Today is the birthday of a Welsh musician named John Cale. He’s not an altogether famous name, except among a certain slice of music fans.
He was born in Wales in 1942 during WWII. His father was a coal miner and his mother taught school. At some point when he was young, he picked up a viola and learned to play it. When he was 13, he joined the National Youth Orchestra of Wales (which is today the longest running youth orchestra in the world). His evident musicianship blossomed and he received a scholarship to study music at the University of London.
He became very interested in the progressive and avantgarde musical styles that were growing in the 1950s. He was particularly taken with the work of an avant-garde composer named John Cage. He conducted the first British performance of Cage’s “Concerto for Prepared Piano and Orchestra.” In 1963 Cale had two of his own experimental compositions published.
That was also the year that he received a Leonard Bernstein Scholarship and came to the United States, intending to study composition with Aaron Copland. Later, he said that if “it hadn’t been for Aaron Copland and Leonard Bernstein,” he wouldn’t have wound up here at all. Despite a recommendation from Copland that he study at Tanglewood in Massachusetts, Cale would wind up staying in New York City. In September 1963 he joined other avant-garde musicians to perform an 18-hour performance of Erik Satie’s experimental piece entitled “Vexations.”
The next year he and a guitarist named Lou Reed formed an avant-garde rock band called The Velvet Underground. The group became famous in part because they were the house band at Andy Warhol’s studio known as “The Factory.” The New York Times called the group the most influential American rock band ever.
Cale recorded two albums with the group before the other members showed him the door, apparently in part because his music was a little too experimental and less mainstream. He released his first solo album in 1970.
When Warhol died in 1987, Cale and Reed ran into each other at his memorial service. They began writing songs about him and debuted a song cycle at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in November 1989. Cale was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of The Velvet Underground in 1996.
Today he turns 84.
