Sedition and Alchemy: A Biography of John Cale

Written with the full cooperation of John Cale and incorporating exclusive interviews with important figures from all phases of the musician’s 35-year career, this new biography explores the man who has successfully transcended the boundaries between classical and popular music. Cale’s music—from the Velvet Underground onwards—has been a series of passionate assaults on accepted musical forms, and his processes of deconstruction and reconstruction are illustrated by detailed accounts of his albums, live shows and relationships with other artists such as La Monte Young, Brian Eno and Lou Reed. Exhaustively researched, Sedition and Alchemy also contains the first full discography of John Cale’s work to date.