Three pieces of Cale's stunning no-wave vision

JOHN CALE

The Island Years (Island)

Everyone hates Lou Reed, and I wouldn't be surprised if John Cale is at the top of the list. Upon leaving the Velvet Underground after their first two albums, Cale saw all the credit for their avant-garde noisemongering go to Reed, and saw a subsequent generation of alterno-geeks worship him. The fact is, Lou Reed is a first-class tunesmith, but he's about as avant as an armchair (Metal Machine Music does not count). The last two Velvet albums were noise-free, even pedestrian at times. It was Cale, with his training under LaMonte Young and John Cage, who brought viola drones, free structures, and all sorts of noise into the rock world.

Of course, Cale hasn't helped matters by having a confoundingly inconsistent solo career. Cale possesses an amazing voice, a Welsh tenor capable of stern beauty or lung-shredded ugliness. But in between bland orchestral works and unsuccessful pop albums, he has only managed a few LPs that reflect what extraordinary influence he has had. The Island Years, a new boxed set, contains three of them.

In the mid 70s, after a few dull albums and the tradition-minded (but great) Paris 1919, Cale cobbled together a backing band that would support his more psychotic excesses, as well as provide gentle calms to jar the listener even further. The first album of the three-disc set, Fear, is the most calculated, but it's also Cale's finest hour. There's wide-screen, beautiful pop like the Brian Wilson soundalike "Ship of Fools," the depressed/suicidal "You Know More than I Know," and the expansive, moving "Buffalo Ballet." But there's also "Fear Is a Man's Best Friend," which begins with an uneasy, authoritative piano riff, before descending into a raucous singalong, and finally degenerating into chaotic noise complete with fretless bass grunts and Cale's screaming. It's catchy and horrifying all at once, and, especially given the time period, utterly original. "Gun" obsessively pounds for eight minutes, with Roxy Music's Phil Manzanera and Brian Eno making sounds reminiscent of someone caught in a meat grinder. Except for the irritating "The Man Who Couldn't Afford to Orgy," Fear is a masterpiece.

Slow Dazzle makes commercial concessions, and, as such, it's the weakest of the bunch. It has also aged badly; songs like "Dirty Ass Rock'n'Roll" and "Taking It All Away" ooze 70s bombast. Blame it on new guitarist Chris Spedding. That said, at least half the album is brilliant.

Helen of Troy returns Cale to la-la land. Free of any commercial aspirations (but with Phil Collins on drums, not that it makes any difference), he spends most of the album on the verge of breakdown, howling like a maniac on "Leaving It Up to You," desperately whining on "Cable Hogue," and pulverizing his slide guitar on a weird cover of Jonathan Richman's "Pablo Picasso." Cale even sings the blues on Jimmy Reed's "Baby, What You Want Me To Do?" and gets away with it. With spare, edgy performances, the stunning epic "I Keep a Close Watch," and some inconsistent material, Helen of Troy stands proud next to its predecessors.

Unfortunately, Cale went downhill from there, embracing punk and more classical aspirations to little success. Apart from the disturbing, violent, Music For a New Society, nothing he has done since these albums has even approached their unsettling, trailblazing legacy (and neither do the newly- added bonus tracks; apart from the pretty "Sylvia Said," they're completely negligible). But this little set, finally issued domestically, is a firm reminder that Cale presaged DNA, Glenn Branca, and Rhys Chatham in creating the original no-wave, even if he eventually got pulled under it.

--David Auerbach

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