Article Sketch: Europe in Song: John Cale's Paris 1919 at 50 (released February 2023)

An early celebration of John Cale's unique Baroque-Pop masterpiece.

The album references the ultimately disastrous WWI peace talks, together with other Euro-themes, ranging from his native Wales (singing unashamedly in his heavy Carmarthenshire accent) to Spain, France, Norway and beyond.

Cale on Paris 1919:

"I had left New York by the time I wrote Paris. It was really a travelogue of someone who is disembodied in California. A Welsh boy who has come to California and is working for a record company and writing songs about all the things that he admires about Europe."

“Some of the lyrics on Paris 1919 are still opaque to me. Some of them I’ve decoded, but sometimes I think ‘What the hell is that all about?’”

“an example of the nicest ways of saying something ugly.”

The album sleeve reflects Cale's Europhilia, with Cale's studied Boho appearance (anticipating Bobby Gillespie) that blends Left Bank chic, Lloyd George, Oscar Wilde with a dash of Jerry Cornelius, the record's lettering that references Hector Guimard's Art Nouveau designs for the Paris Metro.?

Jerry Cornelius (Jon Finch in The Final Programme, 1973)

Cale's other Euro-centric (or partly) works include Vintage Violence, The Academy in Peril, Church of Anthrax, Honi Soit, Nico and numerous soundtracks (including 2003's Paris).

Riverbank, from Honi Soit (1981), followed by Charlemagne (Vintage Violence 1970), Brahms (The Academy in Peril, 1972), and ?The Hall of Mirrors Palace at Versailles (Church of Anthrax with Terry Riley, 1971):

Paris (2003):

In September 1963 Cale (along with John Cage and others), performed a bum-numbing 18-hour/40-minute piano debut full-length performance of Erik Satie's "Vexations". Cale then appeared on the television panel show I've Got a Secret.

Cale's Velvets colleague Lou Reed strayed from his New York roots for his cheery Berlin opus later the same year of Paris 1919's release:

Diplomacy and peace conferences portrayed through music can also be enjoyed in John Adams' Nixon in China, Hamilton, 1776, Trianon (about the partition of Hungary in 1920), Handel's music celebrating the Utrecht Treaty, the musical version of Aristophanes' Lysistrata and other works.

Cale has taken the album on the road (most notably in 2010-11) to perform in its entirety in various forms (orchestral etc), and will be playing the London Palladium on 9th November 2022.

John Cale - Paris 1919 Live in Sweden (2011)

And as for the machinations of the Paris 1919 peace conference itself, check out Paul Cowan's feature length documentary-drama from 2008: