Solo albums

Artificial Intelligence

About this album

Released in 1985. Beggars Banquet BEGA 68.

Tracks:

"After I finished Camera Obscura, I went away for a couple of weeks, wrote some songs with counterculture journalist Larry Sloman, and came back and made Artificial Intelligence. That was a good way of working, very efficient. But Artificial Intelligence, my last pop album, didn't have much impact, I can't figure out why, because I liked that record. There were a lot of good ideas in it. We had three and a half weeks to complete it, which was ridiculous. We spent one week writing material and then we went into the studio and threw half of it out. Too many of my records were done like that. Give me five grand and you can have the cassettes. I am a ham. but at the time I was very pleased with Artificial Intelligence because for a change there was more singing in there than screaming. Some of it has that psychotic element, but it's downplayed and it's more effective that way. Just sing the song, don't get excited, just take a little blue pill."

However, doubt had crept in as well during the recording sessions. Being a drug addict was no fun:

"I felt there was a certain kind of heroism in my way of life. The heroic stance is to batter yourself with drugs and alcohol and still be able to stand up. And you can, but you find out that the law of diminishing returns comes around with a vengeance. And for me that had kicked in in 1982, at the end of Music for a New Society. So by the time I made Artificial Intelligence I was physically and emotionally exhausted. I thought I was in control and I didn't like the fact that I wasn't. It was a miserable time. It was like trying to sort out your business and your personal life in the middle of an earthquake."

All songs by John Cale and Larry Sloman, except Everytime The Dogs Bark and Vigilante Lover by John Cale, Larry Sloman and David Young.

Musicians:
John Cale: bass, guitar, keyboards, viola
Graham Dowdall: percussion
Gill O'Donovan: background vocals
Susie O'List: background vocals
David Young: guitar
James Young: keyboards

Other credits:
Producer: John Cale
Associate producer: David Young
Cover art and design: Dennis P. Nechvatal
Graphics: Abraxas Studio/Karin Preus
Recorded at Strongroom Studios, London, United Kingdom

Dennis Nechvatal, who did the cover for the album, did a painting live on the stage for the duration of a show at the Elvehjem Museum in Madison, Wisconsin, USA - April 17, 1991.

Dying On The Vine single

Dying On The Vine b/w Everytime The Dogs Bark is released in the UK as a single on 7" and 12" in July 1985. Neither format becomes a bestseller.

Dying On The Vine / Everytime The Dogs Bark
7" 45rpm single. July 1985.
Beggars Banquet 145, UK 12" inch 45rpm. July 1985.
Beggars Banquet 145t, UK

Satellite Walk remix

A dance-remix of Satellite Walk created at Sigma Sound in New York by engineer and producer Carl Beatty was released as a 12" in the UK in 1985 in Germany in 1986, with Dying On The Vine and the otherwise unavailable instrumental track Crash Course In Harmonics on the B-side.