Timeline: 1965
The Primitives
Cale goes on tour with The Primitives to promote Lou Reed's offbeat dance craze The Ostrich. He doesn't perform on the actual recording.
"When I first met Lou Reed at the beginning of 1965 (actually by the end of 1964), he was a 22-year old songwriter at Pickwick Records in Long Island City, and I was a 22-year old avant-garde musician in La Monte Young's Theatre of Eternal Music. We were introduced by a Pickwick producer, Terry Phillips, who thought I was a pop musician because I had long hair. He asked me, Tony Conrad and a friend, the sculptor Walter de Maria, to form a band with Lou called the Primitives. Phillips wanted to publicize a song he had written and recorded in a back room and Pickwick has released as a single, 'The Ostrich', by a fictious band, the Primitives."
TV show American Bandstand needed a band, so:
"The pop programme American Bandstand wanted them to perform this on TV, so Phillips was forced to put out an appropriate-looking band together. We thought it would be fun, and as a lark spent a couple of weekends playing the TV show and a few other East Coast gigs. Even though the record bombed, the experience of being in a rock band, however ersatz, gave Lou and me the opportunity to connect."
The band plays a bunch of hit-and-run shows, including one at supermarket and a few highschool dances. Conrad and Cale's instruments were tuned to "Ostrich tuning" - every string to the same pitch. This made them easier to play, and also resonated with the drone music they were playing with the Theatre of Eternal Music.
Launching the Dream Weapon
Plays behind a screen with Lou Reed, Sterling Morrison and Angus MacLise at Italian-American poet, publisher, actor and filmmaker Piero Heliczer's Launching the Dream Weapon at the Filmmakers' Cinematheque in New York. The band was still named The Falling Spikes then. Morrison remembers in Up-tight | The Velvet Underground by Victor Bockris & Gerard Malanga:
"On an early Spring day in 1965 John and I were strolling through the East Side slums and ran into Angus on the corner of Essex and Delancey. Angus said 'Let's go over to Piero's', and we agreed.
It seems that Piero and Angus were organizing a 'ritual happening' at the time - a mixed-media stage presentation to appear in the old Cinematheque. Naturally, this was well before such events become all the rage. It was to be entitled "Launching the Dream Weapon", and it got launch tumultuously. In the center of the stage there was a movie screen, and between the screen and the audience a number of veils were spread out in different places. these veilswere lit variously by lights and slide projectors, as Piero's films shone through them onto screen. Dancers swirled around, and poetry and song occasionally rose up, while from behind the screen a strange music was being generated by Lou, John, Angus and me."
Living with Lou Reed
Cale and Reed start sharing a flat on the fifth floor of 56 Ludlow Street on the Lower East Side in New York. It was a rough place. Reed introduces him to heroin. He shoots him up, because he didn't dare to do it himself, being "was squeamish about needles". From Victor Bockris' Lou Reed biography:
"The whole place was sparsely furnished with mattresses on the floor, and orange crates that served as furniture and firewood. Bare light bulbs lit the dark rooms, paint and plaster chipped from the woodwork and walls. There was no heat or hot water and the landlord collected the $30 rent with a gun. When it got cold, they often sat hunched over instruments with carpets wrapped around their shoulders. When the toilet stopped up, they picked up the shit and threw it out the window. For sustenance, they cooked a big pot of porridge and made humongous vegetable pancakes, eating the slop day and night as if it were fuel."
Busking takes care of the rent. They form a group with guitarist Sterling Morrison and drummer Angus MacLise. MacLise lives in the same building. His apartment actually has heating. They call themselves The Warlocks and The Falling Spikes. Cale taped a lot of the rehearsals. Some of it is included on the Peel Slowly and See boxset.
He returned to the building in January 8, 2013 for an interview with Marc Myers of the Wall Street Journal:
"Our apartment was a railroad flat—a long room running from the windows in the front to a small bedroom and a bathroom in the back. I slept on a mattress, under the windowsill in the front overlooking Ludlow. We burned crates and furniture in the fireplace to keep warm. There was no heat in the winter other than the gas stove."
Recording with Angus MacLise and Tony Conrad
Records avant-garde pieces with Angus MacLise and Tony Conrad. Four of these experiments are released in 2003 on the Angus MacLise 2CD The Cloud Doctrine: Trance #1, Trance #2, Two Speed Trance, and Four Speed Trance. Cale plays guitar, viola and keyboards.
