Fragments Of A Rainy Season

John Cale's powerful voice, masterful musicianship, and songwriting chops provide a complete introduction to an underestimated genius.

Ask any seasoned music fan what his/her favorite solo album to come from the Velvet Underground is, and you’re almost assured to hear the name of a Lou Reed album as the answer spoken back. That’s a perfectly reasonable outcome.

After all, Reed had fronted the Velvets for virtually the entirety of their existence. Furthermore, his persona was the driving force behind the Velvet Underground, especially after the departure of Nico, and the influence of Andy Warhol had faded a bit.

Albums like Transformer, New York, or Rock n’ Roll Animal, if we’re accepting live submissions are all superb choices. That trio of records summarizes so much of what is great about Lou Reed. They are also in my mind, lacking the bona fides to claim the top spot.

For my money, John Cale’s Fragments Of A Rainy Season is the live album to best sum up the finest output of the post-Velvets years. It is Cale’s finest work, showcasing him as a masterful musician, and a tremendously gifted songwriter. It is also the recording that best showcases his powerful, distinctive voice.

Lou Reed and John Cale began making music together in the early months of 1965. The pair had met through mutual friend and guitarist, Sterling Morrison who would join them as co-founder of their new band, The Velvet Underground.

Cale had been trained from an early age as a classical musician. He played piano, viola, and a host of other instruments. In the Velvets, the band made use of his viola and its angular, shrieking tones. He also covered bass guitar duties in the band.

The first two Velvet Underground albums are still shockingly bold nearly 60 years after their first release. This is due in large part to the avant-garde musicality of Cale, and the unorthodox songwriting, arrangements, and vocal delivery of Lou Reed. One need only to juxtapose the Velvets latter two excellent, but somewhat monochromatic records without Cale, to the vibrant, diverse, and sometimes even grating albums they made with him.

Brian Eno is alleged to have said that “The first Velvet Underground album only sold 10,000 copies, but everyone who bought it formed a band.”

John Cale was an enormous part of the reason why the first record was so massively influential. The combination of Reed’s relentless and graphic songs of the New York underbelly combined with Cale’s wild musical explorations made for a record with seismic implications.

Reed for his part began to get territorial about the Velvets and pushed Cale out the door. There are varying versions of the exit as told by the involved parties, but it seems that everyone involved knew that it was time for Cale to make his exit. According to Robert Quine, a New York guitarist and friend of the band, “Cale's ideas were just too out there. [Lou] was trying to make the band more accessible.”

Upon his departure from the Velvet Underground, John Cale got straight to work on a pair of different fronts. First, he began work on his excellent debut album, Vintage Violence. That album, recorded quickly with a collection of studio ringers is a jaunty slice of surprisingly fun mid-tempo country-rock that feels as if it had been recorded at a weekend cabin retreat with friends.

Cale’s other primary pursuit was working as an in-demand producer. He jumped into the studio with acts like The Stooges, Patti Smith, Brian Eno, Nick Drake, and more. Through this production work, Cale was able to take greater risks with his own musical ambitions. As he earned a nice living on the points of the records he produced, he set about creating a rich and dense discography.

In the space of just six years, 1970-1975, John Cale released eight different records as a solo act, or as part of a collaboration. His five studio “rock” records over that timeframe are a sonic wonder to behold. Fueled by creative ambition, an insatiable desire for new sounds, and a very powerful drug habit, Cale unleashed a lifetime’s worth of work in the space of half a decade.

In that stretch there was also a live record featuring Nico and various members of English art rock’s high guard, as well as a collaboration with the American minimalist composer, Terry Riley. Cale also made his own album of classical compositions that he released in 1972, The Academy In Peril.

Each of Cale’s albums up to 1975 have their own innate charms. There is the high art of the classical work and the leather-clad sleaze at work in the grooves of 1975’s Slow Dazzle. Cale also manages to be at home combining chamber pop, Little Richard, Welsh literature, and the avant-garde.

For all of the greatness of each of those individual albums, most notably the sublime Paris 1919, the best introduction to the genius of John Cale is through his one-man solo album, Fragments Of A Rainy Season.

Recorded in Belgium in April of 1992, the entirety of the performance is John Cale’s voice, a piano or guitar, and a concert hall at rapt attention. To begin the performance Cale emerges in a fashionable quasi-tuxedo replete with black tails and a high collared white shirt. The performer sits after rigidly bowing to the audience. He introduces the triptych of tunes that will begin the evening and the show commences.

His hands furiously pounding at the keyboard, Cale’s booming voice transforms his greatest songs into their most essential bits. This process of paring to foundational elements brings the true power of Cale and his songs to the fore.

In vivid detail, our baritone narrator weaves us through tales of sharing tea with the author Graham Greene and making small talk with the Queen. We venture to the plains of the American Southwest for a cattle drive, and experience a religious awakening in the south, a world full of snake-handlers and revivalists.

Dylan Thomas’ work is transformed as Cale turns the great Welsh poet’s words into lyrics for a series of plaintive, brilliant songs. In channeling the words of Thomas, Cale connects us and himself with his own Welsh upbringing, which was not without difficulty.

Cale was molested by a local Anglican priest, as well as by a male music teacher. His father was a coal miner and his mother taught primary school. It was largely a life of meager means and minimal opportunity. Eventually, music would provide Cale with an escape. He began studying with The National Youth Orchestra of Wales at the age of 13, and was later admitted to London College on a music scholarship.

The entire performance of Fragments Of A Rainy Season is nothing shy of stunning. After each listen to any of Cale’s recorded work I wonder how he is not the household name that Lou Reed is. Certainly Reed’s output, style, and influence are all well-earned, but what of John Cale?

Here is a man who helped to found the same band that Reed has taken almost sole credit for. Additionally, a case can be made that through 1975, Cale’s solo work is better. Shock!

I’ll say it again, Cale’s 70’s output is better than Reed’s output from the same era. Perhaps John Cale did nothing quite as remarkable as Transformer, but that was largely a tweak on Reed’s already established persona.

Cale, when he exited the Velvets, had no real public persona, or reputation to speak of at all. In the wake of his firing, he produced a string of very good to great albums that deftly painted by a master working comfortably with a very large palette. There is no better document of proof to this case than the strength of the songs, and the performances on Fragments Of A Rainy Season.

Despite being a man alone onstage, we are still privy to the fury of his bombastic original, ‘Fear (Is A Man’s Best Friend)’; Cale walloping his way through the song and howling the refrain in animalistic fashion. There is also the haunting, epic rendition of ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ that will forever change your view of that song.

There is of course, one cover version on Fragments that is the proverbial elephant in the room; Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’

Recorded before the Jeff Buckley version that would make the song (in)famous, John Cale’s gorgeous rendition of the Leonard Cohen classic is beautiful despite how overplayed the tune may have become in the intervening years. Eschewing the angelic tones of Buckley, Cale resonates his deep and lumbering voice across Cohen’s brilliant lyrics. If Leonard Cohen had a voice in his head when he wrote ‘Hallelujah’, it might as well have sounded like John Cale.

In 20 songs, and a shade more than one hour, John Cale takes the listener on a voyage across his discography, showing off his musical proficiency, his detailed songs, and his unique and powerful voice.

Fragments Of A Rainy Season is both an introduction to, and a celebration of the genius that is John Cale. It is also, the very best solo release by anyone ever involved with the Velvet Underground. Shock!

Cheers,
Matty C