John Cale's Paris 1919

John Cale's enigmatic masterpiece, Paris 1919, appeared at a time when the artist and his world were changing forever. It was 1973, the year of Watergate and the oil crisis and the end of the Vietnam War, and Cale was at a crossroads. The white-hot rage of his Velvet Underground days was nearly spent, and he was struggling to find a path forward. He needed to lay to rest some ghosts, but he couldn't do that without scaring up others. Paris 1919 was the result.

In this vivid, wide-ranging book, Mark Doyle hunts down the ghosts haunting Cale's most enduring solo album. There is the ghost of the Velvet Underground, whose abrasive sound and ethos Cale nearly managed to exorcise. There is the ghost of Dylan Thomas, a fellow Welshman who haunts not just Paris 1919 but much of Cale's life and art. There are the ghosts of history, of a failed peace and a cold war, and of Christmas, a surprising visitor who lends the proceedings a nostalgic, childlike air. With erudition and wit, Doyle offers new ways to listen to an old album whose mysteries will never fully be resolved.