For some reason I woke up recently
with John Cale's "Chinese Envoy" rattling around my brain.
So I played Music For A New
Society. Which is equal parts beautiful and scary. Some of the pieces are
positively unhinged ("Sanities" and "In The Library Of Force"
are especially worrying), but the simple rework of "Close Watch" is
stunning (though I could do without the bagpipes at the end…) and "Chinese
Envoy" is perfectly lovely. Incidentally the track "Sanities"
was actually called "Sanctus" but the people doing the record sleeve
couldn't read Cale's writing and somehow it ended up being called
"Sanities" - which Cale then thought was a better title, despite not
actually being a word!
The full band rock song "Changes
Made" probably shouldn't be here - it's a fine song, but was included only
at the insistence of the record label who wondered if Cale could at least include just one a 'proper' song. Cale actually felt sorry for them, and so, as the rest of New Society was so uncompromising, he agreed to record one regular song... It
would fit far better on the previous album Honi Soit or the following
record Caribbean Sunset.
Anyway, New Society remains a
favourite Cale album of mine, despite it being the work of a paranoid raving
loony and being generally unlikeable, scary, depressing and eerie...
Then, a few weeks ago Cale
released M:FANS - a brand new reworking of Music For A New
Society and it's (mostly) very good. Extremely different from the
original album - which I suppose is rather the point.
Some of the tracks are perhaps a
little overladen with electronics and effects - "Sanctus" and
"Library Of Force" for example, and I'm really not sure about the new
"Close Watch". But the best tracks are a little cleaner and more
direct - "Chinese Envoy" has become a sort of Talking Heads-ish dance
track, which is really excellent and is, for me, the highlight of the album, and
"Broken Bird" is now a straightforward piano ballad. There are two
versions of "If You Were Still Around" one of which was recorded a
couple of years ago after Lou Reed's death (and was the catalyst which
suggested to Cale that reworking the whole album might be viable). I prefer the
second one with the choir, the first is perhaps a little too overwrought for
me.
It'll need a few more listens, but
this has always been a dark and slightly worrisome album, and these new
versions don't dispel that feeling at all. Cale's voice is still very strong,
and his desire to push the boundaries shows no sign of easing up. Thank
goodness.
After the original New Society Cale
stepped back from the abyss and delivered two more albums (and a throwaway live
record) before he totally cleaned up. 1983's Caribbean Sunset is
still fairly paranoid, but at least Cale sounds like he's actually having a bit
of fun on this album, not on the verge of blowing his brains out... It's got an
oddly commercial sheen to it, some of the songs really rock, hard, and the title track is so
delicately pretty. Oddly, this album has never received a CD release as
Cale obviously has some issues with it. Yet, even more oddly, some of the songs
(like "Model Beirut Recital" and "Magazines") have
cropped up numerous times in Cale live sets over the years, so he must
like some it, at least...
In 1985 he issued the somewhat
unloved Artificial Intelligence. It's actually rather poorly
recorded and produced, which is quite unusual for a John Cale record -
the whole thing seems weirdly lop sided and astonishingly clunky, but the
bulk of this songs are very good.
In fact, once you get past the lumpy
production "Dying On The Vine" is surely one of Cale's best ever
songs. The lyrics are wonderful, hinting at some sort of spy drama in a hot foreign
land. "Meet me when all the shooting's over… you can bring all your
friends along for protection…the authorities say my papers are all in order,
and if I wasn't such a coward I would run", but as ever with Cale's
songs, the lyrics are vividly evocative, of something or other, but
delightfully unspecific when it comes to details.
Elsewhere, tracks like "Fadeaway
Tomorrow" and "Satellite Walk" represent Cale's attempt at a top
forty type song (though no-one bought it, possibly because no-one knew what
"I took my tomahawk for a satellite walk" meant - the 12"
'dance' mix isn't noticeably any dancier either…), but "Black
Rose" is lovely (and was the title song until Cale changed his mind at the
very last minute requiring a total rethink to the cover - hence the horrid
drawing we ended up with, which was really looks like it was done at the 11th hour). And the
marvellous opening track "Everytime The Dogs Bark" hints at the paranoid ranting
Cale of yesteryear.
During the recording of this album
(done at the same time and with the same musicians as Nico's Camera Obscura,
fact fans) Cale's daughter Eden was born. Seemingly overnight Cale cleaned
himself up. Gone were the frightening number of whisky bottles, gone were the
narcotics that kept him up for days at a time while he scoured the news for
evidence to back up his paranoid political conspiracy theories. Now sober, he
took up squash and tennis (with the same fanatical devotion as he once given to
his drinking), and once his live commitments were over in 1985 he took the next
four years off, to be with his wife and daughter. He only emerged from his
retirement in 1989 when Brian Eno suggested recording the Falklands Suite (which Cale
had written in 1982 soon after the War) with a Russian orchestra - that then
lead to Wrong Way Up and, fortunately, loads more Cale albums.
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