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Who's best: Lou Reed or John Cale?
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IanB
IanB
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Edited Apr 25, 2010, 14:34
Re: Who's best: Lou Reed or John Cale?
Apr 25, 2010, 09:30
Popel Vooje wrote:
too simplistic to suggest that Cale was the avant-garde one and Reed was the pop one.


Well yes things are never how they are represented in the often semi-literate world of rock criticism (hence my Lennon / McCartney reference) but I doubt very much if Cale would have bothered much with pop music (or pop music would have bothered much with him) as a career choice had he not been in a band with Lou Reed. And I doubt if Lou would have bothered much with the avant garde had he not been in a band with John Cale. They clearly infected each other.

I struggle to see Cale as a great songwriter though. A lot of what he does musically to my ear is pastiche (something that classically trained people are especially adept at) - a bit of Beefheart here, some Roy Wood there, a smidge of Roxy, a soupcon of Johnny Cash. Which is why I compare him with Kevin Ayers. Sounds like he is skating along on top of each style rather than immersing himself. It's all entertaining enough and some of it is really moving but lyrically Hammill's solo work goes further with that kind of psycho drama rock n roll catharsis.

My ambivalance might also be to do with the fact that a lot of Cale's early 80's stuff sounds like he is genuinely unwell rather than writing from the perspective of an unwell state of mind. Which doesn't sit well with me. I can't listen to much of Syd's solo output for the same reason. Too raw. I don't much like medical photographs either.

Cale's the more solid catalogue but Reed's is the one with the fireworks. Growing Up In Public has to be one of the worst records made by an imporant artist. The Bells (title track aside), Take No Prisoners and Street Hassle (again title track aside) are nowhere near as good as some people would have you believe. Not to mention the dross he co-wrte with Nils Lofgren. What were Arista thinking? Cale was never ever that bad on record. Maybe producing other people meant he didn't have to make records if he didn't want to.

Though it is hard to look at a lot of the work either of them did without thinking they were making up for lost time and trying to make the money they didn't make in the Velvets. Which is fine as far as it goes but it means that a lot of the work isn't going to stand up to the test of time. Lou had to go a long long time to get his muse back and it was the old stand bys Delmore Schwartz and later New York City and Warhol that lit the fuse. For Cale there were fourteen years between Helen of Troy and Words for the Dying & Drella. Took a war and a mentor's death to wring those two out of him. Were they both a bit stuck in the rock machine perhaps?


Can't under estimate Cale's importance to the whole Art Rock movement though. He was in the right place at the right time enough times for his instincts as a talent spotter to be pretty sharp. Like Eno in fact. They both have that Zappa thing of almost having contempt for rock music while making excellent music within that format.
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