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1[[quoteright:325:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/john_cale.jpg]]
2->''"If I'm interested in what I'm doing, other people will be interested in it."''
3
4John Davies Cale (born 9 March 1942) is a Welsh singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist probably best known as a founding member of Music/TheVelvetUnderground. He's accomplished a lot more than that in his career, though, which has included numerous production credits and an extensive solo discography as well as several collaborations with other artists, including former Velvets bandmate Music/LouReed. Amongst the styles he has recorded in include modern classical, BaroquePop, FolkRock, proto-punk, ProgressiveRock, and drone. His best-known solo works are probably ''Paris 1919'' and his cover of Music/LeonardCohen's "Hallelujah", which is generally considered to have been a model for most of the other covers that followed, including Music/JeffBuckley's famous version.
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6Cale was born in 1942 in Garnant, Carmarthenshire, UsefulNotes/{{Wales}}. After a traumatic childhood (suffice it to say that literally being unable to talk to his father until he was seven[[note]]Long story short: at his mother's insistence, he was raised speaking only Welsh; his father only spoke English[[/note]] was the ''least'' of his problems), he studied music at Goldsmiths College, University of London, after being recognized as a potential viola virtuoso, and then moved to America, where he studied under Music/AaronCopland. He also collaborated with Music/JohnCage on the first ever full-length performance of Music/ErikSatie's ''Music/{{Vexations}}'', and later worked with La Monte Young's Dream Syndicate.
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8Cale co-founded the Velvet Underground in 1964 with Reed, Sterling Morrison, and Angus [=MacLise=] (who would leave the band after it received its first paying gig, to be replaced by Maureen Tucker). Although his writing credits with the group were minimal, Cale quickly established himself as a major element of the band's sound, playing viola, bass guitar, piano, and organ, and contributing deadpan vocals that proved integral parts of several of the band's songs, especially "The Gift". Personality conflicts with Reed resulted in his departure from the group after the recording of the band's second album, ''Music/WhiteLightWhiteHeat'', although a handful of recordings with Cale afterwards have since been released (including "Stephanie Says", "Hey Mr. Rain", "Temptation Inside Your Heart", and "Ocean").
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10After his departure from the group, Cale quickly established himself as a formidable solo artist and producer in his own right. He produced former Velvet Underground bandmate Music/{{Nico}}'s seminal albums ''The Marble Index'', ''Desertshore'', and ''The End...'' and also contributed arrangements to the former two (Nico arranged the latter entirely on her own, according to Cale). He also produced Music/TheStooges' and Music/TheModernLovers' influential self-titled albums ''[[Music/TheStoogesAlbum The Stooges]]'' and ''The Modern Lovers'' and Music/PattiSmith's equally influential ''Music/{{Horses}}'', and appears on Music/NickDrake's cult classic ''Bryter Layter'' and Music/BrianEno's seminal ''Another Green World''.
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12At the same time, Cale launched his solo career. His first released album, ''Vintage Violence'', is generally regarded as folk-pop; around the same time he also worked on a collaboration with Terry Riley, the mainly instrumental ''Church of Anthrax'', that is often categorised as ProgressiveRock or avant-garde. A number of other solo albums included ''Paris 1919'', regarded as one of the great BaroquePop albums, and a trilogy of albums for Creator/IslandRecords that is probably best represented by his disturbing cover of Music/ElvisPresley's "Heartbreak Hotel", perhaps comparable to Music/TheResidents' cover of Music/TheRollingStonesBand' "Satisfaction" in terms of how radically it reworks the original.
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14A highlight of his 1980s output is generally considered to be ''Music for a New Society'', which is a thoroughly bleak album along the lines of Reed's ''Music/{{Berlin}}'', Music/JoyDivision's ''Music/{{Closer}}'' and the trilogy of Music/{{Nico}}'s albums Cale produced. In 1990 his collaboration with Music/BrianEno was released, ''Wrong Way Up''. It proved to be one of the most commercially successful albums of either artist as a performer. The same year, he also released his collaboration with Lou Reed, ''Songs for Drella'', a tribute to Creator/AndyWarhol, a major mentor of the Velvet Underground. 1991 saw the release of his famous cover of "Hallelujah", which notably served as the basis for nearly every cover version done afterwards (including Music/JeffBuckley and arguably Music/RufusWainwright's even more famous versions).
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16From 1992 to 1994, the complete Reed-Cale-Tucker-Morrison lineup of the Velvet Underground reunited for the first and only time (excepting a one-off performance of "Heroin" in 1990). Further reunions were prevented by Morrison's untimely death in 1995, although the surviving members did play at their Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction in 1996. Reed's death in 2013 means that it is highly unlikely there will be any further Velvet Underground performances.
