John Cale
Cataloging everything you’ve done—I’m not interested in that. I’m interested in different ways of expressing myself. If I’m lucky, it will work."

John Cale

Fear Is A Man's Best Friend (Est. 1999) is the ultimate unofficial John Cale website
Fear Is A Man's Best Friend - John Cale

Tour 1965

With the Primitives

On tour with 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, 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 witht Lou called the Primitives. Phillips wanted to publicize a song had written and recorded in a back room and Pickwick has released as a single, 'The Ostrich', by a fictious band, the Primitives.

The pop programme American Bandstand wanted them to perform this on 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."

» Fresh Cale

Paris 1919 Order the remastered and expanded Paris 1919 album (2LP, CD) via Domino Records
The Academy in Peril Order the remastered and expanded The Academy in Peril album (LP, CD) via Domino Records
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Setlists have been added for 1965, 1984, 1998, 2024 and 2025.

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