John Cale announces Birmingham Town Hall show as part of POPtical Illusion tour for March 2025

John Cale has always been a musician of the times, helping to usher in titanic shifts in sound and culture.

The bleeding edge drones of his Sun Blindness Music opened the path to The Velvet Underground. The frantic rock of Fear and Slow Dazzle, not to mention his production with Patti Smith and the Stooges, framed a half century of punk, post-punk, and art-rock to come. And his curiosity about the way electronics could be more than a gimmick in rock music served as an inspiration to an uncountable number of crucial scenes.

On new album POPtical Illusion, Cale stands as a musician of these times. He looks at the orchestrated turmoil of recent history, furrows his brow in disgust, and then turns on his heels toward a future, even if he - like all of the rest of us, really - doesn’t know just what he’ll find or who exactly he’ll be there. He’s simply happy to be going toward it all.

The tour follows the release of POPtical Illusion, and will be his first since 2023.

Concerts include London’s Royal Festival Hall, Nottingham, Glasgow, Newcastle, Bexhill, Cardiff and Liverpool. The Birmingham Show is at the Town Hall on 23rd March.

Tickets are on sale Thursday 12th September at 10am.