Newsgroup: it.arti.musica.rock
Titolo: John Cale e James Murphy a confronto

http://arts.guardian.co.uk/filmandmusic/story/0,,2102903,00.html
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John Cale is playing at my house
They are both stars of New York's music scene - pioneers of the
coolest pop, separated by 30 years. James Murphy and John Cale
get together with Dorian Lynskey to compare notes across a
generation
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The Gagosian Gallery in Beverly Hills is one of those dazzlingly
white exhibition spaces that can make even three chairs arranged
around a table resemble an art installation. In one of those
chairs sits John Cale, who should feel right at home. Arriving in
New York from Wales in the mid 1960s, he formed the Velvet
Underground with Lou Reed and came under the wing of Andy Warhol.
Since leaving the band in 1968, he has traced an unpredictable
path between solo albums, film scores, and production work.
Article continues
At 67, Cale looks simply extraordinary. The lines on his tanned
face are sleek and bold, as if etched in stone, and his hair,
bleached, tufted and partially dyed red, sticks out like a
cockatoo's feathers. His baritone crackles and booms around the
gallery.
Next to him is 37-year-old James Murphy, whose diverse dance-rock
hybrids as half of Brooklyn-based production duo DFA and linchpin
of LCD Soundsystem have made him one of this decade's most
pioneering producers. Vaguely resembling a cartoon bear, he is a
witty, garrulous conversationalist, only slightly cowed by
meeting a lifelong musical hero. "This is a big deal for me," he
tells Cale, who responds with a cheerful salute.
We have convened their first ever face-to-face meeting not just
because LCD Soundsystem's current single, All My Friends,
features a version by Cale, but because they have much in common,
including New York, sonic innovation and a reputation for getting
their own way. But it's equally interesting to note the
differences between Murphy, the vinyl-fetishising romantic who
feels he was born too late, and Cale, the ardent technophile
gushing over internet radio, download platforms and the logistics
of Daft Punk's live shows.
John, when did you first hear LCD Soundsystem?
John Cale: Daft Punk Is Playing at My House. Catchy. The great
thing about All My Friends is that I could sing along with it.
His range is exactly mine.
James, when did you discover John's music?
James Murphy: My best friend across the street had older
brothers, so that was my first experience of Velvet Underground
records. I like the mystery of rock. My whole education in music
was hearsay and that has so much more power than being able to
Google it. I remember the cover of [Cale's 1974 album] Fear
really scared me.
JC: Those were some cheekbones. [Producer] Chris Thomas saw me in
the studio and said, 'I'm worried about you. You don't look well
at all.' And I thought I looked really nice and svelte. [Grinning
madly] 'I'm fine. I'm having a great time!'
John, you've lived in New York on and off for more than 40 years.
When you heard LCD Soundsystem's album, did the lyric, "New York
I love you but you're bringing me down" strike a chord?
JC: Yeah, that's New York. I still love New York.
JM: How can you not?
JC: It's the centre of aggro. Michael Bloomberg has done a great
job of cleaning up the city but man, ride the subway. Then you
get it.
JM: It still smells like piss. No amount of money can change
that.
James, you grew up in small-town New Jersey. Do you ever feel you
missed the city at its best?
JM: All the time. Because I'm by far the youngest in the family.
I remember growing up and thinking of my own birth year as
comically recent. During my favourite era of music, I was too
young or non-existent. When I look at 1968 to 74, watching
everything getting turned upside down, and record companies run
by weirdos, and genuinely strange music becoming hits ... [To
Cale] Do you feel that knowing people who weren't musicians
helped?
