Before the Velvet Underground, John Cale joined an 18-hour piano marathon
A Welsh miner's son who learned English only at about seven, John Cale arrived in New York in 1963 as a classically trained violist. Within weeks he had joined John Cage in the first complete performance of Satie's Vexations, lasting 18 hours and 40 minutes, and soon co-founded the Velvet Underground with Lou Reed.
Cale was born in 1942 in Garnant, a coal-mining village in Carmarthenshire. His father spoke only English, his mother, a primary teacher, raised him in Welsh. He played organ at Ammanford church, and the BBC recorded a toccata he had written. Discovering a gift for the viola, he joined the National Youth Orchestra of Wales at 13 and won a scholarship to Goldsmiths in London, where he staged an early Fluxus concert in July 1963 and conducted the British premiere of a Cage piano concerto.
In New York the marathon Satie concert, on 9 September 1963, landed him on the TV panel show I've Got a Secret, alongside the one audience member who had stayed the entire time. Cale later credited Cage with loosening his artistic outlook. He also played in La Monte Young's drone ensemble, the Theatre of Eternal Music, whose sustained tones fed into his later rock work, and there met the future Velvets guitarist Sterling Morrison.
With Reed he formed the Velvet Underground, and when drummer Angus MacLise quit before a $75 high-school gig, refusing to take money for art, Moe Tucker replaced him despite Cale's initial objection to a female drummer. A 1965 demo he carried to Britain circulated in the underground there, leading acts including David Bowie to cover the band. Cale played viola, bass and keyboards on The Velvet Underground and Nico and White Light/White Heat, but tensions with Reed grew until Reed demanded he go, and Cale left in 1968.
His solo career has produced seventeen studio albums, with Paris 1919 from 1973 now widely seen as his masterpiece. As a producer he shaped records by Nico, the Stooges, Patti Smith and Squeeze. In 1990 he reunited with Reed for Songs for Drella, a tribute to their mentor and one-time manager Andy Warhol, and in 1996 the band, Cale included, was honoured by the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
Source: John Cale
