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Reed’s tough pop sensibility, between 1965 and 1967 the Velvets created some of the most original and most influential rock ever made.
    Sean O’Hagen, High Llamas:
    I find John Cale fascinating insofar as he could actually write a happy song but convey an element of malice. That was very much an influence in Microdisney [O’Hagen’s first band]. When he was investigating intervals and drones, that was something I love and we try to do a little with Turn On [O’Hagen’s side project with Stereolab’s Tim Gone].
    Conrad opted not to pursue rock with Cale and Reed (although he did name the Velvet Underground, after an SM book he found in the street). Instead, Conrad got involved with avant-garde filmmaking, creating works such as The Flicker, a 1966 short that stands as a milestone of minimalist cinema. Currently a professor of video arts in Buffalo, Conrad never fully left music. In 1972, he traveled to Germany where he recorded Outside the Dream Syndicate with influential prog rock band Faust (it was from this record, not Young’s Dream Syndicate, that the ‘80s group took its name). A decade later, Conrad embarked on a piece called Early Minimalism (released in 1997), which, like the Faust album, is an attempt to realize some of the harmonic ideas he first put forth with dream music. Conrad has also performed with rock experimentalists Gastr del Sol and recorded a further study of his anticompositional, anti-Western microtonal violin work, Slapping Pythagoras .

    Jim O’Rourke, solo / Gastr del Sol:
    In Tony’s music, the message is all laid out. There’s no man behind the curtain, like there is in Stockhausen and Young... If anybody gives me credit for helping Tony Conrad come back I’ve finally done something worthwhile on this planet.
    Cale, who left the Velvets due to creative and personal conflicts with Lou Reed, has pursued a solo career that bridges the worlds of classical and rock. His records run the gamut from orchestral ( Academy in Peril ) to hard rock ( Animal Justice , Sabotage ), and from tuneful and plaintive ( Paris 1919 ) to cold and minimalist ( Church of Anthrax with Terry Riley). Cale has composed song cycles around the life of Andy Warhol ( Songs for Drella , with Lou Reed) and the poetry of Dylan Thomas ( Words for the Dying ), written with playwright Sam Shepard ( Music for a New Society ), and scored films ( I Shot Andy Warhol , Eat/Kiss , Basquiat ). As a producer, Cale is responsible for some of rock’s landmark recordings, including the debut albums by Jonathan Richman ’s Modern Lovers , Patti Smith, and the Stooges . Through collaborations, he has had a profound influence on the music of both Brian Eno ( Wrong Way up ) and David Byrne.
    Brian Eno :
    John Cale influenced me quite a lot. The way he works with musicians [in the studio] is very interesting. You get in there, you’ve just got yourself set up and the tape’s suddenly rolling!... And this is something I’ve picked up, if you catch someone on their first time through they do some very odd things. You get this kind of liveliness to it which is a mixture of a sense of danger and excitement. I also picked up Cale’s sense of arrangement. I started listening to the kind of instruments he uses; he uses a lot of orchestral instruments in a way that doesn’t sound trite and sloppy.
    LaMonte Young has continued to create drone works. In the late ‘70s, Young and Zazeela brought the concept of “eternal music” to a logical extension with their Dream House, an on-site installation of slowly evolving light and sound that runs continually, sometimes for several years at a time, in their New York studio. The Theater of Eternal Music has continued as well, in various forms including a brass ensemble and big band. In 1990, Young formed the Forever Blues Band to apply his drone and just intonation ideas to blues. Dorian Blues in G , the group’s extended jam originally composed in 1961, can go on for hours. The piece brings