"...there was no way of telling when he'd crash into an amp or fall the last three steps off the back of the stage. He was dangerous and unpredictable, which made him exciting to watch."

Robert Greenfield « Writing about Keith Richards in STP

It's hard to know where to begin and just how to control myself about John Cale. I think I know him as well as can be expected, and his albums, Vintage Violence, Paris 1919, Academy in Peril, Fear and now the new Slow Dazzle haven't been off my turntable for long during the past ten months. I know some feel he may well be a complex, acquired musical taste...but reading stuff about him lately, well, I don't think people are exactly getting the point.

John Cale (formerly of the Velvet Underground ctnd producer* for Nico, and the Stooges, in case anyone out there doesn't know) is perhaps our real renaissance musician. Well, at least he's the one who matters most to me, my vision of rock and roll future. A conductor, composer, arranger, producer, songwriter, singer, and he plays god knows how many instruments. Very contradictory—well, maybe not...but classically trained, then very much a part of the street scene in the New York happening 1960's. And of all . of those "60's avant-garde/underground/cult figures, I think John may have survived the best; far better than even he may know. For Cale is still the only one continuing to make music that matters for the Seventies. Jim Morrison isn't with us, Nico was always in a peculiarly special class by herself, what Iggy will do remains to be seen, and let's face it—Lou Reed has recently resorted to performing old Velvets songs onstage. Compared to John— which John hates and is probably ridiculous to do but I'm throwing caution to the winds and doing it anyway—(John may never speak to me again after some of the things I'll write here so what the hell)—compared to John, Louis is doing an oldies act.

Okay, so the music is gorgeous, lush, romantic. If I had a film that needed scoring Pd go to, John first, Nino Rota second. Some people think John's music is crazy, and it's that as well; surely he can be quite mad. But it's so subtle...and there is so much sty/e. It's like gerfius crazed eleganza. The stories one hears about him are legendary. But so what if he and his wife Cyndy have a "stormy" relationship and he gives her a black eye and she disappears the week before an important concert? So what if the exaggerated rumors about his problems in Marseilles (what better townj say) are pretty close to the truth? Do I really care if I can't go back to London's Julie's restaurant because the last time the Cales and I were there John returned to the table wearing a monster mask and fondled the waitress's thigh? And Cyndy was shrieking all the while about how Barry Hay instructed her to say "Lekkepipen" and "Lekkebuffen" when she met his relatives; she thinking it meant "nice to meet you" in Dutch when it actually means "would you like \to participate in cunnilingus?" Actually—she couldn't remember whether or not it was the male or female invitation, but whatever —lots of people eating dinner that night in Julie's now know how to say it should they choose to visit Amsterdam this summer. But does all of this really matter? Well, it adds to the legend.

Rather than the decadent/depraved/crazed/maniacal dope fiend lunatic some of the more naive British journalists would have us believe, John is a riot. I tell you, he is. I've seen him in London four times since November and every time he's done something to make me laugh. And whjle it might not always be totally smooth sailing, I always look forward to whatever he's going to come up with. It's the exact same thing with his albums and his concerts. As a mutual friend said, "He would call me up in the middle of the night for advice, or want to borrow money, or make me nuts . . . then I heard "Heartbreak Hotel" and I wanted to cry."

John is (add him to the short list that includes Ray Davies and Bryan Ferry) one of the elegant rock and rollers. He was the first to tell me about Au Petit Cafe in L.A. years ago, before it became a music biz hangout. (John Denver eats there now, for god's sake.) He told me it was "Shirley McLaine ~ French" and tried to order a hundred and fifty dollar bottle of wine with a familiar gleam in his eye. He was the first man to tell me to stay at the posh L'Hotel in Paris or, as is his preference, the Crillon. Between rushing to Blades ort' Saville Row to have his white wedding suit tailored, he almost got thrown out of the Portobello Hotel because he was crawling naked in the hallway biting Cyndy who ran screaming to the desk begging for a separate room. His favorite groups are the Bee Gees and Brian Wilson, and he once* produced an album for Jennifer. He loves cars, tennis, and Los Angeles. ("Why shouldn't I?," he asked somewhat defensively when we talked at the Savoy Hotel in London following his Drury Lane concert. "I have a beautiful house there, furnished with antiques, my grand piano. And you can keep fit in California.") John likes to keep fit but he also likes to indulge too much in things unhealthy. So what else is new?

