Paris 1919

I was staying at my father's the night they broadcast the David Bowie Prom live from the Albert Hall. My dad watches the annual Glastonbury concerts and anything that features the Stones or the Who, but he was tired on this occasion and was never a fan of Bowie, so he left me to it. I converted his sofa into a bed – a fatal mistake, because I wanted to stay awake, especially for the John Cale slots.

Well... I managed to wake up long enough to glimpse John Cale on stage. Grey hair, white goatie-beard these days, but always edgy and always interesting. Which particular Bowie song would he be interpreting? I couldn't keep my eyes open long enough to find out. Booggah! At least I managed to catch Paul Buchanan of The Blue Nile.

Long after Nico had dragged her harmonium off stage and departed for some new drug-addled landscape, long after Lou Reed had transformed himself into a rock and roll animal, long after Mo Tucker had retired and Sterling Morrison had died prematurely, Cale remained the most interesting, the most infinitely varied of the Velvet Underground members. I'd always thought that 'Venus in Furs' emanated from the dark side of John Cale's mind, until I discovered that it was Lou Reed's masterpiece. Nevertheless, it was certainly the Welshman's deranged viola that helped to make it the Velvets' most memorable song.

'Shiny, shiny, shiny boots of leather/Whiplash girlchild in the dark...' There were always two sides to John Cale. However, I knew of only the lighter melodic side of Cale's musical psyche when I bought Paris 1919 on the recommendation of a friend with whom I would travel back from Exeter University to my parents' home in Bath.

I bought it as a memento of being judged runner-up at the university's rag week drag-queen disco in 1975. With my hair swept back off my face, someone told me I looked too like Sylvia Kristel of the erotic Emmanuelle films to ignore. I won myself a bottle of whiskey, but couldn't stand the stuff, so I gave it away to a boozy friend and invested in the album to mark my near-triumph.

Apart from the personal recommendation, what attracted me to the LP was the fact that it was produced by Chris Thomas, who also produced the clutch of classic albums by a favourite band of mine, Procol Harum. Indeed, there are several similarities, not least of which are beautiful melodies built around interesting if somewhat impenetrable lyrics.

Apart from the boisterous 'Macbeth', the final track on the first side, Paris 1919 is sheer mid-tempo loveliness from start to finish. There is none of the discordant cacophony that marks out songs like 'Leaving It Up to You' from his Island years. As someone who recognised Nick Drake's song-writing genius before he had to commit suicide to be appreciated, Cale has always managed to conjure up melodic delights throughout his career – songs like 'The Man Who Couldn't Afford to Orgy', 'Cable Hogue' and 'I Keep a Close Watch' spring readily to mind – but he never managed before or after Paris to do it quite so uniformly.

Nor did he ever manage to sound quite so Welsh – as he does on a track like 'Graham Greene'. Since it's a cod-reggae song, maybe he was trying to sound Caribbean, only to end up sounding more like a regular chap from the Valleys. But if the mere title of 'Child's Christmas in Wales' suggests an album that looks back fondly on his childhood and his native land, the opaque lyrics seem to scotch any such sentimental notion. 'A belt to hold/Columbus too, perimeters of nails/Perceived the Mamma's golden touch' could defy many a seminar of earnest literary students.

It's beautifully played, too. Unfortunately, there are no details to be had on the album cover of the musicians involved. Normally I run a mile from strings, but there are – as befits a man who had already dabbled in classical music in The Academy at Peril – some tasteful Cale orchestrations throughout, particularly the string quartet featured in the title track. Conversely, though, it's the album's minimalist closer, 'Antarctica Starts Here', with its whispered vocals and subliminal instrumentation, that vies with the bigger productions for the stand-out song nomination.

Not too long after I bought Paris 1919, the university's ambitious and talented social secretary managed to book Cale for a concert in the great hall. He appeared with a travelling band of the time that featured Chris Spedding on guitar. Cale played throughout with an ice-hockey mask on his face, which made it all a slightly disturbing affair, not helped by a repertoire that focused more on some of his more troubling songs – like 'Fear' and 'Guts'. Hoping for and expecting something more like Paris, I was a tad disappointed.

The years, of course, have dispelled any such qualms. Just to have seen a musician like John Cale, even if he was for whatever reason displaying only his darker side, is an experience to be treasured. The man is, after all, a legend in more than just his lunchtime. I've come to love less obviously appealing songs, such as 'Helen of Troy' and 'William Wilson', but it's still Paris 1919 that never fails to touch the soft spot in my heart.