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18Cale's career continues to this day; he received a substantial boost when his cover of "Hallelujah" was featured in ''WesternAnimation/Shrek1'' (although it is Wainwright's version that appears on the film soundtrack). He continues to produce some [[SugarWiki/AwesomeMusic pretty awesome music]].
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20!!Discography
21
22* 1970: ''Vintage Violence''
23* 1971: ''Church of Anthrax'' (with Terry Riley)
24* 1972: ''The Academy in Peril''
25* 1973: ''Paris 1919''
26* 1974: ''Fear''
27* 1975: ''Slow Dazzle''
28* 1975: ''Helen of Troy''
29* 1979: ''Sabotage/Live'' (although it's a LiveAlbum, it includes all new material)
30* 1981: ''Honi Soit''
31* 1982: ''Music for a New Society''
32* 1984: ''Caribbean Sunset''
33* 1985: ''Artificial Intelligence''
34* 1989: ''Words for the Dying''
35* 1990: ''Songs for Drella'' (with Music/LouReed)
36* 1990: ''Wrong Way Up'' (with Music/BrianEno)
37* 1994: ''Last Day on Earth'' (with Bob Neuwirth)
38* 1996: ''Walking on Locusts''
39* 2003: ''[=HoboSapiens=]''
40* 2005: ''blackAcetate''
41* 2012: ''Shifty Adventures in Nookie Wood''
42* 2016: ''M:FANS''
43* 2023: ''Mercy''
44
45!!Tropes present in his works include:
46* {{Angrish}}: "Leaving It Up To You" is a smooth (if slightly menacing) mid-tempo rock song up until the end of the second verse, and then it all starts to get... weird.
47-->''And it's sordid how life goes on when I could take you apart\
48And if you give me half a chance, I'd do it NOW!\
49...I'd do it NOW! RIGHT NOW, YA FASCIST!\
50I know we can all feel safe - [[UsefulNotes/CharlesManson like]] Creator/SharonTate!\
51Or we could give it all, we cou-gi-give-gi-giveitAAAAAAAALL!''
52* CarefulWithThatAxe: He's quite fond of this, especially before he sobered up.
53* ContinuityNod: "Fear Is A Man's Best Friend" opens with a line nodding back to ''Music/TheVelvetUndergroundAndNico''
54-->''Standing, waiting for a man to show...''
55* CoverVersion: His version of "[[Music/LeonardCohen Hallelujah]]" pretty much [[CoveredUp inspired]] every subsequent version. His [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6cU9opuO74 take]] on "[[Music/ElvisPresley Heartbreak Hotel]]"... didn't, though Cale has jokingly said that Elvis probably died from hearing it. He even did a cover of "[[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qN109ybT1xs All My Friends]]" by Music/LCDSoundsystem.
56* DarkReprise: "I Keep a Close Watch", from ''Helen of Troy'', gets one of these on ''Music for a New Society'', which in itself gets one with the release of ''M:FANS'' (see GriefSong below).
57* DroneOfDread: Cale tends to produce this whenever he plays his viola.
58* EpicRocking: Some of his songs can get quite long. In particular, three of the songs on ''The Church of Anthrax'' range from just under eight to over eleven minutes.
59* EverythingIsAnInstrument: On "Gun," Music/BrianEno plays [[Music/RoxyMusic Phil Manzanera]]. That is, Phil Manzanera takes a guitar solo, which is fed into Eno's keyboard, so Eno is sampling him in real time. On the same album, Eno is simply credited as playing "[[PersonAsVerb Eno]]" rather than any specific instrument.
60* GriefSong: "If You Were Still Around" could be this. It was originally on ''Music for a New Society'' but was remade and a music video for it was released on the anniversary of Lou Reed's death. Photos of Reed, along with Andy Warhol, Edie Sedgwick, Nico, and fellow VU member Sterling Morrison appear in the video, so it's more likely just a heartwarming tribute to these people.
61** ''M:FANS'' features new versions of most of the songs from ''Music for a New Society''. Cale wrote that when he began the sessions, he found himself loathing all the characters he'd written about on the original album, but Music/LouReed's death altered his perspective:
62---> "Making any form of art is always personal to my mind. During the making of M:FANS, I found myself loathing each and every character written about in those original recording sessions of ''Music For...'' Unearthing those tapes reopened those wounds. It was time to decimate the despair from 1981 and breathe new energy, re-write the story. Then, the unthinkable happened. What had informed so much over lost and twisted relationships in 1981 had now come full circle. Losing Lou [too painful to understand] forced me to upend the entire recording process and begin again...a different perspective - a new sense of urgency to tell a story from a completely opposite point of view - what was once sorrow, was now a form of rage. A fertile ground for exorcism of things gone wrong and the realization they are unchangeable. From sadness came the strength of fire!"
