Music Reissues Weekly: John Cale - The Academy in Peril, Paris 1919, Fear, Slow Dazzle, Helen of Troy

The return to shops of a consecutive sequence of five of John Cale's Seventies albums through different labels is undoubtedly coincidental. All have been previously reissued multiple times and none are scarce in any form. Anyone wanting any of these albums presumably already has a copy. Nonetheless, it’s good that these makeovers sustain the profile of Cale’s idiosyncratic take on art-rock.

The Academy in Peril was originally issued in July 1972. Cale’s third solo album after his 1968 departure from The Velvet Underground, it followed-up March 1970’s Vintage Violence and April 1971’s Terry Riley collaboration Church of Anthrax. The Academy in Peril was released by US label Reprise, where its predecessors were on the also-American Columbia. Following The Academy in Peril there were February 1973’s Paris 1919 (on Reprise again), Fear (October 1974, on the UK’s Island label), Slow Dazzle (March 1975, also Island) and Helen of Troy (November 1975, his last for Island and last studio album until 1981). Cale’s calling card with Island had been his 1970 studio work with Nick Drake, who was signed to the label. As well as the individual reissues, the three Island albums are gathered together in the smart, three-CD clamshell box set Ship Of Fools – The Island Albums.

To a degree, then, Helen of Troy, the latest of these reissues, marks the point after which Cale retreated from being a solo artist for a while. It is a marker. As is Paris 1919: Cale’s last album for an American label (until the 1980s) where its follow-ups Fear, Slow Dazzle and Helen of Troy were UK stimulated. In the Island period, he linked-in with the Kevin Ayers, Eno, Phil Manzanera art-rock crowd while working on-and-off with his former Velvets band-mate Nico. Along with the doubtless motivating success of his other former VU colleague Lou Reed, all these signifiers are integral to the ebb and flow of the five albums which have been reissued.

At the time they were released, the music press lacked a clear stance on Cale and his albums. Reviewing The Academy in Peril (pictured below left) in October 1972, Melody Maker concluded “Cale is an artist of some significance, but too often this album appears as eccentric doodling.” In May 1973, Sounds was less havering in its consideration of Paris 1919: “This latest offering is exactly what I thought we would never hear from Cale again – an album of songs which, for lack of a better definition, just fall into the rock bag. This is a brilliant and indispensable album.”

In its November 1974 review of Fear, Let It Rock said “Cale has the voice of a chameleon. He can adapt to the disco-funk of 'Barracuda,' the balladry of 'Ship of Fools,' the middle-of-the-road sing-along ' The Man Who Couldn’t Afford to Orgy,' and even do Elvis impersonations on 'Momamma Scuba.' It’s never great singing but his deadpan Welsh-American accent gives it just the right edge. His music has broadened its range whilst also sounding more pared-down. It's self-evident from Paris 1919 and Fear that Cale's work is more original and more enjoyable than the albums being put out by a dozen better-known artists. The only question is...is anybody listening?”

Slow Dazzle was reviewed by NME in May 1975. The album, it was declared, “proves beyond doubt that he is master of many styles, some acceptable, some may drain the listener completely. Now more than ever Cale is mining a rich vein of personal honesty that transcends almost all of his potential competitors. There again with so many lightweights making albums which are either good, bad or merely indifferent, can we do without his specialised idiosyncrasy? I doubt it.”

Cale’s live shows of 1975 generated some comment. For NME in November 1975, who saw him play Amsterdam, he was “too self-consciously caught up in the persona of The Thinking Man's Rock Star, a little too much the Professional Poet. [Yet you] rapidly you forget the possible academicism of the evening and simply get into the music as highly erudite hard commercial rock.” Seeing him later that month in London, Melody Maker said “Musically, Cale's songs have duration without shape, being a predictable series of portentous minor chords with two possible speeds: fast or slow. One notes the points where hip approval is considered appropriate: the entrance in all-white fencing kit, like a refugee from Dr. Who, the ‘urban menace’ implicit in donning shades when he removes the face mask. No doubt the businessmen who profit from thinking about these things have assessed that there's a big market for his brand of stoned pseudery, but this shouldn't blind us to the fact, despite all the ‘creative listening’ he invites, that Cale is little more than the hip man's Black Sabbath.” If there was a “big market,” it wasn’t recognised by his label Island who released their last John Cale record that month.

A striking selection of descriptions, all applied to John Cale over 1972 to 1975. Clearly, getting a handle on him was tough.