Why Don't You Smile Now
The first Cale/Reed collaboration is committed to vinyl: Why Don't You Smile Now, also credited to Terry Philips and Jerry Vance, is released as a single by The All-Night Workers.
A cover of this track was released on the five track 12" EP MoeJadKateBarry by Maureen Tucker, Jad Fair, Kate Messer and Barry Stock in 1987. The original got an official release on the Why Don't You Smile Now: Lou Reed at Pickwick Records 1964-65 album in 2024.
The Velvet Underground: a name is born
When Angus MacLise finds a copy of The Velvet Underground by Michael Leigh, a book about "aberrant" sexual behavior between consenting adults", in the Times Square subway station, the group finally has a name.
According to Sterling Morrison, it is a really boring novel about wife swapping in the suburbs. He is not wrong.
Piero Heliczer movies
Appears in Venus In Furs (a.k.a Dirt), a short movie directed by Piero Heliczer. Features Cale, MacLise, Reed and others.
It is aired on New Year's Eve on Walter Cronkite's CBS program in a segment called The Making of an Underground Film. He also appears in a short called Satisfaction.
Marianne Faithfull demo
Cale travels to London, hoping to pique some interest from singer Marianne Faithfull and other luminaries for the demo recordings he made in the Ludlow Street appartment. She is not impressed.
All is not in vain. Cale returns with a fresh stack of just released UK 45s, including Anyway Anyhow Anywhere by The Who, one of the first singles featuring feedback. And the demo reel makes the rounds in the UK, resulting in covers of the tracks by The Deviants, The Yardbirds and David Bowie, months before the release of the band's debut album.
Final performances with the Theatre of Eternal Music
On December 5 and 6 he plays his final shows as a member of the Theatre of Eternal Music at the Cinematheque in New York.
First Velvet Underground gig
On December 11th The Velvet Underground are booked by journalist Al Aronowitz to play their first official gig - they are paid $ 75.00 - at the Summit High School in Summit, New Jersey. They are the opening act for the garage rock band The Myddle Class. Also on the bill were The Forty Fingers, a bunch of fourten-year-old kids, as co-support.
Angus MacLise can't cope with the idea that this is a scheduled set:
"You mean we start when they tell us to start and we have to end when they tell us to? I can't work that way."
He quits. Enter Maureen Tucker on percussion.
The Velvets opened their short set with There She Goes Again. Also included Venus In Furs and Heroin. The audience was far from ready.
"On our first gig, we were so loud and horrifying to the highchool audience that the majority of them, teachers, students and parents, fled screaming out of the room. The Myddle Class were really pissed off when we came off stage. I tried to apologize to the lead singer, but secretly I was exhilarated. Once we had started I was sure nobody could stop us because we knew exactly what we were doing, and we were good at it. About that I had no doubt."
Sterling Morrison about this gig:
"At Summit we opened with "There She Goes Again", then played "Venus In Furs", and ended with "Heroin". The murmur of surprise that greeted our appearance as the curtain went up increased to a roar of disbelief once we started to play "Venus", and swelled to a mighty howl of outrage and bewilderment by the end of "Heroin". Al Aronowitz observed that we seemed to have an oddly stimulating and polarizing effect on audiences."
Spectro-Mach 1 at the Cinematique
Takes part in Spectro-Mach 1 at the Film-makers' Cinematheque in New York (December 7-12). It is a multimedia performance by photographer, poet, and printer Don Snyder with Angus MacLise, Ralph Metzner, Allen Neff, and Diane Rebuff. He supplies the music with MacLise - minimalist drone compositions - for a showing of psychedelic visual projections.
Cale is not credited in the flyer that was used to promote the performances.
Cafe Bizarre residency in Greenwich Village
In December the Velvets enjoy a short lived residency at the Cafe Bizarre at 106 West Third Street in Greenwich Village, New York. Maureen Tucker plays tambourine - drums were to loud according to the owner Rick Allmen.
They were fired after playing The Black Angels Death Song once too often, a song the owner's wife thoroughly disliked and asked specifically not to play or else. So they did. But they get lucky: Andy Warhol asks them to join his upcoming multimedia extravaganza Up-Tight.
"Before Andy left with his floating tribe of ragamuffin gypsies, he invited us to the Factory. There was something he wanted to talk to us about. In exchange for 25% of whatever money we made he would manage us, buy us new instruments and equipment, and get us gigs and a recording contract. The second day we went there, he sprang his first surprise on us. He wanted Nico to front the band."