So, Lou Reed is sadly with us no
more and whilst his influence on music has rightfully been celebrated, his
influence on style doesn’t seem to have been picked up on much. Although it may
be a cliché now, can you think of anyone who did the all-black leather look
prior to him? Sure, the leather jacket was a staple ‘50s rebel look favoured by
people like James Dean and Link Wray, but did anyone assimilate it into a totally black look before Lou did? Well, possibly, but even if they did he was the
one who made it his own. And in the decades that followed, his leathery look
was taken up by generations of New York bands from the Ramones to the Strokes.
Like his music, Reed found a style he liked and stuck to it (and this is not a
criticism; Songs for Drella is my all-time favourite album and I think the
reason he managed to carry on creating good music in middle age was because he
knew what he did best; thus his New York album isn’t so far away from the Sweet
Jane-type riffage of his Velvets days.)
(Still, I think he missed a trick by
not starting his own clothing brand. Along with signature leather jackets, he
could have sold Velvet Underpants, for one thing.)
But whilst Lou Reed was justly
credited for his influential ways, isn’t it true to say that his one-time
Velvets collaborator, John Cale, is unfairly less well known, not only for his
extensive musical output but also for his unique sartorial ways? To be fair, he
should be inducted into the Coolness Hall of Fame (were such a thing to exist)
based on his Velvets work, his solo work and all the stuff he played on or
produced, including albums by the Stooges, Nick Drake and the Replacements, and
that coolness would stand even if he’d done it all whilst dressed in a clown
costume. Plus I believe he was the first person to cover Leonard Cohen’s
Hallelujah. And he played the viola
in the Velvets! How un-rock and roll (and thus cool) is that?!?
Stylistically, though, he more than
held his own, doing the all black Velvets thing with the rest of the band and
then moving on to doing deliberately shocking things like freaking out his
audience by wearing a hockey mask a decade or so before Friday the 13th’s
Jason Vorhees. And, whilst I praised Leonard Cohen for growing old with
dignity, I think it’s fair to say that John Cale showed you can grow old
disgracefully and still be cool. I’ve seen him perform a gig wearing leather
trousers whilst in his sixties and somehow get away with it. Even Lou Reed
might have struggled to do that. Also, like comics maestro Grant Morrison, John
Cale is someone I would have thought was too cool to accept honours from the
Queen, but he did. However, he did it with style, by dyeing his hair pink
especially for the occasion. Now, having pink hair all the time at the age
would not be very cool but I think when you do it as a one off to meet royalty
you have to respect that. I mean, if you’re going to dye your hair when you’re
old, at least make it obvious rather than follow the embarrassing examples of
Paul McCartney and Tom Jones.
Generally, though, John Cale’s later
period style choices are well chosen and subdued and he quite often dresses in
a way befitting his age, in suits and fitted jackets, only throwing in acts of
sartorial defiance for special occasions. That, I think is the solution to the
‘rockers-growing-old’ dilemma. If you wear leather and denim all the time it
will just be wrong but you can get away with it on select occasions. The hockey
mask is probably optional, though. Still, it might have been funny if he’d worn
that to Buckingham Palace.
