol coined by Warhol superstar Ondine, a contraction of Dracula and Cinderella, used by Warhol's crowd but never liked by Warhol himself. The song cycle focuses on Warhol's interpersonal relations and experiences, with songs falling roughly into three categories: Warhol's first-person perspective (which makes up the vast majority of the album), third-person narratives chronicling events and affairs, and first-person commentaries on Warhol by Reed and Cale themselves. The songs, in general, address events in their chronological order.
Info
Brian Eno and John Cale’s 1990 collaboration is an album of contention, contrasts, cycles, and pop songs so layered and euphoric it ranks among the best albums either artist has ever made.
Info
John Davies Cale, (born 9 March 1942) is a Welsh musician, composer, singer, songwriter and record producer who was a founding member of the American rock band the Velvet Underground. Over his five-decade career, Cale has worked in various styles across rock, drone, classical, avant-garde and electronic music.
Info
Welsh composer, viola terrorist, and art rocker John Cale remains a unique link between "dirty ass rock & roll" (as one '70s mission statement was titled), the avant garde and classicism--a droll, thoughtful musician who studied with John Cage, joined the Velvet Underground, and went on to craft a series of often divergent post-Velvets solo projects. Early projects that confronted the clash of classicism and pop head-on, like The Academy In Peril and the classic Paris 1919, which mixed string sections with electric slide guitars, gave way to more stripped-down, primal rock in the '70s, but Cale's music has always left a door open to musical and thematic invention. This intelligently assembled two-CD anthology offers a smart entry point into a beguiling maze of Cale personae. --Sam Sutherland