John Davies Cale OBE (born 9 March 1942) is a Welsh musician, composer, and record producer who was a founding member of the American rock band the Velvet Underground.

Since leaving the band in 1968, Cale has released seventeen solo studio albums, including the widely acclaimed Paris 1919 (1973) and Music for a New Society (1982).

Cale has also acquired a reputation as an adventurous record producer, working on the debut studio albums of several influential artists, including the Stooges and Patti Smith.

[10][13][better source needed] Cale would later attribute Cage's writings with his own "relaxed" artistic outlook, having hitherto been raised to believe that European composers were obliged to justify their work.

[10] Although this failed to manifest, the tape was disseminated throughout the UK underground over the following eighteen months by such figures as producer Joe Boyd and Mick Farren of the Deviants.

As a result, the Deviants, the Yardbirds and David Bowie had all covered Velvet Underground songs prior to the release of their debut studio album in 1967.

[14] The very first commercially available recording of the Velvet Underground, an instrumental track called "Loop" given away with the Pop Art issue of Aspen magazine, was a feedback experiment written and conducted by Cale.

Cale has favorably compared the dissonance of his Velvet Underground compositions to the indecipherable lyricism of certain strains of Southern hip hop: "If I can use out-of-tune stuff, [rappers] don't need words to make sense.

After leaving the Velvet Underground, Cale worked as a record producer and arranger on a number of studio albums, most notably the Stooges' highly influential 1969 self-titled debut and a trilogy by Nico, including The Marble Index (1968), Desertshore (1970) and The End...

He appeared on Drake's second studio album, Bryter Layter (1971), playing viola and harpsichord on "Fly" and piano, organ, and celesta on "Northern Sky".

His debut studio album, Vintage Violence (1970), is a lushly produced roots rock effort indebted to a range of disparate influences, including the Band, Leonard Cohen, the Byrds, Phil Spector and Brian Wilson.

A trilogy of studio albums – Fear (1974), Slow Dazzle (1975), and Helen of Troy (1975) – were rapidly recorded and released over the course of about a year with other Island artists, including Phil Manzanera and Brian Eno of Roxy Music and Chris Spedding, who played in his live band.

A showpiece of his concerts from the era was his radically transformed cover version of Elvis Presley's "Heartbreak Hotel",[10] initially performed by Cale on Slow Dazzle (1975) and the live album June 1, 1974, recorded with Kevin Ayers, Nico and Eno.

During one concert in Croydon, south London, Cale chopped the head off a dead chicken with a meat cleaver, leading his band to walk offstage in protest.

[10][9] Also in 1979, Cale played piano and the ARP synthesizer on the track "Bastard" by Ian Hunter of Mott the Hoople, on his fourth solo studio album You're Never Alone with a Schizophrenic.

The band on that recording includes Ivan Král (best known for his work with Patti Smith) on bass and longtime Brian Eno associate Judy Nylon providing vocals, and narrating.

[33] In 1992, he performed vocals on two songs, "Hunger" and "First Evening", on French composer and record producer Hector Zazou's concept album, Sahara Blue.

In 1994, Cale performed a spoken-word duet with folk rock singer Suzanne Vega on the song "The Long Voyage" on Zazou's studio album Chansons des mers froides.

The record featured appearances by Talking Heads' David Byrne,[10] the Soldier String Quartet, and original Velvet Underground drummer Moe Tucker.

[34] The concert was shown on Dutch national television and featured a song specially composed for the event and still unreleased, "Murdering Mouth", sung in duet with Siouxsie and her second band the Creatures.

[35] Cale and Siouxsie then did a double bill tour in the US for two months from late June until mid-August,[36] both artists collaborating on stage on several songs including a version of the Velvet Underground's "Venus in Furs".

[39] In 2002, Cale played piano and sang vocals on the track "Don't Pretend" by Gordon Gano of Violent Femmes, from his debut solo studio album Hitting the Ground.

Cale has continued to work with other artists, contributing viola to Replica Sun Machine, the Danger Mouse-produced second studio album by London alternative pop trio the Shortwave Set and producing the second studio album of American indie band Ambulance LTD. On 11 October 2008, Cale hosted an event to pay tribute to Nico called Life Along the Borderline in celebration of what, five days later, would have been her 70th birthday.

Cale represented Wales at the 2009 Venice Biennale exhibition, collaborating with artists, filmmakers, and poets, and focusing the artwork on his relationship with the Welsh language.

[citation needed] In January 2010, Cale was invited to be the first Eminent Art in Residence (EAR) at the Mona Foma festival curated by Brian Ritchie of the Violent Femmes held in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia.

[51] In July 2016, Cale performed the songs "Valentine's Day", "Sorrow" and "Space Oddity" at a late-night BBC Prom concert at the Royal Albert Hall in London, celebrating the music of David Bowie who had died earlier that year.

At the 2017 Grammy Salute to Music Legends ceremony, Cale performed with, amongst others, Moe Tucker, two Velvet Underground classics, "Sunday Morning" and "I'm Waiting for the Man".

Cale played synthesizers, bass guitar, piano and drums on the track assisted by Mars Volta drummer Deantoni Parks and guitarist Dustin Boyer.

At the ceremony, Cale, Reed, and Tucker performed a song titled "Last Night I Said Goodbye to My Friend", dedicated to Sterling Morrison, who had died the previous August due to non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

[77] For his 2004 appearance on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs Cale chose "She Belongs to Me" by Bob Dylan as his favourite track; he also selected Repetition (2001) by Alain Robbe-Grillet as his chosen book and an espresso coffee machine as his luxury item.