AUTEUR TO AUTHOR

Luke Haines writes the shuk out of rock'n'roll Cale'n'arty

- Luke Haines

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.