Timeline: 2021
Lorrach show cancelled
He was booked to perform in Lorrach, Germany @ STIMMEN-Festival on July 15th, 2020. The show was been rescheduled, because of the pandemic. New date: 13 July, 2021. And that got cancelled as well, for the same reason.
Real Estate covers "Please"
American indie rock band cover Please for one of Aquarium Drunkard's The Lagniappe Sessions. Frontman and guitarist Martin Courtney:
"Love the production on the early 70s John Cale records, particularly the drums. How did they do it? Vintage Violence being one of my favorite albums, we could have probably done any song off of it, basically just picked "Please" because I like the line about sneezing. Felt timely. Beautiful melody/harmony in the chorus. Had to look up what a hansom cab is. Nice image."
You Are Beautiful and You Are Alone: The Biography of Nico
American author Jennifer Otter Bickerdike publishes her extensive You Are Beautiful and You Are Alone: The Biography of Nico.
Cale is featured quite prominently. On recording her debut album Chelsea Girl in 1967:
"None of us had any patience, so it was very sloppy. We didn't have anybody telling us how to do things."
Songs for Drella 4K restoration
A 4K restoration of the Songs for Drella performance filmed at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York, USA on December 4 and 5, 1989. is aired online and in select theaters. The 4K scan is made Metropolis Post NYC by Carolyn Hepburn (one of the producers of The Velvet Underground documentary and director Ed Lachman. For years the latter thought that the masters were lost:
"I had been looking for the elements all over the world for years, and then I remembered that DuArt Lab in New York had sent me the materials with my name on it a few years ago after they had shut down. To more than my amazement, I found the original A and B rolls in a box less than 100 feet from my bedroom."
The restored version is used for an authorized release on DVD in Japan in 2023.
The Velvet Underground documentary
The Velvet Underground, a documentary directed by Todd Haynes is premiered at Cannes Film Festival in France on July 7, 2021. He and Maureen Tucker were filmed in 2018 to share their thoughts.
"It's made me appreciate the personalities and the disparate confluences we laid bare in the Factory and through the development of what would become the Velvet Underground. They came from all over the world and opened this Welsh boy's eyes to the rest of mankind beyond the European experience. It took all these characters to fuel the furnaces. It's important for everyone to understand the entirety of this band, warts and all, but most importantly the organic nature of its honesty. If there had been a blueprint, we didn't want to know. Carving our own distorted path was far more important than trying to be the next big thing. Without the competitiveness that grew out of our fierce desire to bend and ultimately break rock and roll, we'd have been just another Sixties band."
The film garners rave reviews. Limited theatrical release, since Apple paid for it to show it on their streaming service. Released on DVD and Blu-ray with outtakes and extra's.
Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, a Journey, a Song
Features in the documentary Hallelujah: Leonard Cohen, a Journey, a Song, directed by Daniel Geller and Dayna Goldfine. The film is first screened at the Venice and Telluride Film Festivals in September. Cale got the ball rolling when he covered it on the I'm Your Fan tribute album in 1991.
Journalist Larry Ratso Sloman sheds some light on how it came to be. Other interviewees include Brandi Carlile, Judy Collins, Glenn Hansard, and Rufus Wainwright