See John Cale Rework ‘Velvet Underground & Nico’ With Animal Collective, Libertines
John Cale hosted an early 50th anniversary celebration for the classic Velvet Underground & Nico Sunday at Paris’ La Phihamonie, with the cellist recruiting artists like Animal Collective, the Libertines‘ Carl Barat and Pete Doherty, Mark Lanegan, Etienne Daho, Lou Doillon and more to assist him on playing cuts from both that 1967 LP and other tracks from the VU catalog.
Animal Collective, who previously teamed with Cale on the band’s Painting With cut “Hocus Pocus,” performed “There She Goes Again” with the Velvet Underground rocker, while Cale himself put a droning spin on the album’s soft opening track “Sunday Morning” (via Pitchfork):
Later in the performance, Barat and Doherty joined Cale for a pair of songs, “Run Run Run” and the non-VU & Nico-but-still-legendary “White Light/White Heat.”
In February, Cale spoke to Rolling Stone about the re-recording of his 1982 solo album Music for a New Society – now dubbed M:FANS – and his celebration of what he calls the “Banana Album,” a nod to Andy Warhol’s iconic cover. At the time, Cale revealed that he was working on new arrangements for all the album tracks to create “different versions” of the songs.