Paramount Theatre
Friday, December 8 John Cale was the classical side of the Velvet Underground, who laid
groundwork for every generation of rock & roll since the late Sixties. In
almost every musical capacity — from A&R at Warner Bros., to producer for
Iggy Pop, Patti Smith, and Jonathan Richman, to collaborative efforts with
Brian Eno, Lou Reed, and Hector Zazou — Cale has built a body of work
staggering in scope and complexity, and which came full circle with a Velvet
Underground Reunion in 1994. With melodic Welsh tones, Cale responded to a kind
of 20 Questions format with studied responses about music and animated ones
when touching on his passions.
Austin Chronicle: What did you do today?
John Cale: Just finished doing music for [the film] I Shot Andy Warhol.
AC: I Shot Andy Warhol with Stephen Dorff as Candy Darling?
Are the Velvets recreated?
JC: Yes, Dorff is great in it! Lili Taylor is magnificent as
Valerie Solanas, the woman who shot Andy. Yo La Tengo, I think, is playing the
band. I went to the set they built for The Factory. It was so real it was
chilling. So I left.
AC: There’s so much focus on the Reed/Cale rivalry in the
Velvets.
JC: Well, everyone loves a dysfunctional family. We were the Roseanne
of rock & roll. The recidivist rate was no better in [the Velvets] than
any other group, but that’s one side of it. [Problems between me and Reed]
became the dominant aspect. Never should have gone that far. We should have
been able to handle them.
AC: This press release calls you a “sonic madman” [guffaws
from both ends]. Do you deliberately cultivate an enigmatic image?
JC: Am I enigmatic? Mmm. If you’re writing on a lot of topics that are
important to me, that’s not really going to make it simple for people, is it?
They’d rather pin you down.
AC: What are you reading these days?
JC: Chinese press reports off the Net, looking at crime in China. Do you
know what kind of crimes are committed there? Mostly economic ones, ripoffs.
AC: What’s your current musical line-up?
JC: I have an amplified string quartet, steel and piano.
AC: Those Velvet songs must sound interesting.
JC: It sounds pretty fierce but it’s really a nice musical evening; they
can play classical style but they can also make a hell of a racket with them. I
like that. — Margaret Moser
This article appears in December 8 • 1995 and December 8 • 1995 (Cover).