John Cale是一名无法用三言两语匆匆带过的传奇人物。
出生于威尔斯的矿工家庭，Cale从小即在母亲的严厉监督下学习乐器。当别的男孩于外头踢足球时，Cale已坐在房里练习钢琴与管风琴。十三岁时加入当地的青年管弦乐团担任小提琴手，可他的兴趣却不限于此。随着迈入青春期，他逐渐对大西洋彼岸的敲打诗人、现代音乐与摇滚乐产生浓厚兴趣。
结束伦敦Goldsmiths College的音乐课程，Cale飞往美国，于波士顿近郊的Berkshire Music Center继续深造。学期结束后他前往纽约，立刻被六零年代初期繁茂兴盛的纽约文化场景深深吸引，从此定居此地。他结识了现代音乐大师John Cage与Aaron Copland，前者甚至邀请他参与一项名为Vexations的表演。这是一首长约八十秒的钢琴曲，而在Cage的编排下，不同音乐家持续演奏了长达十八个小时。
成为专职乐手前，Cale于纽约的Orientalia书店工作，因此结识了更多诗人与艺术家。他也鼓起勇气造访了自己的偶像LaMonte Young（美国现代音乐巨匠），此举不但使Cale顺利加入LaMonte Young的乐队，也让他有机会接触到更多相同领域的优秀份子，同时打入了狂喜逸乐的纽约下东城嗑药场景。然而真正改变John Cale人生的是1965年。
一名来自Pickwick Records的制作人Terry Phillips将Cale引荐给当时仍默默无名的Lou Reed，原因是Phillips觉得Cale留了一头长发，"看起来就很像搞摇滚乐的"。起先Cale并不将这个机缘看成一次机会，只是应Lou Reed之邀，伙同其他朋友帮他伴奏。然而当Cale有机会接触到更多Lou Reed的创作，他才被歌曲里满溢的神经质、诗意与原创精神所打动。从某些层面来看，两人追求的其实是极为相似的艺术境界。于是他们窝在Cale的公寓里写歌，并一同施打海洛因。随后Lou Reed的朋友Sterling Morrison加入他们，Maureen Tucker也接受征召成为鼓手（取代了Angus MacLise），摇滚史上另类音乐的原型乐队Velvet Underground正式成军。
他们在Cale的公寓里录下了Heroin与Venus in Furs等曲子，同时持续搞砸各地的表演。他们的音乐在六零年代听来，活像下个世纪传回来的反响。光怪陆离且复杂难懂，传统的摇滚公式套在他们身上完全不管用。他们的表演几乎都以票房凄惨收场，Velvet Underground走在距离时代太远的前端位置，识货的人少之又少。其中一人恰巧名为Andy Warhol。
Warhol于Café Bizarre首次欣赏了Velvet Underground演出，马上认定这就是他一直寻找的”摇滚”乐队。自此将他们带入自己的工作室Factory，两组人马紧密结合；加上其他电影明星、艺术家与毒虫的相濡以沫，一连串翻天覆地的艺术革命遂一发不可收拾。六零年代后半部的纽约地下场景，不论电影、音乐或文化，几乎都与这群人脱不了关系。
Cale在Velvet Underground里负责贝斯、中提琴与钢琴的演奏，偶而担任演唱。虽然乐队的词曲创作几由Lou Reed一手包办，其他成员少有参与余地，Cale却在乐队的前两张专辑The Velvet Underground & Nico与White Light/White Heat里担任音乐走向的调配师。他将整组乐队的音乐走势往同一个方向集中，使之更趋向未抛光的粗糙本质。这些音乐虽看似简单，实则充满各式深奥难解的趣味。这也是为何Cale于1968年离团后，Velvet Underground的后两张专辑少了更多的实验况味，成为安全保守的作品。（这是相对于自己的比较。比起同期乐队，The Velvet Underground与Loaded仍是走在前面）
by Richie Unterberger
While John Cale is one of the most famous and, in his own way, influential underground rock musicians, he is also one of the hardest to pin down stylistically. Much has been made of his schooling in classical and avant-garde music, yet much of what hes recorded has been decidedly song-oriented, dovetailing close to the mainstream at times. Terming him a forefather of punk and new wave isnt exactly accurate either. Those investigating his work for the first time under that premise may be surprised at how consciously accessible much of his output is, at times approaching (but not quite attaining) a fairly normal rock sound. There is always a tension between the experimental and the accessible in Cales solo recordings, meaning that he usually finds himself (not unwillingly) caught between the cracks: too weird for commercial success, and yet not really weird or daring enough to place him among the top rank of rocks innovators.
Any assessment of Cales solo contributions also tends to be overshadowed by his other considerable achievements. Before launching his solo career, he was, with Lou Reed, a primary creative force behind the Velvet Underground, as bassist, viola player, keyboardist, and occasional co-songwriter (the exact nature of his compositional contributions is still a matter of heated debate among the group). He was without question one of the most influential producers of pre-punk, punk, and new wave, overseeing important recordings by the Stooges, Nico, Patti Smith, the Modern Lovers, and Squeeze. Ultimately he may be better remembered for his work in the Velvets, and as a producer, than for his own large discography.
The son of a Welsh coal miner (his father) and schoolteacher (his mother), Cale was a child prodigy of sorts, performing an original composition on the BBC before he entered his teens. In the early 60s, he drifted toward the avant-garde, gaining a scholarship (with help from Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein) to study music in the United States. Moving to New York in 1963, he participated in an 18-hour piano recital with John Cage (pictures of Cale performing at the event made the New York Times). More important, he became a member of LaMonte Youngs minimalist ensemble, the Dream Syndicate, whose use of repetitious drones would influence the arrangements of his next group, the Velvet Underground.
