Last year, a remarkable rock’n’roll time capsule came to light. Unheard for more than 50 years, Lou Reed’s acoustic demos for his soon-to-be band – the Velvet Underground – were released, revealing one of the most important cultural partnerships of the 20th century in its infancy. If that claim sounds inflated, as well as motivating a great many taboo-busting creatives prone to wearing shades, the Velvet Underground also inspired superfan Václav Havel and Czechoslovakia’s resistance to Soviet totalitarianism.
The other person in the room with Reed was Welshman John Cale, whose mastery of repetition and drone – one gleaned from his studies in the New York noise avant garde – made the Velvet Underground just as groundbreaking as Reed’s chemically frank lyrics. Cale’s body of work since has covered an extraordinary amount of territory, encompassing experimental offerings, notable collaboration, soundtrack and production work – Patti Smith, the list goes on – as well as albums of his own songcraft.
