I'm writing this column on a rainy early January afternoon. By the time you read it, it will be rainy February. Now is not the time for introspection: ruminations on catalogue numbers of Racey singles or reflections on rare Marmalade Spanish picture sleeves. It is the time for a gonzo appreciation of Wales' finest man from Wales: John Cale.
I love John Cale. I think I love him more than Lou Reed these days (looks upwards, crosses self, whispers, Sorry, Lou). Everyone loves Paris 1919, don't they? And that marvellous trio of boozy coked-up Island albums. The paranoid masterpiece that is Fear. The histrionic even-more paranoid Helen Of Troy (featuring our hero in a straightjacket on the cover) and Slow Dazzle. Cale wearing a ski-mask on the cover looking not unlike Leatherface from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Who would start a song with the immortal couplet, "Bugger in the short-sleeves fucked my wife, did it quick then split"? That would be John Cale on Guts (from Slow Dazzle). Who would dare to reference Sharon Tate (Leaving It Up To You) just five years after her murder? Incidentally, the bugger in the short-sleeves was Cale's early 70s playmate Kevin Ayers, who a few lines (and possibly "lines") later gets referred to as "parrot-shit". Cool.
This story is from the March 2023 edition of Record Collector.
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This story is from the March 2023 edition of Record Collector.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
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Paperback Blighters - The books every record collector should read.
The books every record collector should read. Vinyl, you may have heard, has made a big comeback. In 2022, sales of vinyl albums surpassed compact discs (CDs) for the first time in more than three decades in terms of global revenue, racking up more than $1.2bn.
"Beware the Savage Lure/of 1984..." - David Bowie is one of the most venerated musicians ever. But even he had his bad periods.
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7" Heaven & Hell the Story of the 45 - The 45 turns 75 this year. Matthew Quinlan charts its history, recalling the RPM wars and two belligerent titans who went into battle over the speed of spinning sound
Someone needs to come and empty the bins behind the Lloyds Bank branch in Kingston-upon-Thames. It’s been raining and flattened cardboard slumps next to a flytipped air conditioning unit and a rusting clothes rack. There are two signs at head height on the red brick wall. One warns that you’ll be clamped if you park here; the other, a stainless-steel plaque, marks Nipper’s 100th birthday. Nipper, the dog at the heart of the HMV and RCA Victor logos, was a white terrier with chocolate brown ears, maybe a Jack Russell, Smooth Fox, or Bull Terrier, more likely a mix. This is his final resting place. He was buried under a mulberry tree but, you know, urban sprawl, progress, etc. The plaque was unveiled by the Chairman of HMV Stores on 15 August 1984, while Captain Sensible, Janice Long, and a Nipper doppelganger looked on. Round the corner, at HMV and Our Price, George Michael’s Careless Whisper was flying off the shelves, and every copy turned at 45 RPM.
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THE TORTURED SHOPPER'S DEPARTMENT
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Young American
A serendipitous collaboration with David Bowie in 1974 kick-started Luther Vandross' recording career. But he still faced an uphill struggle to succeed as a solo artist. Charles Waring talks to some of the singer's most trusted collaborators about his early years and how he battled to be heard....
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EXACTLY 45 YEARS AGO, CRASS, THE ANARCHIST ACTIVIST COLLECTIVE, WERE FINISHING PIVOTAL SECOND ALBUM, STATIONS OF THE CRASS.
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David Cassidy was arguably the biggest solo star of the immediate post-Beatles era, yet his fame as well as his boyish good looks and extracurricular excessesovershadow the excellence of his breathily intimate, musically accomplished records. Simon Goddard, RC contributor and author of an acclaimed series of books on David Bowie, hails the work of the tortured pop idol
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There's little sign of slowing down from the 19-year-old Pete Townshend. Currently on the go: multi-media project The Age Of Anxiety; a dance production of Quadrophenia; and Pete Townshend Live In Concert 1985-2001, a 14-disc boxset of his solo in-concert recordings. Not, he admits, that his every whim and fancy are worth deeper exploration. \"Some of them are good ideas, some of them are pretty dumb,\"
