约翰·凯尔

John Davies Cale (born 9 March 1942) is a Welsh singer, musician, composer, record producer and arranger. He was a founding member of the influential American rock band the Velvet Underground, with whom he recorded two studio albums. Over his six-decade career, Cale has worked in various styles of rock and avant-garde music.

John Cale studied music at Goldsmiths, University of London, before moving to New York City in 1963, where he performed as part of the drone collective the Theatre of Eternal Music and formed the Velvet Underground with Lou Reed. Since leaving the band in 1968, Cale has released seventeen solo studio albums, including Paris 1919 (1973), which is retrospectively considered to be his masterpiece; Fear (1974); Slow Dazzle (1975); and Music for a New Society (1982). In 1990, he collaborated with Reed on Songs for Drella, a tribute to the Velvet Underground's mentor and one-time manager Andy Warhol.

Cale has worked as a record producer with artists including Nico, the Stooges, the Modern Lovers, Patti Smith, Squeeze, Happy Mondays and Siouxsie and the Banshees. Cale was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the Velvet Underground in 1996.

Early life and career

John Davies Cale was born on 9 March 1942 in the coal mining village of Garnant, Carmarthenshire, Wales, to William Arthur George Cale, a miner, and Margaret Davies, a primary school teacher. His father spoke only English, while his mother also spoke and taught Welsh to Cale. He began learning English at primary school, at around the age of seven. Cale was molested by two different men during his youth: an Anglican priest who molested him in a church and a music teacher. He played organ at Ammanford church. The BBC recorded Cale playing a toccata he composed, which some commentators compared to the work of Aram Khachaturian.

Having discovered a talent for viola, Cale joined the National Youth Orchestra of Wales (NYOW) at age 13. Receiving a scholarship, he then studied music at Goldsmiths College, University of London. While he was there he organised an early Fluxus concert, A Little Festival of New Music, on 6 July 1963. He also contributed to the short film Police Car and had two scores published in Fluxus Preview Review (July 1963) for the nascent avant-garde collective. He conducted the first performance in the UK of Cage's Concert for Piano and Orchestra, with the English composer and pianist Michael Garrett as soloist. In 1963, he travelled to the United States to continue his musical training with the assistance and influence of American composer Aaron Copland, who recommended him for Tanglewood.

Upon arriving in New York City, Cale met a number of influential composers. On 9 September 1963, he participated, along with John Cage and several others, in an 18-hour-and-40-minute marathon piano concert that was the first full-length performance of Erik Satie's Vexations. After the performance, Cale appeared on the television panel show I've Got a Secret. Cale's secret was that he had performed in an 18-hour concert, and he was accompanied by Karl Schenzer, whose secret was that he was the only member of the audience who had stayed for the duration. Cale would later attribute his own "relaxed" artistic outlook to Cage, having hitherto been raised to believe that European composers were obliged to justify their work.