JC: I'll tell you the best thing [Allen] Ginsberg did for me. He
came over to La Monte [Young]'s when we were rehearsing and I'd
been in New York for like three months. I was very green. Very
few people could understand what I was saying because I had a
really thick Welsh accent. The first thing he said to me was,
'Have you got any friends?' And it was just like bam! [Mimes a
deflating balloon] All the air went out of me. He said, 'In New
York the hardest thing is to find friends. You have to go out and
physically hold on to them. I remember that. I don't have a lot
of friends from Wales and that's a studied pose, I suppose. My
daughter is crazy about learning Welsh. I think she's bonkers. I
don't know where it came from. She found [the Welsh community] in
New York a year ago. I don't want to know! Please! I've been
running away!
Let's talk about originality in music. John, with the Velvets did
it feel like you were making something genuinely new?
JC: Yeah, it did. The minute we slowed Venus in Furs down from a
folk song and had the drone in there. We went through a lot of
drones and detuned guitars. We were perverse. [Smiling
devilishly] I mean in a lot of ways, but we detuned the guitars
so that nobody could figure out how the hell we did it. Nobody's
going to come close.
JM: I don't even really consider originality. Outside of
sampling, you don't get more brazen about influences than me. If
I was to compare what I'm doing to Nina Simone or the Velvets or
something that was creating space in a very different time, I'd
be crushed. So I just try to be like, well, what can I do that
makes sense to me in 2007? I can't play by the same rules as the
music that I love.
Are you happy when you've finished a record?
JC: I'm really exhilarated, but it's mainly the exhilaration of
finishing a crossword. It's always about the next one. You just
plough ahead.
John, you worked as a producer on seminal records by, among
others, Patti Smith, the Stooges, and Nick Drake. Was that as
much luck as design?
JC: Absolutely. I was trying to get a gig. I didn't have a job. I
was looking to pay for breakfast. And [Elektra Records founder
Jac Holzman] said, 'Yeah, yeah, if the right thing comes along,'
and sure enough the right thing was the Stooges. You look at
someone and think, 'This is what this person is going to be.'
There's nothing you can really change. They have a magic. Iggy
had this way of threatening the audience and then embracing them
the next minute. He was a chameleon. And Patti had a preacher's
verve.
JM: I was a terrible, terrible producer through the entire 1990s.
About eight bands in a row broke up after working with me. I'd
bring in records and be like, 'Have you heard this?' And then two
guys would be like, 'What are we doing? Our band sucks.' [Cale
roars with laughter] So I was bad news for a long time. And then
the Rapture [Murphy produced the band's 2003 album Echoes] was
absolutely brutal. I was very aggressive and fucked up. I used to
believe shit needed to get crazy for it to get good and I was
going to bring the crazy. I think I did them an occasional
disservice.
Do you have unusual ways of describing music?
JM: I remember watching a performance of Strange Brew by Cream on
TV. Eric Clapton's all puffed up and playing like he's got a
powdered wig. [Pulls a Lord Snooty face] And I remember thinking
that's what the guitar sounds like! It's a little braggy but kind
of foppish. It's like a rapier rather than a broadsword. That
face is the gesture I come up with most. The other one is the
monkey gesture. [Lets his arms hang down and mouth droop] The
Stooges are kings of that.
JC: I remember watching the Searchers on [New York DJ] Murray the
K's Christmas show, and he ripped this guitar solo that was just
scalding. I remember thinking, 'How the fuck did he do that?' And
that's one of the things about rock'n'roll. There's something
that happened at that particular time and that particular place,
and if you can get that down on record ...
JM: You have to make the space for it, though. I think there's
more and more space for getting it "right" and less and less
space for getting it special. That "momentness" is something I
find less and less.
JC: Miles [Davis] would get you in the moment. He went destroying
everything that went before him just so you could get to now. I
really like that. I always try to invent something on stage that
nobody's heard before. [I like it when] you don't know what
you're doing.
JM: There should be fear there.
JC: Right, right. Because when something happens you are so over
the moon. Bam! There it is. What I can't get enough of is that
process of becoming something. I don't know what I want to
become. I don't think it's important. It's the fear, the
uncertainty, the blindness.

 uncertainty, the blindness.
Perň.
bye
soul-s