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- [00:00]
Ian
Welcome back to Jokerman in Conversation. I'm Ian here today speaking with Mark Doyle, author of the just released book from the 33 and a third series, everyone's favorite little pamphlet size, pocket size books about records that we all know and love. John Cale, Paris 1919. A record that for, you know, longtime listeners of Jokerman podcast needs no introduction, but one that I think for the public at large could still use one. You know, I literally know from our number, our download numbers that the John Cale focused episodes of this program, not typically the most popular ones, not quite as listened to as the Bob Dylan or the Beach Boys shit, but you know, John Cale nonetheless remains just as important and integral an artist to, to us here on the program. And so anytime we see someone out there doing the work, spreading the good word of the Gospel of John, we got to talk to them, we got to help however we can, you know, marshal the Jokerman Mujahideen. Great conversation with Mark. It's a great book. I read the whole thing here in about a day. You know, that's the great thing about the 33 and the thirds, they go by just like that. Short obviously, but dense. You know, this book, there's so many fascinating threads that he manages to pull out of this record, some of which are, you know, reflective of conversations we've had here on this very program, some of which totally entirely brand new to me. A really just, you know, stimulating and fascinating read about a record that I continue to find stimulating and fascinating up until this day and probably will on into the future. Here is Mark on John Paris 1919 and his new book.
- [02:12]
Mark Doyle
Halloween we go.
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Ian
Mark Doyle, author of the I think at the time this episode is coming, the recently released 33 and a third on John Cale's Paris 1919. Not out today as of the day we're speaking, but we're going to time this, we're going to peg it to the pub date. Welcome Mark.
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Mark Doyle
Thank you. Nice to be here.
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Ian
Absolutely. So I don't know, I would guess probably not, but for our listeners at least they're going to be familiar. I don't know if you are familiar but you know, on the, on the Jokerman podcast here we did spend about two solid years talking about literally every single song and record made by Mr. John Davis Kail. And so you know, when we saw this, this book coming out through 33 and a third new, just you know, anyone in the small but passionate squadron army of John Cale defenders, theorizers, thinkers, appreciators, we want to, want to talk to and look out for and do what we can. So that's. That's. It's great to see a fellow member of the Kale tribe here for a conversation.
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Mark Doyle
Yeah, it's not. It's always. Always a welcome opportunity to. To. To preach the gospel of K. Although he wouldn't probably want us putting it that way.
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Ian
He certainly would not, no. And that might explain why we've never managed to rope him into an interview, despite numerous attempts to do so. Did you. It didn't seem like it, but did you get a chance to talk to him for the book? I didn't see any direct quotes from him from a recent interview.
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Mark Doyle
No, I did not, despite numerous attempts to do so.
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So, yeah, we're familiar with that.
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Ian
We're in the same boat.
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Mark Doyle
Yeah.
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I mean, I think, to me, it wasn't.
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It wasn't crucial to do for.
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For the book. I think, you know, he is reluctant.
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To spend a whole lot of time revisiting the past.
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Although, you know, he just did these reissues and he reworks the songs from time to time. But, you know, he. He kind of carefully manages how much time he actually spends looking backwards. He's mostly looking forward, so that'll make sense. And then, you know, I also think that while it would be cool and.
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Probably really intimidating and scary to.
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To meet him, I don't know that.
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There'S much he would say at this point about certainly about the. The making of the book or the influences or the making of the album.
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Paris 1919, or the influence behind the album that he hasn't already said and that he. You know, you sort of. You read enough of these interviews, you realize that over time, people sort of develop a narrative and they've got the story that they tell about the thing, and there's not that sort of the ver. Their version of what happened kind of gets solidified. And it's often somewhat at odds with or not as complex as the actual historical record. So. Sure, yeah. So either way it works out, I think.
- [05:13]
Ian
Absolutely. Yeah. There's this quote, you know, as we speak here. You know, David lynch had just passed about a week ago at this point, and there's this quote, you know, that, you know, is. He gave years ago, obviously, but has been going around again, you know, as all of the appreciations have come out from. I forget what it is verbatim, but it's something like, you know, when you make a movie, the first thing people want to do is like, sit down and talk with you about the movie and, you know, explain what the movie is saying and what choices you made and stuff. And that's the last thing that I want to do because the movie itself is the talking. Like, that's, that's it. And so, you know, especially getting those conversations with the artists themselves, the authors themselves. I think you're exactly right. It's oftentimes less illuminating. Like, even if they are willing to talk about it, which in many cases they aren't for potentially good reasons, it's less illuminating than any sort of conversation had about the art object by an independent party. Right.
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Mark Doyle
Yeah, yeah, because you sort of want to defer to the artist's version of.
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Events or version of, you know, or.
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Interpretations or whatever it is. But that's not necessarily you should be doing. And I don't think that's actually what Cale would be doing, really. Like, I mean, you know, his approach to art and all that sort of thing. I think, you know, the authority of the artist is maybe who should be, in his way of thinking, less important than.
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Yeah.
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The authority of the art itself.
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Ian
Absolutely, absolutely. And that, I think that concept is very clearly felt and heard more specifically on, on this record on Paris 1919, a weird, swirling, amorphous record that you kind of frame around the concept of like or your investigation into it. You frame around the concept of ghosts and of haunting in this book, obviously, I'm not going to ask you to spoil the whole thing and reveal all your secrets without getting people to buy it, you know, available now, but can you just kind of introduce us to any into that reading of this record, how you arrived at it and kind of what, you know, what it revealed to you?
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Mark Doyle
Sure, yeah.
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I mean, the obvious starting point is the refrain of the song Paris 1919, Euros. And I think, as I say in the introduction, this record was something that I came to fairly, I mean, not.
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Late, I was in my 20s.
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But it wasn't something that I grew up with and I encountered through email.
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Newsletter from a record store.
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And, and initially I, I, I came to it with really high expectations. Then I put it on and it didn't grab me immediately. And I, I was expecting, I don't know, I was expecting more yelling, more screeching violas or something. And, and it doesn't have any of that. And I, so I sort of, sort of put it aside, but I found myself going back to it and going back to it in between other records. It was just sort of the default thing that I would put on. And, and so in a sense, it sort of came to haunt me. Like there was something about it that just wouldn't really let me go. And then, yeah, I thought, well, you.
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Know, the ghost thing is there.
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It's in the. It's the most. I don't know, maybe most prominent image that you come across in the midpoint of the album. And so it just seemed like a useful way to. To write the book. I think the way I'm using ghosts in much of the book is really just a way of talking about influences. The way that the Velvet Underground experience sort of continued to shape what Kael was doing years later in la. His experience working with Warhol and Nico and Lou Reed. And then there's a chapter on the ghost of Dylan Thomas, who has haunted.
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Much of Gael's work beyond Paris 1919.
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And he's talked about quite frequent. The ghost of history. As a historian. That's sort of the. That was maybe my. The first chapter that I had conceptualized because, you know, Paris 1919, Paris Peace Conference, and. And all the ghosts that that war sort of created and stirred up.
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And then the.
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The final chapter is the Ghosts of.
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Of Christmas, which.
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Ian
Yeah, fun, but unexpected, you know, left turn there at the end.
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Mark Doyle
Sort of a challenge I set for.
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Myself, or a challenge, I should say.
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My friend Jonathan Briggs said to myself.
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When I was kicking around the idea.
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Of writing the book, he said, well, you could. You should write about how this is a Christmas album.
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And I was like, that's. And it mentions Christmas. But then I got to thinking about it and, you know, and so I.
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Spend some time, you know, making the case that.
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That this album can be heard as a great Christmas album. But it's in, I guess, in the.
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The service of this larger idea that.
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You can hear it as whatever kind.
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Of album you want to.
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You know, I'm really, really careful in the book not to prescribe any readings.
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Not to decode much of the lyrics.
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Not to sort of say, well, this is. You know, he's obviously talking about the.
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Battle of Sebastopol, the Siege of Sebastopol.
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And the Crimean War in 1855. Like, I don't want to prescribe anything.
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And so that the Christmas chapter is.
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Yeah, just a way for me to.
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To have a little fun and encourage others to. To bring their own interpretations to it.
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Ian
Absolutely. It's an inspired take on things, which, you know, obviously, you know, Child's Christmas in Wales is maybe the clearest way into that way of looking at this record. But, you know, you do go through song by song, top to bottom, you know, different, you know, thematic strains. You know, that are tied, more or less, depending on the song, to. To that great holiday we all know and love of Christmas, it. And I think that's perfect for a record like. Like you were just saying, you don't want to prescribe. You don't want to decode here. Someone like John in particular. And this is a question I wanted to ask you a little bit about. Actually, we spent a lot of time on our series when we were talking John, because we did all of the Velvets, we did all of John, we did all of Lou. And kind of looked at the way the two of them worked together as this sort of yin and yang at the beginning. And then the way over their corresponding subsequent solo careers, the way that they kind of moved away from each other in many cases, but then at other points kind of swerved back and kind of intersected in new and unexpected manners. One thing that I think emerged consistently throughout that conversation was like, the style of writing, literally like lyricism between John and Lou. And you make this point in the book as well. Lou's lyrics, brilliant, beautiful, bold. Disturbing in many cases, but sort of tangible. You know, you kind of understand what he's talking about. More often than not, he's dealing with characters, you know, people real or imagined. But you. You know, there's a reality to it pretty much all the way throughout. John's approach towards lyricism, towards writing, is much less. There's a vaporous quality to it, I think. And I think some of that actually comes from the Dylan Thomas influence, which you mentioned. I wonder if you could just kind of talk about your read on John Cale as a. As a lyricist, as a writer in that regard.
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Mark Doyle
Yeah, you know, I think he.
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Immediately after this record came out, he.
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Gave an interview in which he was.
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Sort of complaining about his lyrics and saying, well, you know, I don't feel.
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Like the lyrics are quite there.
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They're not quite.
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Lou. Lou will say, you know, $26 in your hand.
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And that's very precise and very sort of hard.
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And I think for a while, immediately after, or for a few years actually, after he left the Velvets, he was.
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Kind of going for that.
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And I think you get some of.
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That in Vintage Violence.
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You get some of that. You know, there's a little bit of.
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Sort of Lou Reed, like, storytelling in.
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Something, like in some of the tracks on Fear, the. It's not a. What's the. The one where he says the word orgy wrong?
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Ian
Yes. Yes.
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Mark Doyle
Yeah. You know, there's a few kind of moments when you can Actually hear him.
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Kind of going for that more sort.
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Of just narrative style, even though with his own little twist. But I think, you know, the point I make, and he's made repeatedly with.
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Regard to Dylan Thomas, is that Dylan.
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Thomas's lyric poetry, especially the early stuff.
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Doesn'T make any sense.
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Like it just. It's words for the sound, for the sound of them. And Cale has said, you know, what drew me to Dylan Thomas from when.
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I was young, growing up in Wales.
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You know, he's part of the curriculum was not really the meaning, it was just the sounds. And you know, that he talked about.
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Later in the 90s, actually, in the.
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80S and the 90s, when he was trying to set some of Dylan Thomas's music poems to music.
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Ian
Words for the Dying. Yeah, yeah.
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Mark Doyle
And I think an opera that he was planning to do at some point in the 80s, and it didn't come off anyway. He, you know, he said it was so hard because these, these poems have.
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Their own internal noise that like, that.
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Was just clashing with the music that I was trying to create around it. It didn't need the music or they, they weren't fitting with the music. And so I think that's how he approaches, especially on this album on Paris 1919. You know, it's words for the sake of their sounds. There might be some narrative that he has in mind. This is, you know, this is also the, the era when Bowie's doing his cut up methods and it's got kind.
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Of that quality to it.
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Too little of things that might make sense if you cut them up and.
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Put them in different order than he.
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Has done with the lyrics. So, yeah, I mean, I think what.
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All that speaks to is several things.
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One is the influence of Thomas. Second would be the attempt to write songs like Lou Reed, but failing, interestingly to do so, right? Failing rewardingly, like Lou Reed. And then his, you know, his brain.
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He's a music first guy, right?
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Lou Reed, I think was a words first guy. You know, you write down the words and then. And the music will be whatever it'll be. But Kael, you know, he thinks and breathes music.
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And so it makes sense that he.
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Would treat words like music rather than words with, you know, as conveyors of meaning.
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Ian
It kind of strikes me as like a, like a midway point, John's writing style between someone like Louis and then someone like another collaborator of John's, Brian Eno, who I think Eno in particular has made, especially with the oblique strategies and stuff. He's made it very clear the Few pop records that he's ever really made with traditional verses and songwriting. The meaning of those words, it might as well be Lego pieces that you're just snapping together in arbitrary fashion. It's really about, you know, the feeling and the sound and the way that the words kind of reinforce the musical. Musical movements, musical emotion, whatever. And John, I think, you know, you get some of that with him certainly at certain points on records. But at the same time, you know, I think that there is that influence from Lou, which I think you point out here as well. Like he, you know, like you said, trying to. Trying to write like Lou, but failing to do so, but in his own unique, ultimately successful, John Cale esque way. You know, these songs are kind of hard to grasp and really, you know, get to the bottom of certainly on a line by line basis. But at the same time, you know, I do feel like, you know, to take the most famous example from this record, you know, you're a ghost. Like there is like. That conjures something very specific in my mind that I feel like when John was writing, whether or not he wanted it to conjure one particular image or, you know, just kind of have the potentiality of a series of different images for listeners, it. I don't know, there is more of a. Like an emotional kind of reaction to a song like that than I get on, like I was saying, a lot of the Brian Eno type of records where it's. It's really just, you know, gobbledygook type of language.
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Mark Doyle
Yeah, yeah. You know, I think there's. There's a.
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Maybe a connection there with John Cage.
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As well, who, you know, was a.
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Major influence early on in Cal's time in New York. And actually before he came to New.
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York, John Cage, like Brian Eno, I think is maybe even.
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Is less interest, was less interested in music than in sound.
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You know, let's just sort of create.
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Some sort of randomized process for creating.
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Sound or in, you know, in some cases just silence and let the ambient noise be the.
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Be the performance.
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But part of what Cage, I think, was trying to remove from the construction of music or the writing of music was like human will or human intent and lot of. I don't know. Have you seen the new Brian Eno documentary?
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Ian
I haven't, no, but I've intended to the one where whenever they play it, it's like a different sequence or like a different order of the movie. Right?
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Mark Doyle
Yeah, I saw it here at a.
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Screening in Nashville with the filmmaker and he said, you know, had Long resisted any effort to make a documentary about him. The only reason he agreed was because we were using this technology that basically, I don't know, he filmed so many hours, hundreds of hours of. Or he had so many hundreds of hours of archival footage, plus recorded interviews with Eno. And it just sort of remixes it.
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Every single time it's played.
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Ian
Right.
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Mark Doyle
Machine. And there are certain scenes that are always there, but most of it is. Is random. And that's. I mean, that's sort of Eno's ethos. Right.
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Ian
It's a very Eno approach towards making a movie about Brian Eno.
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Mark Doyle
Right.
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And. And that's sort of what John Cage was. Some of the earlier Dadais, Marcel Duchamp.
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Experiment, that sort of thing too, like, take the human will out of the. Of the. Of the stuff. And I think Kale is drawn to that.
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But also part of what makes this.
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Record especially, I think, successful is that there is, you know, there's an artist at work, there's a vision, there's a.
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World that he's trying to create.
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You don't know what it is. You know, it means something. And part of the fun of listening to it over and over and over and over is. And it's. It is. You know, I think it's the perfect.
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Example of the record that you just.
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Every time you put it on, you hear something new is you don't know.
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What he's getting at, but there's something. Or you can just invent your own.
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But it's. It's, yeah, like this kind of midway point between Lou, who is, you know, telling you exactly what's going on and telling you what it smells like and what it feels like, and. And somebody like, you know, or Cage, who are not interested in prescribing any sort of meaning.
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Oh, tell a man to cry oh.
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My.
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Field Marshall now feel Marshall wept away.
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Ian
Again I wonder on that. On that note, you know, listening to the record endlessly, you make this point several times in the book. You listen to it endlessly, and you always feel like you kind of come away with a new discovery or have you. I would assume the answer to this question is yes. But the recent reissue, you know, of Paris, which I think came out, you know, a couple months ago at this point. Have you spent a lot of time listening to that?
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Mark Doyle
I haven't spent a lot of time.
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I've listened to a little bit of it here and there. And I think some of what was re. Released was also on the 2006 CD re release.
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Yes, The Drone Mix of hanky panky, know how, which I could listen to all day actually. It's beautiful. It's amazing.
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So I've listened to it a little.
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Bit, but not exhaustively sure.
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Ian
If you have any comments to offer and if you don't, that's fine. But we talked about it on the pod a couple months ago or weeks ago at this point and to me it's a really remarkable job of cleaning up that record, of cleaning up Paris and you know, kind of, I don't know, distinguishing between the different. Like everything really feels, you know, separate and kind of intentional and not that Paris ever sounded, you know, muddy and compressed and kind of one dimensional but, you know, ab testing the two of them, you do get the sense of, I don't know, things are more mushed down, kind of swirled together on the original actual record. And so from a technical standpoint, I find the new reissue just very impressive on that level alone that they were able to pull the pieces apart this cleanly and present it in high definition, 4K, so to speak. But at the same, I almost kind of feel like at the same time I kind of miss a little bit of that kind of muddier, almost more like watercolor type sound to the record from the original release. I don't know, it's a fascina, know, kind of question or conundrum, you know, the original intentional or the original unintentional presentation of this record where it maybe didn't come out quite as clean as they wanted it to versus this new like master, you know, masterful representation probably using you know, AI and advanced software and stuff. But like it. It's almost too clean at a certain point, you know.
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Mark Doyle
That's interesting. Yeah.
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I haven't listened to the new one on good enough equipment to.
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To have caught, you know, to really appreciated the cleaning up. But I mean, I know what you're saying. I think the muddy.
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Well, it's not muddy but the watercolor.
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Nature of the original, it makes it feel like a sort of this little self contained world. It's like settling into an old, dusty.
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Old armchair that kind of smells like pipe smoke.
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And you know, it feels like you are entering that this sort of antique.
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Europe between the wars or Europe just.
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After the war kind of kind of realm. And yeah, if it were too clean that you wouldn't get that. But yeah, you just get a different experience and it would be equally interesting.
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And valid and it might just be.
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That we know the originals and that's what we're comfortable with and the new Little. Feels a little awkward, but, yeah, I'll have to. Have to spend more time. I don't have it on vinyl. I'll have to. To get the new reissues soon.
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Ian
Sure, yeah. I mean, certainly a worthwhile effort and just based alone on, like, you know, taking this landmark record and cleaning it up and kind of, you know, putting some money behind it and getting it out there, you know, kind of trying to burnish its reputation a little bit. Totally great. Admirable. But I just. It's. I found myself, you know, kind of, like I said, pining for a little bit of the antique quality a little bit. And I mean, per your last statement here, you know, Europe between the wars, or Europe just after the war, obviously, this record, Paris 1919, conjures a very specific place and time in its title. Its title literally is just a place and a time. And you bring to that whatever, you know, whatever you do, you know, today. I don't know. I don't know what the standard kind of cultural awareness of things like the Paris Peace Conference and the Great War, as it was called back then, is, but for me, I'm sort of a amateur World War I nut. So when I discovered this record, it kind of just really tweaked me in a way that almost no other record ever has. And you're a historian yourself?
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Mark Doyle
Yes.
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Ian
Yeah. What areas of history are you focused on?
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Mark Doyle
My background. My training is In Irish history. 19th century Irish history. I did my dissertation on sectarian violence, Protestant Catholic violence in Belfast, in Ireland, in the middle of the 19th century. But I came to this record while I was in grad school and, of.
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Course, studying other things and teaching other things.
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And, yeah, I bought it kind of expecting something about the review I had read made me think it was like a concept album about the peace conference, about World War I.
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Ian
Right.
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Mark Doyle
And that was kind of what drew me in. And it's not good. You know, it's a good thing that it's not. But that was part. Part of my initial disappointment was like, well, I want, you know, let's.
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Let's talk about the battle of song here.
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Ian
Yeah, let's get it. Let's get a song about Lloyd George.
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Mark Doyle
Right? And, you know, there are plenty of.
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Actually pretty good songs about World War I. I was just listening to one recently, earlier this morning, the Zombies album Odyssey. And Oracle has.
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Ian
Sure.
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Mark Doyle
Forget what it's called. But anyway, yeah, I. I think in.
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The chapter where I. I address the.
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History and kind of what Paris 1919 was. I think Cale has said that while he was writing the songs.
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It was 1972.
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He was looking at the, you know, the.
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The Cold War and how had we.
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Gotten to this point and, you know, the threat of nuclear war was ever present and the war in Vietnam was still going on. And he's like, well, the. The origin point is.
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Is Paris 1919, this peace conference that was meant to end the war, but.
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Really just kind of prolonged it and made it. Have made there be a part two and then a Cold War and. And all the rest of it.
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And so he was sort of, you know, thinking about.
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He's. He's somebody who pays a lot of.
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Attention to the news and global politics.
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You can see that in the. The books that he reads. He talks a lot about Graham Green and John Le Carre and others, you know, spy fiction, and is very interested in military technologies and all these things. So I think he had that in mind.
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I don't know that. He definitely also had in mind the fact that Paris in 1919 did help to give birth to the Dada movement.
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This artistic rejection of the values that.
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The artists felt had led Europe into this destructive war.
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This kind of howl of artistic rage against bourgeois. The rationality and conformity and so on. So I don't know that that was.
- [27:57]
The case, but that you can trace a definite.
- [28:00]
From that artistic moment in Paris 19, 19, 20, into, you know, through New.
- [28:07]
York in the 50s and 60s to. To John Cale himself.
- [28:10]
So I think it's. If. If he didn't have that artistic movement in mind in Paris 1919, it was somewhere lurking, haunting his thought process, probably.
- [28:24]
And.
- [28:25]
And it's definitely plays a role in so much of what he's written and recorded.
- [28:31]
Ian
Totally, yeah. I mean, the fascination with militarism and espionage and all that type of shit. I mean, you see that in so many of his records. I think you call it out in the book, like the song Mercenaries very clearly. Some of the songs on Caribbean Sunset, Model Beirut Recital, some of the shit on Ony Soie. This is a fascination that he returns to again and again, I think, throughout his career, certainly for several decades at least. And so it makes perfect sense. I think that he's just kind of interested, just on. Not a basic level, but just like kind of. It's a titillating moment in history for a particular type of mind at least. And so him approaching that through this weird kind of like hall of Mirrors to semi quote a song off of Church of Anthrax makes perfect sense from that regard. At the same time, this is a record that as you identify in the book and as we talked about, I think when we talked about it a couple years ago, it's a Los Angeles record, which is a weird way to think about it. You know, especially a Los Angeles record made by this like, you know, sort of, I mean, at this moment in time, a cocaine crazed Welshman in many ways. Can you just kind of talk about this record not as, you know, sort of an examination of the ghosts of World War I, but as instead just like a record about displacement and California on one level?
- [30:06]
Mark Doyle
Yeah. I mean, you know, he was so identified with New York and Wales, I guess. And you know, the one time that the Velvets had come to la, they had hated it and it had gone really poorly. And. And so, you know, I think the reason that he moved there was just for, for work.
- [30:22]
He had been in London.
- [30:23]
Joe Boyd, the producer, had just taken a job at Warner Brothers and Joe.
- [30:29]
Had gotten John this gig.
- [30:31]
I think the idea was that he was going to be scoring soundtracks, but it didn't quite work out and so.
- [30:38]
He ended up as ANR man. Previous to that he'd been working for CBS Records. So, you know, partly it's just the.
- [30:45]
Fact that an artist for the record industry was.
- [30:47]
Ian
Yeah, right.
- [30:47]
Mark Doyle
Yeah.
- [30:48]
And, you know, an artist needs to make a living.
- [30:49]
The kind of music he was making was not ever going to make a whole lot of money for him and.
- [30:55]
Especially if you have a cocaine habit.
- [30:57]
So. So, you know, it was, it was a practical thing. I don't know that he was drawn to it for many other reasons. And then he, you know, LA in.
- [31:08]
That era was just heaving. There was so much going on. There's the Laurel Canyon scene.
- [31:13]
There was all the, you know, the Zappa world and the Beefheart and the Van Dyke Parks and Brian Wilson. It just. And a lot of that going on at Warner Brothers. He doesn't seem to have really been.
- [31:27]
Plugged into that scene.
- [31:28]
Ian
Right.
- [31:29]
Mark Doyle
I, I interviewed the photographer, Mike Salisbury, who took the COVID photograph and the, the photographs on the back of the, of the original album.
- [31:37]
Ian
Just up at his house in Laurel Canyon.
- [31:39]
Mark Doyle
Yeah, yeah, this house. But he's, you know, I don't know.
- [31:43]
How close he was to Kale, but.
- [31:45]
I asked him, you know, did. Were they plugged into.
- [31:48]
Was he plugged into the, you know, the scene there?
- [31:50]
And he said it didn't really seem like Kale was, was part of it. He was kind of an outsider.
- [31:55]
And Joe Boyd has told me the.
- [31:56]
Same thing that, you know, they were living on this hat in this house.
- [32:01]
I think it was actually on Woodrow Wilson Drive, which is an interesting little.
- [32:04]
Tiny he with Linda Peters, who was Boyd's girlfriend at the time, who became Linda Thompson. And so they're all living together and.
- [32:16]
They were playing ping pong and.
- [32:19]
But they weren't really like, they weren't going to Rodney Bingenheimer's. They're not going to the, you know, hanging out with the groupies, cruising the strip.
- [32:27]
Ian
Yeah, right.
- [32:28]
Mark Doyle
Although, you know, Kale does end up marrying this famous. Well, this member of this famous groupie collective, the GTOs.
- [32:36]
Ian
The GTOs, yeah.
- [32:37]
Mark Doyle
I would be really curious if I had been able to interview Kale. One of, one of the things I.
- [32:42]
Would have asked him was how did, how did you end up, of all.
- [32:44]
People, with this seemingly quite troubled, kind of spacey and wild character, Ms. Cinderella.
- [32:57]
From this GTO's group? I did email Pamela Dez Bars, who.
- [33:02]
Was one of the, you know, who's kind of the, the standard bearer of.
- [33:05]
Of that group he's seen, and asked.
- [33:07]
Her if she remembered anything about Kale at that time.
- [33:10]
And she said she didn.
- [33:12]
I don't know. He was just sort of there and.
- [33:14]
Ian
Not there, but haunting a ghost in Los Angeles, you could say.
- [33:18]
Mark Doyle
Yeah, maybe you could say that. But, you know, he was able to.
- [33:21]
Draw on all the resources that are.
- [33:23]
There, both physical and human. Right. So he, he brings in, you know, the half of little feet. He brings in these amazing musicians. He's got the, the, the, the technical, you know, the studio and the very.
- [33:43]
Skilled student musicians who are the orchestra.
- [33:45]
Ian
And all that stuff from usc. I think you clarify. Right, because. And as a UCLA alumnus.
- [33:52]
Mark Doyle
Oh, no.
- [33:53]
I hope that wasn't devastating for you.
- [33:54]
Ian
Yeah. My sense of self has been shattered and I'm still trying to put it back together. I had always thought this was one of the great Bruin claims to fame, you know, the appearance on Paris 1919. But you've debunked that myth. It actually was the Dastardly Trojans.
- [34:08]
Mark Doyle
Yes, yes. Yeah. And I, I wasn't the one, the first one to dig that up. It was. He came to UCLA and did a concert there maybe 10 years ago or 15 years ago now. And the musical director at that time started digging and tried to figure out, you know, I think the. On the original record sleeve, the orchestra manager is called Joel Druckmann. And you know, so we went through.
- [34:34]
The records at UC LA to try to find him was Joel Druckman.
- [34:38]
And he couldn't find him and finally figured out that, no, he was at.
- [34:41]
Usc and talked to Joel and I.
- [34:43]
I talked to him too. And. And yeah, no, they were. They were usc. USC players.
- [34:49]
Ian
Brutal.
- [34:50]
Mark Doyle
Yeah.
- [35:01]
I suppose I'm glad I'm on this train. And it's long somewhere between Dunkirk and Paris. Most people here are still asleep, but I'm awake. Lots hang out from here at Half Past Friends.
- [35:37]
Ian
Yeah, I mean, it's just. It's a fascinating thing to think about, particularly for, you know, for me or, you know, for us on this show. Because, like, we're doing the Beach Boys right now and that has also included, like, doing Van Dyke park stuff. We did a whole Randy Newman series, you know, a couple months ago, where we talked about all of his work, you know, at Warner's and working with Lenny Warrenker and stuff. And there's just such a fascinating little kind of coterie of people working in the Los Angeles music industry at this moment in time. Brian Wilson, obviously someone who Cale was a devoted acolyte of, as we see at the very beginning of Slow Dazzle. And you make a couple other points of, I think, Andalucia, you call out as potentially Brian Wilson inspired composition on this record. It's always been funny to me that he was in the mix, you know, kind of swimming around in this same world at this time. This is when the Steely Dan guys are coming out to Los Angeles too. But, like, he might as well have never been there, you know, at least when you think of like, the cultural landscape of Los Angeles, the Los Angeles record industry at this moment in time, like, John Cale is not a part of it in, like, anyone's conception.
- [36:46]
Mark Doyle
Yeah. And I think, you know, it got out pretty quickly too. He didn't stay just a couple of years, although I believe.
- [36:53]
Is that where he lives now?
- [36:55]
Ian
He does live there now. Yeah, he's. He's lived in Los Angeles for. For some number of years at this point, I think.
- [37:00]
Mark Doyle
Yeah.
- [37:00]
So, I mean, clearly something about it he likes.
- [37:04]
Ian
Yep.
- [37:05]
Mark Doyle
But, yeah, it's. It's, you know, you read accounts of the LA music scene in that era and he just.
- [37:12]
He just doesn't appear.
- [37:13]
Ian
Yeah.
- [37:14]
Mark Doyle
You know, there are stories of him. You know, he learns to. He gets a car, he learns to drive. Stor of him kind of zooming down the road.
- [37:24]
Chris Thomas, the producer, is driving and.
- [37:27]
He'S on the hood and, you know, there's a couple of moments when they.
- [37:32]
Outside this Chateau Marmont.
- [37:34]
Anyway, like, there's. There's a few. He shows up here and there, but. But no, it's. I think the LA element that you hear on the album is just the, the. The musicians. Right, yeah, written, you know, the. The very kind of clean smooth guitar sound and all that sort of thing is an la. Well, I don't know if it's an LA thing, but the people who made those sounds were in la. And you might not have gotten that if you were in New York or London.
- [38:04]
Ian
Totally professional. Not Wrecking Crew members necessarily, but people who were in demand playing sessions and could just kind of come in and knock things out and make it sound fantastic. I mean, I think another element of the Los Angeles ness of this record is the complete un. Los Angeles ness of it. I think there's a quote from John in the book that living out there at that time sort of made him nostalgic and miss a lot of the kind of continental delights life back in obviously in Wales, in the UK and in Europe. And he really kind of feels that absence as a displaced avant garde musician from. First from Wales and then from the New York downtown scene. And now here he is in the valley of all places. It's like, you know, you cannot think of a man more out of place, out of time than John Cale at that moment.
- [39:04]
Mark Doyle
Yeah, well. And especially just having come from working with Nico where you know, you almost couldn't come up with a more European sounding record than Marble Index. You know, this kind of windswept. Like one of the reviews that I.
- [39:20]
Remember reading called it a sung Tundra.
- [39:25]
And so, you know, chilly like a, you know, black and white, muted colors like a Bergman film or something. It's.
- [39:33]
And so having come from that to.
- [39:35]
La, where it's a. It's just. It was a very different sort of feel.
- [39:41]
But yeah, I think the sense of feeling slightly out of place. Graham Green the song is a fish.
- [39:46]
Out of water story and. And sort of speaks of this nostalgia for home.
- [39:54]
The one LA song that I think there is is Antarctica. Starts here where it's.
- [39:59]
You know, it's.
- [40:00]
And that may be the most Lou.
- [40:01]
Reed like song also because there's a character, there's a story, there's a. I think I, I mentioned and he said this, this is a sort of well known quote that he had originally wanted to call it Cocale and there was just a cocaine song.
- [40:15]
Ian
It's so good.
- [40:17]
Mark Doyle
And so, you know, there's a.
- [40:18]
Maybe a parallel between this if you.
- [40:20]
Think of it as a Cocain and Heroin from the Velvet Underground. So there's that.
- [40:27]
So it's. There's a little bit of Lou Reed.
- [40:28]
But if we take it as a kind of Sunset Boulevard type story. Then.
- [40:34]
Then Hollywood is creeping its way into his thoughts.
- [40:38]
But it doesn't say what's on the next album though.
- [40:41]
There is more.
- [40:41]
There's sort of an American west kind of theme.
- [40:45]
Ian
Buffalo Ballet.
- [40:45]
Mark Doyle
Yeah, yeah, that. I wonder if that's.
- [40:50]
Once he.
- [40:50]
Once he left and went back to London. If you sort of. You get more LA on Fear than you get on Paris on the album.
- [40:58]
Ian
Made in Los Angeles. Yeah. You know, grass is always greener. You're always interested in and, you know, missing the thing that you don't have at that time. On that note, I wonder, you know, if you could talk a little bit about just kind of where Paris comes in his discography. Because it is a fascinating moment, you know, because it comes after. Obviously there's Vintage Violence comes out in 1970 and then he kind of really moves away from that almost kind of like stereotypical rocks, like surprisingly stereotypical, like like down the middle rock sound that he has on Vintage Violence. As fantastic of a record as Vintage Violence is, when one of my favorite Kale records, you know, it's. It's not. It's not the Black Angel's Death song, you know. And then he makes a. A quick hard left into classical or avant classical type of records with the Academy in Peril and Church of Anthrax. And then after Paris, he's going to go on to do the island trilogy. These three kind of glam rock, art rock, Roxy Music esque sounding records. But Paris just kind of exists right there in the middle, its own individual little jewel box world. How does this record kind of relate to what comes before and after for you?
- [42:11]
Mark Doyle
Yeah, I mean, it. It's not something, you know, I think of it as kind of a cul de sac. Like he was like, well, I'll sort of go in this direction and I'm gonna go back out and try other things.
- [42:22]
He.
- [42:23]
He did make, you know, songs or create. Write songs, record songs that were similar.
- [42:30]
But not on John Cale albums prior to this.
- [42:33]
Right.
- [42:33]
There's the Mike Heron, Feast of Stephen.
- [42:36]
Mike Heron, I forget the name. It's some complicated title of the Incredible String Band. He. John Kell played on and contributed to that album.
- [42:45]
And I think the arrangements maybe wrote.
- [42:48]
The Feast of Stephen.
- [42:49]
Anyway, so that sounds very Paris, 1919. Nico, the Nico work that he did around that time was also.
- [42:56]
Even though it's. It's, you know, it's Nico's world, you can hear a kind of that antique.
- [43:02]
European sound coming in that he will repurpose for his own record in Paris 1919.
- [43:10]
He was involved in actually a whole bunch of really obscure Earth Orchestra. I think it was one of the obscure projects that kind of sound similar. So there's, there is precedent. I think what was going on with.
- [43:27]
Vintage Violence and then Academy Imperil especially.
- [43:29]
Was, you know, he's looking for an identity. Who am I if I'm not in the Velvet Underground around am I the band in upstate New York doing am I a classical musician? And he kind of, he's trying to.
- [43:45]
Meld those two things as arguably he'd been trying to do in the Velvets too.
- [43:49]
He was doing avant classical and then pop rock and kind of putting those together.
- [43:54]
Ian
Right.
- [43:55]
Mark Doyle
And so he's, he's just sort of.
- [43:58]
Searching and he's working at a. Such, such a frenetic pace.
- [44:02]
He's putting these things out while holding down day jobs, doing other things that. I think what happened with Paris was.
- [44:11]
That he had time. He had a producer, Chris Thomas, who.
- [44:14]
Was very good at the meticulous detail oriented work of producing the record that Kael was not good at at that time. He sort of, you know, he put on the brakes for, for a little while to write this thing and record.
- [44:30]
It and get it right and work and rework and revise his work rather.
- [44:35]
Than just sort of put out the rough draft.
- [44:37]
That's.
- [44:38]
I think that's what you hear. And then after Paris, then it's back.
- [44:41]
To London and it's the cocaine and.
- [44:45]
And booze years for, for another decade and, and it's still, I mean, you know, there's wonderful stuff that comes out of all that. I love those island rock records. Some of the early to mid-80s stuff I really like as well. But it's. You can tell that it's not been polished later over.
- [45:08]
Sure, yeah, they were to nearly the same extent.
- [45:10]
So, yeah, I mean it's. It's just a peculiar artifact of the. The circumstances of, you know, la in 1972 when he was recording it.
- [45:25]
You're having tea with Graham Green in a colored costume of your choice and you'll be thought in high esteem if you're seen in between stiffly holding umbrellas, catching the fellers, making the. To the civil servant, Caracas, making the.
- [45:55]
Ian
Could you talk a little bit about Chris Thomas in particular and what he brings to this record?
- [45:59]
Mark Doyle
Yeah, I, I don't.
- [46:01]
I wasn't able to pin down Chris Thomas very much.
- [46:04]
I was trying to find him for an interview.
- [46:07]
He had come from recording this live.
- [46:10]
Album with Proko Harem and they had orchestrated the. I had been behind the orchestration of this live album. And Kale had heard it and really liked it. Kale also around this time had gone.
- [46:25]
To see a Bee Gees concert. And this is when the Bee Gees were also. This is pre Disco Beaches.
- [46:29]
This is when the Bee Gees were also in Odessa. This was their kind of big orchestrated, historical epic era and was really blown away by that. And so I think that was what appealed to Kael about Thomas. Thomas was also English. And so I think they kind of.
- [46:51]
Bonded over that, you know, where these.
- [46:53]
These Brits marooned out here on the far side of North America.
- [47:00]
And yeah, I just sort of was able to. It was his idea to orchestrate, as.
- [47:04]
I understand it, the. The title track and Endless Plan of Fortune I get. And to kind of bring in the orchestra in the first place. I think that was. That was his idea. So it really. He deserves an awful lot of credit for the specific sound that this record has.
- [47:20]
Ian
Yeah. I mean, I can't even imagine if I knew this at some point in the past. I had forgotten it until you mentioned it in the book. But the idea that I think that main kind of melody on Paris, that was just supposed to be a piano initially. Right. I cannot imagine that in any other. And obviously he goes on to play Paris solo many times at his sort of piano recital type performances. And it sounds amazing there too. But that just soaring, kind of grandiloquent feeling you get from those strings on this, you know, record, it just feels monumental. Titanic in a way that no other instrumental interpretation of that music really ever could.
- [48:01]
Mark Doyle
Yeah, I agree. And then if you go and listen to the first track on that Purple Harem album, I think it's live in Edmonton Caravan, it sounds. There are those strings, which takes nothing away from, you know, the originality and.
- [48:13]
Brilliance of Paris 1919, the track.
- [48:15]
But, you know, it's. You can definitely see Chris Thomas's touch there.
- [48:21]
Ian
Influence there. Sure. One other just fascinating kind of string that you pull at a little bit in this book. Again, I don't want to give the whole thing away here, but the concept or trying to locate any sense of the Dadaist and surrealist movements that were present literally in Paris in 1919. In Paris, 1919. You could just kind of, you know, give us. Give us a sense of where that comes from and what you see in it.
- [48:53]
Mark Doyle
Yeah.
- [48:54]
So, you know, the Dada movement had.
- [48:55]
Started a few years earlier, 1916, in Zurich. And maybe someday Cale will put out a prequel called Zurich, but it had.
- [49:04]
Made its way to Paris by 1919, 1920.
- [49:08]
And it was led by these sort.
- [49:10]
Of upstart, angry young European artists who.
- [49:13]
Were dismayed and, you know, appalled by what was happening with the war. Had felt like the, you know, European culture of the 19th century was responsible and so that we needed to make a complete break. And what Dada did was, you know.
- [49:30]
We sort of associate Dada now with, like, the.
- [49:32]
The readymades, the Marcel Duchamp, the urinal and the bicycle tire and that sort of thing.
- [49:36]
But really what Dada was, was performance.
- [49:38]
It was about loud, cacophonous, absurd, probably really funny performances that were not really meant to be recorded or certified. It was. It was a sort of live, active element to it.
- [49:58]
And so in Paris, in Zurich, they've.
- [50:00]
Done small scale performances. When it gets to Paris, 1920 and 21, they do larger performances and the.
- [50:09]
Press starts to pay attention and becomes this big movement.
- [50:11]
And that's sort of where Dada really lifts off. And so I make the point that, you know, one of the things to come out of Dada, which had actually.
- [50:19]
Kind of started before Dada came to.
- [50:20]
Paris, was surrealism as an allied and.
- [50:25]
Closely tied movement, but not the same thing as Dada. And so realism was much more about.
- [50:30]
You know, digging into the subconscious, digging.
- [50:34]
Into dreams, seeking ultimate reality not in what we see before us, but in.
- [50:38]
The depths of our unconsciousness. Starts off with Andre Breton and some friends, you know, doing automatic writing, talking about lyric writing and how, you know, sometimes in kale, it doesn't make much sense or it's kind of hazy, you know, just writing without.
- [50:53]
Without precognition in any way. Just sort of letting the hand create.
- [50:57]
Some words and that the idea was that that would reju.
- [51:01]
Rejuvenate poetry and so hooks up with the daddists and the Dada flares and dies.
- [51:07]
But surrealism stays and becomes one of.
- [51:10]
The most important art movements of the 20th century.
- [51:13]
And so I think, you know, you can kind of see a parallel between the relation in the relationship between Dada and surrealism. You can see a parallel in the relationship between, well, Lou Reed and John Cale to a certain extent, but also.
- [51:28]
The Velvet underground and Paris 1919 velvets were, for all that they're known today, you know, for their records, of course.
- [51:35]
Because they're not around anymore. With the point about the Velvets was the live performance. It was the.
- [51:41]
The noise. It was Lou Reed on stage improvising lyrics.
- [51:45]
And, yeah, that's what Sister Ray is. And, you know, that's what they tried to get it with White White Heat, I'm not sure, but they totally got what they wanted when they tried to, you know, sort of freeze this data. So Velvets were kind of Dada in conception. That's what the exploding plastic inevitables were with Andy Warhol.
- [52:05]
Ian
Totally.
- [52:06]
Mark Doyle
But then what lasted, what stayed, what.
- [52:09]
Became a little bit more solidified and permanent was in one respect at least.
- [52:13]
Kael's approach to lyrics and, and you see it on, you know, in full.
- [52:19]
Full flow on Paris 1919.
- [52:21]
Ian
Absolutely, yeah. I mean the, the descriptions, some of those Dadais performance you offer in the book, you know, these kind of confrontational, you know, unpleasant for the audience in many cases sounding performances that are going on. Absolutely. To me ring through to a Velvet's performance at the Dom. You know, when Gerard Merlanga's up there with a whip and doing his dancing and the projections are happening, it's just ear splittingly loud. And then even on into later John Cale performance, you know, some of the performances that he's giving. I think you make this point too, you know, when he's doing the chicken shit shit, you know, cutting chickens heads off and wearing the hockey mask and even on into like solo performances when he's just kind of like almost like melting down, you know, turning into just this screaming maniac banging on a piano, doing Heartbreak Hotel. I think that element of like shock is not the right word because it's not like he's deliberately doing this just to provoke a reaction and scare people and make them upset. But this, I don't know, this kind of unbridled willingness to kind of go beyond the bounds of what is typically considered like an acceptable way of performing in a public setting. I think that's a very clear through line from beginning to end.
- [53:43]
Mark Doyle
Yeah, absolutely. I think he was less Dada in the Paris 1919 era in 71, 72 because he wasn't performing. There were a couple of, you know, one off shows here and there, but that wasn't really.
- [53:55]
So that's another reason why I think.
- [53:56]
It sounds he's able to, he leans more into the, the surreal than the shadow. Yeah, sure.
- [54:04]
Ian
Wow. Well, this has been a very robust and intellectually stimulating conversation. Usually these episodes are us, you know, just sitting here, you know, mumbling through, you know, bad, bad opinions about these songs. But you know, fortunately you've had, you've, you've had plenty of good opinions, opinions for the both of us here. Do you have any late era John Fig? That's kind of our focus here. The Whole breadth of the career of an artist. I'm a big Walking On Locusts fan. I don't know if you've listened to that record, although I think you probably have because you mentioned seeing John in New Orleans sometime in the 90s, which I think would have been probably right around Walking On Locusts. Just any other favorite records you ride for from John.
- [54:44]
Mark Doyle
Yeah, I mean, I've come to really appreciate Fragments of a Rainy Season. That was when I. Yeah, the first.
- [54:51]
Time I saw him, he was.
- [54:52]
It was just, you know, him, and.
- [54:53]
I think it was a drummer.
- [54:54]
Maybe there were some other people behind him, but it was sort of him at the piano and. And not being familiar with his work, I actually found it rather boring because.
- [55:05]
I didn't know the songs. But then occasionally he would do this.
- [55:08]
Screaming, you know, at the end of Fear or something, you know, and I.
- [55:12]
Sort of, oh, this is okay.
- [55:14]
Ian
What's going on here?
- [55:14]
Mark Doyle
Yeah, that.
- [55:16]
That was what really stood out to.
- [55:17]
Me and kind of made me want to learn more. So. Yeah, I think the last two records have been interesting. I think Talking about how Paris 1919.
- [55:31]
Kind of creates this little world and you sink into it.
- [55:33]
I feel that way about Mercy, actually. You don't really know what is saying all the time. I don't know why it makes sense, but it creates this. I don't want to say vibe, because I think that's not. That's. That undersells it, but it's. If you're in the mood for it.
- [55:51]
And you want to just sort of surround yourself in this kind of cavernous.
- [55:53]
Dark, echoey kind of place, then Mercy is.
- [56:01]
A wonderful experience.
- [56:03]
Pop illusion also has its high points that it does less for me. I feel like there's a few more that are a little more kind of.
- [56:09]
Tossed off that didn't need to be there.
- [56:11]
But what's the big single?
- [56:14]
They're two.
- [56:14]
There's Shark, Shark and there's the other one.
- [56:15]
Ian
Davis and Wales, or. No, no, no, no. How We See the Light. Right?
- [56:19]
Mark Doyle
Yeah. I think How We See the Light's one of his best songs. I think it's a great song. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [56:24]
Ian
I was just thinking Davis and Wales, because that's the song that I can't stop, you know, walking around humming to myself off A Practical Illusion. It's, you know, it is absolutely more on the triviality side of things. Although I think there is some interesting, you know, kind of biographical, you know, resonance there, obviously with his. His. His Welsh ancestry, but just insanely catchy song. Along with Shark. Shark.
- [56:47]
Mark Doyle
I wonder if there's maybe an oblique reference to the Kinks there too.
- [56:51]
He's on record.
- [56:52]
Ian
Oh, sure, yeah.
- [56:54]
Mark Doyle
Being a fan of the Davies Brothers.
- [56:56]
Ian
I can see that.
- [56:57]
Mark Doyle
And, yeah, that just. The Kinks I've also written about, so maybe they're on in my mind anyway. But yeah, that's. I think they have Welsh ancestry. That's where the Davis comes from.
- [57:09]
Ian
Makes sense. Well, John Cale, folks. It's all good music. As if you already. If you didn't already know. Mark, thank you so much for joining. I guess, you know, folks out there, run, don't walk to your nearest bookseller. Bloomsbury has got this wonderful little tome out there for you to read. John Cale, Paris, 1919, available from the 33 and a third series.
- [57:35]
Mark Doyle
Thanks, Ian. It's been a real pleasure.
- [57:56]
Ian
One more time. Thanks. Thanks to Mark Doyle, author of John Cale, 1919. They don't have titles beyond that. It's, you know, it's the 33 and a third on John Cale and 1919, available now from Bloomsbury. We'll have links in the episode description to purchase. Give it a read, folks. It's fantastic stuff. Got a fantastic record and one that, you know, I do feel like it's starting to. Starting to claim the historical reputation that it should. Obviously we had the reissues last year and between this book and our little program here, starting to get some more plaudits out there in the culture at large. But, you know, there's a endless plane of fortune full of people who still need to hear this record and have their lives changed by it the way that we have here on Jokerman.
- [59:18]
Mark Doyle
There's a name for everything and forever sing to feed the cows that agriculture won't allow Panky panky no how Panky panky no know how.