Background and career
John Davies Cale (born 9 March 1942) is a Welsh singer, musician, composer, record producer and arranger. He was a founding member of the influential American rock band the Velvet Underground, with whom he recorded two studio albums. Over his six-decade career, Cale has worked in various styles of rock and avant-garde music.
John Cale studied music at Goldsmiths, University of London, before moving to New York City in 1963, where he performed as part of the drone collective the Theatre of Eternal Music and formed the Velvet Underground with Lou Reed. Since leaving the band in 1968, Cale has released seventeen solo studio albums, including Paris 1919 (1973), which is retrospectively considered to be his masterpiece; Fear (1974); Slow Dazzle (1975); and Music for a New Society (1982). In 1990, he collaborated with Reed on Songs for Drella, a tribute to the Velvet Underground's mentor and one-time manager Andy Warhol.
Cale has worked as a record producer with artists including Nico, the Stooges, the Modern Lovers, Patti Smith, Squeeze, Happy Mondays and Siouxsie and the Banshees. Cale was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the Velvet Underground in 1996.
