JOHN CALE
Royal Festival Hall, London, March 21
Songs old, new, borrowed and blue from the octogenarian art-rocker, still at the peak of his piratical powers
Biting guitar: Cale opens the show with 2024 single “Shark-Shark”
STEWART FULLERTON
A
LOT can change in half a century. When he visited London in the spring of 1977, John Cale was heading upriver to his own heart of darkness, wielding a meat cleaver and chopping up a chicken live on stage during a Grand Guignol performance of “Heartbreak Hotel”. He reprises the song tonight, beautifully, mournfully, in the more refined environs of London’s Royal Festival Hall. Serenely enthroned behind his Kurzweil synth like Burt Bacharach’s wild-eyed brother, his hair a pale halo, Cale seems to have ascended to paradise, far from the bloody, sweaty, rugby-shirted maniac of the past.