John Cale is a musician of unusual talent. Classically trained, he was a youthful ally of avant-garde composers John Cage and LaMonte Young. He went on to form a songwriting partnership with Lou Reed that has influenced the way bands write music to this day. His work as a producer in the early ‘seventies directly inspired the punk rock revolution that came a few years later.

Very few rock musicians indeed are renowned for their expertise on the viola. Fewer still are born and bred in the Amman Valley. It might appear an unlikely leap from Garnant to uptown Manhattan, but Cale found himself a central figure in pop artist Andy Warhol’s Factory, a hotbed of music, art and fashion in New York, during the mid 1960s.

It all came about courtesy of a scholarship to the Boston University Orchestra"s Tanglewood summer school followed by chance meeting with Lou Reed, with whom he formed The Velvet Underground.

“I needed to be with someone who was a songwriter,” Cale recalls, “someone with the ability to write words. I had no idea how to do it. I was a pretty serious classical musician… To find somebody who happened to have all that, and a bent for improvisation was a bolt out of the blue.”

Although fractious and short-lived, Cale’s relationship with Reed shaped his approach to making music. His solo career has been a series of collaborations, both as performer and producer. The feature film, Beautiful Mistake, for example, saw him teaming up with many of Wales’ leading contemporary musicians in 2000 including James Dean Bradfield, Catatonia and the Super Furry Animals

Unusually, his critical credibility has remained intact throughout his career. Unlike John Lennon or Brian Wilson, Cale has been unable to write or perform within the commercial arena. As he freely admits, he has no alternative but to be alternative.