John Cale - Quotes
About Cale
- Leee Childers
- Tony Conrad
- Jayne County
- Nat Finkelstein
- Margaret Moser
- Sterling Morrison
- Deantoni Parks
- Lou Reed
- Chris Sullivan
- Ingrid Superstar
"I was staying at the Tropicana Hotel in Hollywood. One day we heard all this noise. We looked across the parking lot to the other side where the noise was coming from and suddenly the whole door of this room came flying out onto the balcony, and there stood John Cale. He couldn't work the doorknob, so he just knocked the door down, right off the hinges."
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"What I had learned first about John Cale was that he had written a piece which pushed a piano down a mine shaft. We hungered for music almost seething beyond control - or even something just beyond music, a violent feeling of soaring unstoppably, powered by immense angular machine across abrupt and torrential seas of pounding blood."
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"John Cale is fantastic, and he made the sound of the Velvet Underground."
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"Never knew whether John Cale wanted to be Elvis Presley, Frankenstein's creature or the young Chopin."
"John Cale is a fucking elitist. He did not like the people he was playing for. He's Welsh, and they're all nasty bastards."
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"See, the beauty of Cale in the beginning was that he really didn't know very much about rock. In fact, he knew next to nothing. So, if you turned him loose on an instrument he wasn't able to play any kind of cliched anything because he didn't know any of the cliches. It was all original."
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"Rounding the corner, I ran headlong into a man dressed in black, wearing mirrored shades and a silver hardhat. He pushed me back at arm's length, pausing ever so briefly. I jumped back against the wall as he and the band filed past. The man in black looked back at me over his sunglasses as he ascended the stairs to the stage, and I melted. So this was John Cale!"
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"He's the only musician I’ll mention if people ask who I play with. There’s only one name. He’s the greatest. He has more of an impact on me than any drummer, more than anyone, in my adult life."
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"I only hope that one day John will be recognized as ... the Beethoven or something of his day. He knows so much about music, he's such a great musician. He's completely mad - but that's because he's Welsh."
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"John Cale is from Aberdare in Wales and went to the local grammar school. It's a hard, rough and surprisingly violent place, where huge bar brawls and street fights are considered normal. To grow up as the son of a teacher, play the cello and then be a child prodigy must have been hard work for Cale, and no mistake."
Chris Sullivan
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"John Cale? Good grief! I couldn't begin to describe him. He's just funny-looking..... He looks like the devil."
Ingrid Superstar
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