John Cale, OBE is a Welsh musician, composer, singer, songwriter and record producer who was a founding member of the American rock band the Velvet Underground. Over his five-decade career, Cale has worked in various styles across rock, drone, classical, avant-garde and electronic music. He's regarded as one of the most influential underground rock musicians. 

After studying music at Goldsmiths College, he relocated to New York City's downtown music scene in 1963, performing as part of the Theatre of Eternal Music and forming the Velvet Underground. Since leaving the band, he's released 16 solo studio albums, and acquired a reputation as an adventurous producer.

John joined Island Records in 1974, working on albums with artists like Squeeze, Patti Smith and Sham 69, as well as a series of solo albums. A trilogy of albums were rapidly recorded and released over the course of about a year with other Island artists, including Phil Manzanera and Brian Eno of Roxy Music and Chris Spedding, 

In '80s,  Songs for Drella (1990) reunited him with Lou Reed to create a tribute to Andy Warhol and, due to being well received, may have been one of the factors that led to the Velvet Underground's reunion in 1993.

He has continued to record regularly into the new millennium, releasing a pair of well-received studio albums, HoboSapiens (2003) and Black Acetate (2005). The Extra Playful EP arrived in 2011, followed in 2012 by a well-deserved career overview, Conflict & Catalysis: Productions & Arrangements 1966-2006, and a new studio album, Shifty Adventures in Nookie Wood. In early 2016, Cale released M:FANS, a collection of stark, electronic-based reworkings of the material from his outstanding 1982 album Music for a New Society.

In 2023 Cale released Mercy, his first full album in a decade. It moves through true dark-night-of-the-soul electronic torment toward vulnerable love songs and hopeful considerations for the future with the help of some of music’s most curious young minds. Cale has always searched for new ways to explore old ideas of alienation, hurt, and joy; Mercy is the latest transfixing find of this unsatisfied mind.