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Who's best: Lou Reed or John Cale?
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IanB
IanB
6761 posts

Edited Apr 24, 2010, 08:39
Re: Who's best: Lou Reed or John Cale?
Apr 24, 2010, 08:26
Lou.

I know the craft of songwriting is not a big priority for everyone (especially here) but how many classic songs has he written? At least a dozen instantly recognisable, straight-into-the-canon tunes. And how much of an influence has his writing style and guitar playing been on hundreds of artists, dozens of whom went on to shape the musical culture of the 70s, 80s and 90s?

Admittedly he's not a great creative strike rate since Berlin but Rock n Roll Animal, Blue Mask, New York, Drella, CI Baby and Magic & Loss are all pretty great records.

Most recording artists only have three to five really great years. The rest is the run up to greatness and then a long slow decline with the occasional spike of genuine interest.

On his own John Cale is for me a Kevin Ayers level artist. Interesting, sometimes great but not totally essential for the more casual listener. Every home should have Transformer and Berlin.

As a producer Cale has a bigger claim of course but without Lou I am not sure we would have ever heard of him outside of the minimalist, avant garde and IRCAM type scenes. Would he have even bothered with rock n roll? Lou has that Bowie thing of being able absorb stuff in the culture and churn it back out as pop music in his own image.

In the end it is a bit like the Lennon / Macca thing. Macca gets all the brickbats for being soft whereas it was Lennon who was the real musical conservative in the Beatles pre Yoko. They needed each other to make the best of that they had.
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