Cale founded the Velvets with Reed and guitarist Sterling Morrison in the mid-60s. John met Lou when the latter was a struggling songwriter for the rock & roll exploitation label Pickwick Records. He tested the rock waters as part of the Primitives (with Reed and fellow Dream Syndicate member Tony Conrad), who did a few live shows to promote a silly novelty that Reed had written and recorded at Pickwick, The Ostrich. What Cale and Reed shared was an ambition to bring the sensibilities of the avant-garde to rock music.
They succeeded in doing so over the next three years with the Velvet Underground. While Reed was the most important member of the band as the lead singer and primary songwriter, Cale was just as crucial in devising the bands sound. It was Cale who was responsible for the most experimental elements of their first two albums, The Velvet Underground & Nico and White Light/White Heat (1967), especially with his droning viola parts on Venus in Furs, Heroin, and Black Angels Death Song; his pounding piano on Im Waiting for the Man and All Tomorrows Parties; his deadpan narration of The Gift; and the white-noise organ of Sister Ray.
Yet Cale was ousted from the band in an apparent power play by Lou Reed in the summer of 1968. Accounts still vary as to whether he was fired and/or quit, but its been suggested that Reeds ego found Cales talents threatening to his leadership of the band. Sterling Morrison has said that Reed told him and Velvets drummer Maureen Tucker that if Cale didnt leave, he would leave instead; the pair reluctantly opted to side with Reed. The Velvets would continue to make great music for a couple of years, but their experimental edge was considerably blunted by Cales absence.
Cale in any case was soon busy producing ex-Velvets singer Nicos baroque-gothic The Marble Index (1969) and the Stooges self-titled debut album (also 1969). Though about as different as two projects could be, both were extremely influential (though initially extremely low-selling) cult items that helped lay the ground for punk and new wave about five years later.
In 1970, Cale began his proper solo career with one of his best albums, Vintage Violence. Those expecting a slab of radicalism were in for a surprise; the material was the work of a low-key, accessible singer/songwriter, working in the mold of the Band rather than the Velvets. Listeners wouldnt have to wait long for something a bit more radical; his next album, Church of Anthrax, was a collaboration with minimalist composer Terry Riley that was almost entirely instrumental.
In some respects, these two records defined the poles of Cales solo career. Even at his most accessible, his music had a moody, even morbid edge that precluded much radio airplay. Even at its most experimental, it was never as avant-garde as, say, LaMonte Young. Cale would reserve his most experimental outings for collaborations with Riley, Brian Eno, and, much further down the road, Lou Reed.
On his own, he was more concerned with crafting songs, delivered in his lilting if thin Welsh burr, and inventively arranged. It was in his arrangements that his musical training and avant-garde background were most evident, in its eclecticism (even drawing from country-rock and guest shots from Lowell George at times) and touches of classical music. Sometimes hed take out his viola, but generally he focused on the more traditional instruments of guitar and keyboards.
Cale has covered a wide territory on his solo albums without ever quite making his mark as a major artist. His songs and concepts are interesting, but ultimately he does not have the striking traditional rock talents of someone like, say, his old rival Lou Reed. The hooks arent that sharp, the lyrics — often dealing with the psychological and social dilemmas of late 20th-century life, in somewhat arty terms — not as gripping.
Toward the end of the late 70s especially, his approach became harder-rocking and a bit vicious, especially in concert, where he would adopt a number of flamboyant costumes and theatrical poses that verged on the confrontational (especially in a notorious incident in which he killed a chicken on-stage). Generally he was most successful in a more subdued and brooding mode, as on Vintage Violence or, much later, Music for a New Society (1982). His discography is so large and variable that the two-CD career retrospective, Seducing Down the Door, might be the best place to start for those with enough interest to buy more than one or two Cale records.
Cale never abandoned his production activities, and indeed a few of the albums with his credits are destined to endure as more important statements than anything hes done on his own. His sessions with Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers (from the early 70s, but not released until a few years later) anticipated punk and new wave. Patti Smiths Horses (1975) was one of the best and most influential recordings of the 1970s. There were also other albums with Nico, and records with Squeeze, Sham 69, and others; for a couple years in the early 70s, he was even a staff producer at Warners, handling unlikely clients like Jennifer Warnes.
After the mid-80s, Cale slowed (but did not curtail) work on his own releases. His most high-profile outings since then have been collaborations. Wrong Way Up (1990) matched him with Brian Eno. Songs for Drella (1990), which got a lot more media ink, reunited him at long last with Reed, with whom he had feuded on and off for a couple of decades; the album was a song-cycle tribute to their recently deceased mentor and ex-Velvet Underground manager, Andy Warhol. Well-received both on record and in performance, it may have been one of the factors that finally caused the pair to bury the hatchet and re-form the Velvet Underground for a 1993 live European tour (and live album). These events were not as successful with the critics; more disturbingly, Reed and Cale were on the outs yet again by the end of the tour, with feuds over direction, leadership, and songwriting credits apparently resurfacing with a vengeance.
Prospects for an American Velvet Underground tour never came to realization, Cale and Reed vowing never to work with each other again. The death of Sterling Morrison in 1995 ended any reunion hopes, although it did apparently serve to reconcile Reed and Cale, who played together when the Velvet Underground were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1996. Cale in any case didnt need Reed to keep busy (or vice versa). In the 1990s, he continued to record as a soloist and a soundtrack composer. One of his most ambitious collaboration was The Last Day on Earth (1994), a song cycle and theatrical production written and performed with cult singer/songwriter Bobby Neuwirth. In 1998, Cale released Nico, a tribute to his Velvet Underground bandmate.