John Cale

About

Also known as: Cale, John Davies Cale

Few musicians can claim a career as genuinely wide ranging as John Cale's. The Welsh multi instrumentalist co founded the Velvet Underground with Lou Reed in the mid 1960s, and his viola, bass and keyboards work on The Velvet Underground and Nico and White Light/White Heat helped define a sound that still echoes through rock music. Before any of that, he was deep in New York's avant garde scene, playing drone based music in La Monte Young's Theatre of Eternal Music and taking part in the first full performance of Erik Satie's Vexations, an 18 hour marathon piano concert. After leaving the Velvet Underground in 1968, Cale built a substantial solo catalogue, with Paris 1919 widely regarded as his masterpiece, alongside darker records like Fear and Music for a New Society. He also shaped other artists' sounds as a producer, working with Nico, the Stooges, Patti Smith, the Modern Lovers and Happy Mondays, among others. In 1990 he reunited with Reed for Songs for Drella, a tribute to Andy Warhol. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the Velvet Underground in 1996.