It's often the most complex and troublesome musical relationships that produce the best sounds: so many great bands hate each other with an unbridled passion and spend more time with their lawyers haggling over which band member should walk out on stage first, etc, than they do with their craft. It's just one of those paradoxical rock'n'roll things. For once money isn't an issue: it's just sheer, bloody-minded personal enmity. Just remember, kids - for every memorable chorus or every awesome solo, someone somewhere has just been threatened with having a Rickenbacker smashed over their head. Quite literally, there's blood on the tracks. And don't believe any of this "us against the world" nonsense.
For all McCartney and Lennon's "we're just childhood friends from Liverpool" spiel, they squabbled over middle eights with the rest of them. Why else would Lennon write a song like How Do You Sleep? (although to be fair, McCartney did start that particular dialogue with some snide references on his first solo album). Jagger and Richards can barely be in the same room together unless there are large sums of money involved, and even "cool" bands like Nirvana can arrive at a situation where Kurt Cobain can say to his two band mates that he wants to renegotiate their recording/ publishing contract (after the success of Nevermind) so he could rake in more dosh at Grohl and Novoselic's expense. And the Mercury Rev stories are just legion, everyone's favourite being the time they were on the aeroplane and the guitarist tried to remove the singer's eye with a spoon (10 out of 10 for a novel approach, you'll agree). There's also an incredibly funny story about a well-known Irish band, but Mr Libel Lawyer (Sir) won't let me do it.
If you're looking for a downright complex, multi-layered, love/hate musical relationship to beat the band, look no further than the Velvet Underground and the ongoing war of attrition between John Cale and Lou Reed. What makes this all the worse (or better) is that both are "arty" types who exist in that strange place known as "avant-garde"; thus when things got a bit ropey between them, it was very much a full-on, Prima Donna to the Nth degree affair.
In his just published, and most compelling, biography, What's The Welsh For Zen?, John Cale spends perhaps more time than is necessary in discussing his friend/collaborator and nemesis. Here's the first paragraph of the book: "I was born on March 9th, 1942 in Garnant, between Swansea and Carmarthen, South Wales. Some 3,000 miles away in Brooklyn, New York, Louis (sic) Reed had been born one week earlier, on the 2nd. I always knew he had an edge on me." Significantly in the pre-publication copies of the book, Cale used the term "bastard" instead of "he" but took it out because he thought it was "unnecessary".
Ignoring the whole Lou Reed motif, though, there's plenty of interest here. Cale writes eloquently about his childhood in a Welsh-speaking household, his time as a violist with the Welsh Youth Orchestra and his self-education in classical music - along the way he opened up his own personal correspondence course with Aaron Copeland and John Cage. Arriving in New York courtesy of a place at Leonard Bernstein's music workshop, he soon drifted towards the Greenwich Village scene, hanging out in hippy bookshops and taking part in what were quaintly called "happenings" - these usually involved playing two-hour-long one-note drone sessions with everyone too out of it to care. After meeting Reed and putting The Velvet Underground together with Moe Tucker and Sterling Morrison, Andy Warhol (who comes out very well from the book, surprisingly) deigned to manage the band and they released the still-classic debut album (check out Nico singing All Tomorrow's Parties - quite phenomenal). The following two albums were good but didn't quite scrape the heights the way the debut did; Reed sacked Cale and went ego-tripping for a good decade or so.
It's not just the juxtaposition of the almost fundamentalist Welsh upbringing with the smacked-out Manhattan experiences of The Velvet Underground - still regarded by many as being the very first indie band - it's more the following years, which saw Cale producing Nico, Patti Smith (there's some great stuff on her), Iggy Pop, Squeeze and The Happy Mondays (which was quite a task for a recovering drug addict). Cale also worked with Terry Riley, Brian Eno and Nick Drake and recorded about 16 solo albums - including the rather good Paris 1919, which a lot of people just can't get their head around. Towards the end there's some archly observed material about teaming up with Reed again for, first, the Songs For Drella album (a tribute to Warhol) and then the ill-fated Velvet Underground reunion where they joined U2's Zooropa tour. This is manic street preaching at its best.
What's The Welsh For Zen? is published by Bloomsbury, price £20. John Cale's Dance Music: Music For Nico is now available on the Warner Classic label.
