Heroes of the Style Vortex: John Cale

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 13^th’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.