He's produced all of Nico's startling, stirring albums, the Stooges" great first one, and a collectors item tape of the Modern Lovers that Warners wouldn't release. John worked as a Warners A & R man for a while but they couldn't take his excesses and never really knew how to utilize his special talents. Perhaps the only mistake Richard Williams of Island Records has made (he's the one who went wild with enthusiasm at the news that John was free to record for them and is one of the few with enough faith to have signed him to a six-album deal) was not sending Cale over to New York to do a demo tape with Television instead of Eno. That collaboration might have produced something miraculous.

(There is some miraculous music on Sldw Dazzle: "Heartbreak Hotel"— Presley gone berserk...wrenching out the real meaning behind those words. Guts—when John played it for his managers they said, "GREAT, a commercial song John! What are the lyrics??" To which he replied slowly, in that rolling Welsh accent, "The man in the short sleeves fucked my wife...")

So—John has managed through his albums, and with his concerts from what I can judge from having seen him at Drury Lane, to transcend any category and really take his listener on a musical journey through all of his crazed genius. Including the sentimental romanticism with his sense of humor still intact. That element of surprise is rock and roll magic, and John used it to his full advantage at Drury Lane. When his guitar string broke and the roadie couldn't fix it fast enough John went wild and attacked a mannequin propped up on the side of the stage that was dressed as a nurse. He ripped off all the nurse clothes to reveal garter belt, black stockings, the whole bit...broke her in half, and went down on the bottom half. Lekkepipen, indeed. AND...he had these bullets filled with red paint stuck in his mouth so that when you bit down on them it appears that blood is dripping out of your mouth...Well, it was so funny, even Eno laughed. But I'm sure that there will be those who seek to find endless and dreary intellectual explanations for the incident. The point remains that it was spontaneous theater because whatever it was—it was so random. John never does the same thing twice; no blowing the guitarist, or shooting up in the middle of a song, or hanging just when it's supposed to happen on cue, ho-hum. (As I left London that week John was pondering the possibility of performing at his Cambridge concert dressed exactly like the local rapist who had been terrorizing the town...black hooded cape, blond curly wig, and the word RAPE in red on his forehead. I encouraged him to go ahead.)

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And even for those of us who either expect the worst or appreciate his sense of humor, there is something still a bit menacing about John Cale. Falling down backwards onstage with the mike or staggering around like some kind of Frankenstein monster, he's scary— but with style . It's almost as if we need John Cale now to act out all our crazy artist fantasies, for he can be anything you want: Rock and Roller, singing Jimmy Reed's "What You Want Me To Do," ("I love him, he's great!," John said enthusiastically, showing me all the new old Jimmy Reed LPs he'd just bought. Take Some Insurance Out On Me Baby" — what a great title . . Dramatist—with his short story "The Jeweler" read onstage) in John's rich voice; Crazy Freak—who, when he's actually offstage yelling at the roadie to fix the guitar string has somehow managed to psych the audience (through no concious effort of his own) that he's performing Jonathan Richman's "Pablo Picasso" in front of 2800 people?? ("Pablo Picasso...girls would turn the colpr of an avocado when he'd drive flown the street in his Eldorado... Pablo Picasso...nobody ever called him an asshole...NOT LIKE YOU!!"); Imposing Artiste—sitting at the grand piano singing bis magnificient love songs..."Paris 1919," "Child's Christmas in Wales," "Antarctica Starts Here"...his voice is great, sheer romance. To listen to John's albums is to be able to pick and choose from a musical feast. To see him perform onstage is even better. To know him is to love him.