1986 was the summer that everyone re-discovered the Velvet Underground. John Cale was less than impressed. Mark J. Prendergast profiles the man who was more than just Lou Reed's guitarist.

On a personal visit to Britain this summer John Cale played a few concerts to please his staunch and patient followers. The last one at Brixton's Ritzy cinema is still being talked about as the very best performance in a solo career that has erratically veered from excellence to mediocrity. Armed with an acoustic guitar and acoustic piano, Cale's incredibly powerful presence delivered 20 superb numbers. Hearts warmed to his opening selections 'Ghost Story' and 'Amsterdam' from his first album 'Vintage Violence'; a work often ignored by critics due to its scarcity rather than quality. Off the drink and intermittently gulping water Cale concentrated on the quality of old favourites like 'Ship of Fools', 'Buffalo Ballet', 'Heartbreak Hotel', 'Fear', 'I keep a close watch', 'Leaving it up to you', 'Dying on the vine' and more. After seeing the man strum one chord and glare at the audience for half an hour in Dublin three years ago, John Cale's present healthy state comes as a pleasant shock.

Despite a recent spate of accolades and endorsements for his ground-breaking work with The Exploding Plastic Inevitable and the avant-garde music scene of 1960's New York, Cale is quick to assert the importance of his solo output since 1970.

"The influence of The Velvet Underground doesn't mean anything to me. I don't and never have understood that. I have always tried to introduce a classical change from one album to another. I like writing songs and it's a difficult habit to drop."

Earlier this year he appeared on a South Bank Show television special about The Velvets and stubbornly refuted their importance. He finished the programme by performing 'Thoughtless Kind' from his 1982 album 'Music for a New Society'. Its bittersweet quality seemed to suit the retrospective nature of the programme. Flailing on his acoustic guitar Cale spat out the words 'never ever turn your back on them. The best of times with the thoughtless kind.'

The beautiful ballad quality of songs like 'Thoughtless Kind', 'Chinese Envoy', 'Half Past France', 'Amsterdam' and similar gems from his solo canon is rarely recognised by writers over keen to magnify the manic side of Cale's personality. Lyrically the song 'Dying on the Vine' from his most recent album 'Artificial Intelligence' is his finest accomplishment to date — "I was living like a Hollywood... Or a William Burroughs playing for lost time... But I was dying on the vine." Here Cale tastefully backs the song with the minimum of instrumentation allowing the lyrics their full stinging potential. Like most of John Cale's work 'Artificial Intelligence' is a different item yet it has an addictive quality. "I like it because I sing on it. There's more singing on it than screaming. It took a week to write the songs and two weeks here of recording. With some very talented musicians we threw out all the material and I'm very happy with the results. This one has some power to it without all the ranting and screaming."

John Cale has been living in America for well over twenty years. He is happily married to his wife Rise who had his first child, a daughter, last year. Since 1970 he has produced 13 solo albums of his own work. He has produced albums for Iggy Pop and the Stooges, Patti Smith, Squeeze, Jonathan Richman and Nico. His life-long involvement with Nico's career has been mutually beneficial culminating in her 1985 tour de force 'Camera Obscura'. He is currently involved in three major projects: the writing of an orchestral suite, the preparation of material for a new rock album and the creation of 'pieces of music on' on a new type of computer music keyboard. The orchestral suite is to revolve around the poems of Dylan Thomas and will be financed by the Dutch government. When it is ready Cale will be giving special performances in London and Amsterdam with a selection of serious classical players. This time he will be conducting. After twenty three years out of the serious classical music scene, John Cale will be finishing the studies he took up as a teenager in Goldsmith's college all those moons ago.

"I only listen to classical music. I'm more interested in symphonic music. I'd be quite happy writing symphonies for the rest of my life. I've no business being in rock and roll in fact I am not a rock and roll musician."

Cale started playing piano at the age of three and viola when he was five making his first BBC performance when he was eight. After being admitted to Goldsmith's College London he was expelled after three years for rejecting his syllabus for the avant-garde fluxus movement of John Cage, Yoko Ono, La Monte Young and Henry Flynt. Firmly in correspondence with these musical dissidents he was awarded a Bernstein scholarship to study modern composition with the France-Greek composer Iannis Xenakis at Eastman Conservatory, Lennox, Massachusetts. His supervisor Aaron Copland found Cale's attitude too destructive and yet again he found himself out of College. Heading for New York he teamed up with La Monte Young and formed The Dream Syndicate with Marion Zazeela and Tony Conrad.

"La Monte was the best part of my education and my introduction to musical discipline."

The Dream Syndicate was about sustaining amplified voices, viola and violin for hours at a time in a drone effect. Nico contends that a really strange album was recorded by this outfit during that period. In 1963 Cale was involved in John Cage's three day repetition of Erik Satie's 'Vexations' at the Pocket Theatre New York — this consisted of an 80 second piece being repeated 840 times by a team of 12 pianists. This makes headlines in the papers. Cale's fateful path led him to meet Lou Reed at a party in 1964 and after throwing in his lot with Lou as The Primitives, The Warlocks and The Falling Spikes the Velvet Underground are born. The rest is history.

"How could The Velvets be influential. Nothing today is reminiscent of The Velvet Underground, nothing. I don't want eulogies, I'll leave them for my gravestone".

John Cale speaks fluent Welsh and wants to contribute to Welsh culture. His persistently perverse attitude and inspired moves have resulted in some of the most blatantly unnerving music in both the classical and rock genres. Whatever criticisms have been levelled at him, John Cale has never ever been boring. His recent contribution to the soundtrack of 'Sid and Nancy' in the form of the haunting 'She Never Took No For An Answer' and his yet unreleased acting debut film prove that, in the long term, talent is a man's best friend.