6. The Stooges

Here’s John Cale again, with his doom-laden playing on this Stooges track. It’s such a strange song to have on an album of three-minute proto-punk pieces. It’s this really slow mantric chant, and a baleful viola coming in and playing. It was incredible and it definitely sparked a desire to look at stringed instruments and see what they could do. For many of us, string instruments are off limits, because they’re immediately associated with classical music. I’d actually wanted to play the violin from being quite young. I’m left handed, and I tried to begin playing the violin at primary school, aged seven or something like that, but the violin teacher insisted that I play the instrument right-handed like everyone else. It made learning a hard instrument impossible, so I didn’t last very long, but I had an unresolved desire to return to it. Even though John Cale is classically trained, I think his re-situating the viola within experimental rock really opened it up to other people.