Interviews
Bloodied but Unbowed
Interview by Scott Isler. Published in Musician no. 126 - April 1989
Violence, Viola and Enigma Variations
Not even the Velvet Underground is sacrosanct. "We had a chance to do it and we blew it,', he stated in a 1979 interview. "We didn't deliver."
So who does Cale respect? Would you believe... the Doobie Brothers? Steely Dan? "There are elements of them that are very, very strong," he says, apparently in earnest. "Some parts of them show incredible craftsmanship, and that's what I appreciate. There are certain things Randy Newman does that, in the craft of songwriting, are really his brand: the way he creates phrases, his lyrics especially. There was a recording thing with the Doobies that I thought was tops. Steely Dan just seemed like they worked very carefully on their words." Cale still knows how to shock an audience.
Regardless of what he says, Cale the producer doesn't gravitate to slick performers. Instead, what attracts him to an artist, he says, is "individuality. You've got to resolve conflicts in situations. You've got to be an ally, a co-conspirator. Sometimes you have to introduce conflict into the situation in orderto resolve it. You have to make one position or another untenable. With Patti Smith, it was a case of, 'Look, you're gonna have a band that would be able to do the Rolling Stones for you. You have got to be neither the Rolling Stones nor a member of the band. What you're doing is really not involved in songwriting at all. You're involved in something else that employs a band, but what it is I can't tell you.' The vaguer you leave it, the more product you get."
A vein of anger, like molten lava, runs through Cale's own rock-oriented work. His first solo release, pleasant enough musically, was called Vintage Violence. Later Cale albums grew increasingly strident in tone and subject matter. By 1981 at least one critic was moved to ask, "Why is John Cale's mind so full of bombs and barbed wire?"
"It was, then," admits the composer of "Fear Is a Man's Best Friend," "Gun" and "Mercenaries (Ready for War)." "But... it was fashionable at the time." This isn't quite an answer worth an eight-year wait.