63* LeadBassist: He was this in Music/TheVelvetUnderground, mainly responsible for the band's abrasive sound on the first two albums.
64* LiteralMetaphor: The chorus of "Guts" isn't about someone being a coward; the character has literally been "blown all over the living room floor" with a shotgun.
65-->''Guts, guts, got no guts! And stitches don't help at all!''
66* LiteraryAllusionTitle: ''Paris 1919'' is full of these, with "Child's Christmas in Wales" (named after a Creator/DylanThomas work), "Graham Greene", "Theatre/{{Macbeth}}", and the outtake "Burned Out Affair", which seems to be a mixture of two of Greene's works (''Literature/TheEndOfTheAffair'' and ''A Burnt-Out Case''). The album title itself is a Historical Allusion Title, being a reference to the conference that produced the Treaty of Versailles (which, due to its imposition of unilateral war reparations on UsefulNotes/{{Germany}}, is generally considered to have led to the rise of [[UsefulNotes/NaziGermany the Third Reich]]). Cale called it "an example of the nicest ways of saying something ugly". Several of Cale's other songs and album titles also allude to historical events, mythology, or literature ("Ides of March", "Helen of Troy", "Gideon's Bible", "Charlemagne", "Creator/JohnMilton", list goes on).
67* LyricalDissonance: All over the place.
68* PerishingAltRockVoice: Along with every other member of the Velvet Underground, but arguably the trope applies to Cale more than all of them.
69* PopStarComposer: His list of film credits is actually longer than his list of solo albums that aren't associated with films. By far the most famous score he composed has to be ''Film/AmericanPsycho'', though.
70* PrecisionFStrike: "Guts" opens with one.
71-->''The bugger in the short sleeves fucked my wife!''
72* ProtoPunk: The albums ''Fear'', ''Slow Dazzle'' and ''Helen of Troy'', recorded and released in 1974-75 but featuring some of the most abrasive and punkish music Cale has ever made, e.g. "Fear Is A Man's Best Friend", "Leaving It Up To You" and his cover versions of "Heartbreak Hotel" and "Pablo Picasso".
73* RecordProducer: Cale's other career since leaving the Velvet Underground, especially other ProtoPunk, PunkRock, and {{New Wave|Music}} acts working with fellow VU member Music/{{Nico}}, Music/TheStooges, Music/PattiSmith, Music/{{Squeeze|Band}} and Music/TheModernLovers, among others.
74* RedOniBlueOni: To a certain extent with Lou Reed — VU turned away from the assault of ''Music/WhiteLightWhiteHeat'' to a more accessible direction under Reed's lead, and when PunkRock broke Reed was recording singer-songwritery albums and dismissing the movement while Cale had been recording proto-punk music for years, e.g. on 1974's ''Fear''. Then again Cale also recorded the BaroquePop ''Paris 1919'' and Reed recorded the infamously abrasive ''Music/MetalMachineMusic'' so it's not like this trope completely defined their post-VU careers.
75* RockstarSong: "The Biggest, Loudest, Hairiest Group Of All" is a look back at being in [[Music/TheVelvetUnderground a band]] that fails to be commercially successful.
76-->''We cut a record once, it [[GermansLoveDavidHasselhoff sold a lot in France]]...''
77* SpokenWordInMusic: "A Dream", "The Jeweller".
78* SurprisinglyGentleSong: The version of "Thoughtless Kind" on ''Fragments of a Rainy Season'', which turns the original bleak and rather frazzled song into a bittersweet reflection on growing old and leaving friends behind.
79* UnpluggedVersion: The 1992 live album ''Fragments of a Rainy Season'' is a whole album of Cale performing his songs solo on just piano or acoustic guitar. Still manages to be pretty aggressive on songs such as "Guts" and "Leaving It Up To You", but it also features perhaps his definitive version of "Hallelujah".
80* UpdatedRerelease:
81** The 2006 reissue of ''Paris 1919'' adds 12 bonus tracks, more than doubling the length of the album. The outtake "Burned Out Affair" is added, as is at least one additional version of every song on the original album ("Macbeth" and the title track get two).
82** ''Music For A New Society'' was re-released in 2016 with an extra disc of re-recordings called ''M:FANS''
83* WordSaladLyrics: A LOT of his songs have this.

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