![]() ![]() It was impossible to miss how much Cale's viola did to set the band apart from even the few others with the courage to venture into their field, and those with a driving interest in the band at the time were quick to notice that Cale was the same person who had studied with John Cage and been a member of the Dream Syndicate with minimalist hotshots like La Monte Young and Tony Conrad. It was a curious move on Reed's part, and all signs point towards jealousy and insecurity. ![]() Hence, John Cale became suddenly unemployed and the Velvets' sound shifted dramatically. ![]() Though at least in retrospect, the other members of the band have said that they were uncomfortable with the decision, they have also admitted thinking to themselves that minus their primary songwriter, there was not much of a band to preserve. After White Light/White Heat, however, Reed put the ultimatum to the band that either they apply their collective boot to Cale's avant-garde backside or else Reed would split and leave the band to flounder. The Velvet Underground's first two albums were as brilliant as fusions get, forever expanding the sonic vocabulary available to the rock medium. Until then, Cale and Reed had looked like the perfect couple, with the latter giving a rock and roll drive to the former's arty adventurousness. More than that, though, this is an attempt to determine who inherited the larger portion of the spirit of the Velvet Underground, a spirit important enough to overshadow the fact that the result of such an undertaking, no matter what the result, will not save lives, end world hunger, erase the deficit, etc.Īnyway, the place to begin is at the time of the divorce. This is almost always a subtractive process which does nothing if not prove how interactive even the most dominated bands are, but good and even great moments pop up from time to time, so this is at least partly a comparative tally of those poppings. Perhaps because that legacy was so preciously small, we find ourselves hungering for more, and in the absence of more, we may first turn to shoddy bootlegs and live recordings, but eventually, we will get down and face the inevitable-the solo careers. Picture if you will Lou Reed and John Cale battling throughout the seventies (this being by far their most artistically meaty period) to see which one of them would better live up to the mountainous legacy that they had jointly erected in kinder, gentler times. No, I'll leave that up to other people who consider the fight worth fighting and instead set up a different kind of cage match. It has been a matter of spattering debate between Reed and Cale as to who contributed what to their collaborations, and simply taking one side or another would simply place me in line behind the hordes of presumptuous outsiders who bray endlessly and mindlessly around beer-soaked coffee tables and on information superhighways. To take up the gauntlet that the preceding paragraph seems itching to do would be pure foolishness on my part. Additionally, the fact that Reed's solo records rarely approached the sonic territory mapped out the Velvets speaks to the singular contribution of the other members, most notably John Cale. Yet more peculiar was the subtitle of this collection, which read: "Words and Music of Lou Reed." The cover of this compact disc featured all three of the other band members as well as Nico and Andy Warhol, so presumably the men and/or women behind this set couldn't plead ignorance of the fact that Lou Reed did not manufacture the sound that came out of Velvet Underground records all by his lonesome. The fact that this band that had flown so far from commercial recognition in their all-too-brief tenure as a working entity was being distilled down to their most marketable elements was strange enough. Lou Reed and John Cale face down the '70'sīy the time the Velvet Underground belatedly gained the recognition they had deserved for so long, a best-of collection suddenly appeared in 1989.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |