John Cale spouse Risé Cale
1980s
In 1980, Cale signed a recording contract with A&M Records and moved in a more commercial direction with his seventh solo studio album Honi Soit (1981). He worked with record producer Mike Thorne towards this end. Andy Warhol provided the cover art, in black and white, but against Warhol's wishes, Cale colourised it. The new direction did not succeed commercially, however, and his relationship with A&M ended. He signed with ZE Records, a company he had influenced the creation of and which had absorbed SPY Records, the label he had co-founded with Jane Friedman. In 1982, Cale released the sparse studio album Music for a New Society. Seeming to blend the refined music of his early solo work with the threatening music that came later, it is by any standard a bleak, harrowing record. It's been called "understated, and perhaps a masterpiece."He followed it up with his ninth solo studio album Caribbean Sunset (1984), also on ZE Records. The album features contributions from Brian Eno and an otherwise "young unknown" band, that consisted of David Young on guitar, Andrew Heermans on bass guitar, and David Lichtenstein (son of artist Roy Lichtenstein) on drums. This work, with much more accessible production than on Music for a New Society (1982), was still extremely militant in some ways. However, it received negative reviews from critics, and has never been released on CD.
A live album, John Cale Comes Alive (1984), followed Caribbean Sunset and included two new studio songs, "Ooh La La" and "Never Give Up on You". Different mixes of the two studio tracks appeared on both sides of the Atlantic. During this period, Eden Cale was born to Cale and his third wife Risé Irushalmi in July 1985.In a last-ditch attempt at commercial success, Cale recorded Artificial Intelligence (1985), his only studio album for Beggars Banquet Records. With all of its tracks written in collaboration with High Times and National Lampoon editor Larry "Ratso" Sloman (who had previously co-written two tracks on Caribbean Sunset), the album was a pop effort characterised by prominent use of synthesizers and drum machines. It was not significantly more successful than its predecessors, despite the relative success of the single "Satellite Walk". However, "Dying on the Vine" is generally regarded as one of Cale's best songs. That same year, he played a neo-Nazi organizer on an episode of The Equalizer, and wrote the music for a dramatization of the Kurt Vonnegut short story, Who Am I This Time? (1982), which aired on PBS and starred Christopher Walken and Susan Sarandon.
Cale again returned to record producing, producing Belgian pop singer Lio's third studio album Pop model (1986), and Happy Mondays's debut studio album, Squirrel and G-Man Twenty Four Hour Party People Plastic Face Carnt Smile (White Out) (1987). Other albums that he produced during this time were Element of Crime's second studio album Try to Be Mensch (1987), and Art Bergmann's debut solo studio album Crawl with Me (1988).
In part because of his young daughter, Cale took a long break from recording and performing. He made a comeback in 1989 with the Brian Eno-produced studio album Words for the Dying. The album consists mainly of oral work, read or sung by Cale. It was written in 1982 as a response to the Anglo-Argentinian Falklands War, using poems written by fellow Welshman Dylan Thomas. There are also two orchestral interludes, two other solo piano pieces "Songs Without Words", and finally a song by Cale, "The Soul of Carmen Miranda".Personal life
Cale married American fashion designer Betsey Johnson in 1968. The couple divorced in 1971 having been married three years.In 1971, Cale met Cynthia "Cindy" Wells, better known as Miss Cinderella or Miss Cindy of the GTOs, and they married soon afterward. Their marriage was rocky and they divorced in 1975.On 6 December 1981, Cale married his third wife, Risé Irushalmi. They had one daughter together, Eden Cale. They divorced in 1997.For his 2004 appearance on BBC Radio 4's Desert Island Discs Cale chose "She Belongs to Me" by Bob Dylan as his favourite track; he also selected  Repetition (2001) by Alain Robbe-Grillet as his chosen book and an espresso coffee machine as his luxury item.
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