Sedition and Alchemy: A Biography of John Cale

by Tim Mitchell

Written with the full cooperation of John Cale and incorporating exclusive interviews with important figures from all phases of the musician's 35-year career, this new biography by Tim Mitchell, author of There's Something About Jonathan: Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers, explores the man who has successfully transcended the boundaries between classical and popular music. Cale's music--from the Velvet Underground onwards--has been a series of passionate assaults on accepted musical forms, and his processes of deconstruction and reconstruction are illustrated by detailed accounts of his albums, live shows, and relationships with other artists, such as La Monte Young, Brian Eno, and Lou Reed. Exhaustively researched, this work includes the first full discography of Cale's work to date and many never before seen photographs.

Genres: Music, Biography, Nonfiction

214 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

Reviews

[John Savory · Rating 4 out of 5]

a good read, not a great one, but it had the cooperation of Cale himself. since there are so few books on John Cale, i'm not complaining :)

[Michael Brown · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is great that this biography of John Cale exists. As a chronicle of his life, it's full of interesting detail, the author Tim Mitchell paying careful attention to projects great and small along the way. In a literary move reminiscent of the music being discussed, Mitchell also strews the text with vaguely connected historical facts in different typefaces to the main text. Perhaps intended to stimulate thought, they were a little distracting, though I liked them as a poetic touch.

Plus there's a discography (pre-2005), including of Cale's production work and exclusive tracks on compilations. So, the book functions almost like a reference work.

That said, there is definitely room for a conventional Cale biography with a more flowing narrative and more searching critical analysis of the music. Until then, this (and Cale's autobiography) will have to do.

[David Mundy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Covers a lot of ground about the twists and turns of this sometimes brilliant musician's career and repeated reinventions, touching on many aspects of musical history over the last several decades. John Cale has been involved in the avant-garde in both rock and classical worlds, and also produced music that's beautiful in simple ways. This is a worthwhile book for those who like his music or are interested in the scenes he's been engaged with.

[Duncan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good overview of Cale's life up until very early 2000's. Not in-depth though and left me still with some questions I had about Cale's life. Possibly these questions were overlooked on purpose since Cale was involved in some degree w/this book and he is a pretty private person despite his celebrity (or maybe because of it). I've never read a Lou Reed bio but in the books I've read on rock and the NYC scene from the 60's - 70's he does come across as a complete a-hole. This book if anything downplays his irascible personality but it still can't help but come through just on his behavior alone. Still this is a Cale bio, not a Reed bio of course, and Cale's negative aspects come across loud and clear. His drunken & drugged up antics from the 70's were not only acts of offensive sabotage to those around him but also undercut his own career and relationships. In the 80's Cale does get better, never going to rehab or AA meetings though, Cale with the birth of his kid seemed to just make a conscious decision to stop doing cocaine and drinking, becoming a daily squash player of all things. Musically, it's hard to describe Cale's sometimes esoteric rock and avant-garde music, I only know a few albums of his (along with all the Velvet Underground stuff) and was on safe ground when the writer talked about those but trying to decipher what other albums of Cale I'd never heard before through the book is a hopeless activity and I just read through this stuff, not retaining much really, to get to the bits my decaying brain could grasp better. Of course nowadays (book written in 2001) we have youtube where I was able to peruse a lot of some Cale's later work (80's-90's) I'm unfamiliar with.
Like I say, it's a good overview of a brilliant classically trained musician who was very important in the development of rock music in the 60's and 70's. Cale is where punk and prog-rock met and had an unholy baby which I think is best represented in his '74 album, Fear. That last sentence is an opinion of mine, perhaps shared elsewhere by others but not something I took from the book I just read. Anyway, read it if you dig the Velvet Underground, John Cale, rock'n'roll or the NYC art scene of the last decades of the last century, which with each passing day disappears into the fabled mists of time. Oh brother. Long may John Cale live.