Listening to The Academy in Peril, Paris 1919, Fear, Slow Dazzle and Helen of Troy in the order they were released underlines why there wasn’t – and couldn’t be – a quorum of opinion on Cale. The Academy in Peril opens with the instrumental “The Philosopher,” a rootsy blues chug with New Orleans-style brass, percussive orchestration and Cale’s viola to the fore. Next, “Brahms” is a pacific solo piano showcase (nowadays, it would be categorised as “post-classical”). After this, “Legs Larry at Television Centre,” a chamber piece with vaguely 18th-century style strings and toe-curlingly awful spoken interjections from The Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band’s Legs Larry Smith. Paris 1919 kicks off with the lovely “Child’s Christmas in Wales,” a melodic showcase for Cale’s voice which comes across as what Pearls Before Swine could have been were they aiming for the mainstream. Third up, the doleful “Hanky Panky Nohow” which, despite its silly lyrics, points to some of what Spiritualized would later do. Despite this and the rollicking throwaway “Macbeth,” Paris 1919 works as a distinctive, baroque-leaning singer-songwriter album.

Next out, for UK buyers, Fear has its off moments: the chugging “Barracuda” and the silly duo of the Beach Boys-esque “The Man Who Couldn't Afford to Orgy” and the verging-on-novelty album closer “Momamma Scuba.” Nonetheless, the album is an edgier counterpart to Paris 1919. Slow Dazzle begins with the extraordinary Brian Wilson tribute “Mr Wilson” and includes a series of songs which now sound like instant classics: “Taking it All Away,” the foul-mouthed “Guts” and the Velvets-indebted “The Jeweller.” The album’s pivotal version of “Heartbreak Hotel” reuses the structure and riff from the previous album’s “Momamma Scuba.”

Helen of Troy is less assured. Despite largely cleaving to the style of the previous two albums, the presence of the fantastic title track, “Cable Hogue," "I Keep a Close Watch," "Leaving it up to You" and the monumental cover of The Modern Lovers' (who Cale had produced) "Pablo Picasso," it is less memorable overall. Its sound is thin, and too centred on a foregrounded rock guitar. Coming so soon after the release of Slow Dazzle may have meant Cale's eye was off the ball. Equally, producing Patti Smith’s debut album Horses in the run-up to his own release may have been another contributory factor to album's lack of poise.

In essence, across all the albums Cale sounds as if he hadn’t settled on what he was, or what he could be. In comparison, Lou Reed had an iron grip on this. Pigeonholing the Cale of this period is tough: he sounds like a less theatrical, more stentorian Pete Hammill with brutalist leanings counterpointed by sometimes irritating whimsy. By early 1976, Cale was no longer with Island and could take stock. Helen of Troy was a full stop of sorts. Cale’s next studio album was March 1981’s Honi Soit. Between the two, he could have overtly capitalised on punk’s burgeoning upsurge but didn’t coherently do so.

Indeed he could have, as he was consequential to punk through his membership of the Velvet Underground and his production of the first Stooges album. Just before Helen of Troy was out, he produced Patti Smith’s late 1975 debut album Horses, and intermittently appeared with her live. In 1977 and 1978, he produced UK bands The Cortinas, Menace, Sham 69 and Squeeze. British live shows in 1977 – at which he chopped the heads off chickens – had punk-scene support bands (The Clash were meant to support him, but pulled out). He was active as punk got going, but didn't firmly stake his claim. All he released between 1975’s Helen of Troy and 1979’s stop-gap live Sabotage/Live album was 1977’s Animal Justice EP. Although he didn’t blatantly engage with it, it’s fair to wonder if the three Island albums helped lay the table for punk. Listening to them, notwithstanding his penchant for increasingly stripped-down band arrangements and his use of swearing, it is hard to make a case that the crop of 1976 and 1977 were paying attention.

The reissue of The Academy in Peril comes with the bonus track “Temper”, which first surfaced on the indispensible 1980 compilation Troublemakers. The new Paris 1919 is supplemented with a second disc of very interesting, previously unheard outtakes and “Fever Dream 2024: You’re a Ghost,” a terrific new Cale recording where he obliquely reflects on the period. Fear, Slow Dazzle and Helen of Troy are straight vinyl reissues (selling for around £30 each). For those whose budget doesn’t stretch to premium-price vinyl reissues of albums of which original pressings can be picked up for around half the price, the latter three – the Island albums – are collected in the Ship Of Fools – The Island Albums box set (£25) which also includes the bonus tracks from previous CD reissues of each album. Start with the box as a taster, then wind back to Paris 1919 (though be aware the new double-LP version sells for around £45) and, finally, try out the hit and mostly-miss The Academy in Peril (around £38 for the vinyl).

A bumper bundle of John Cale then. More than enough to justify the more positive contemporaneous assessments of him as “brilliant and indispensable,” and “an artist of some significance” with “the voice of a chameleon” who is a “master of many styles” trading in – above all – “specialised idiosyncrasy.”

• Next week: John Leyton's Lone Rider- The Holloway Road Sessions 1960-62. Straight from the master tapes, three CDs of the "Johnny Remember Me" man's Joe Meek productions as never heard before
  
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