(Credits: Far Out / Album Cover)
Tue 28 April 2026 17:00, UK
June 1st, 1974: It may have been the start of summer, but no heat could have felt fiercer than the tensions that were rising between John Cale and Kevin Ayers.
The pair weren’t typically in each other’s orbit, but their paths did parallel. Hopping on the train of the band life during the 1960s, they both soon realised they were better spreading their own wings and heading out on solo adventures. They certainly fulfilled that order, working with artists that spanned the globe and changed the face of the music landscape forever.
What they perhaps didn’t expect, however, after seeming like kindred spirits at first, was that they would become each other’s worst enemy. To be fair, when you’ve slept with another man’s wife, there isn’t much you can do to come back from that. But in the case of Cale and Ayers, what brought the tension to a maximum was that they had to perform together the very next night.
The concept of the June 1st, 1974 concert held at the Rainbow Theatre in London was initially an inspired one. It brought together the crème de la crème of the art rock scene – Cale, Ayers, as well as Brian Eno and Nico – to stage a show that displayed the best of the niche genre on a pedestal.
However, Ayers’s rather short-sighted decision to sleep with Cale’s wife, Cindy, the night before the gig was a complete disaster, to put it mildly. What was meant to be a night of showing the music in its prime instead turned into a battle of betrayal, animosity, and ultimate adultery. To this end, it went down in history for all the wrong reasons.
To an extent, the incident may not have been fraught with so much lasting tension if it were a live for one night only affair. But no, of course – they also had to record the show for a live album, committing every inch and note of wrath and ire to tape for the rest of time. The cover depicts a pretty steely look between Cale and Ayers, with it having been shot on the day of the concert. You don’t have to wonder why.
As much as the inferno of the night eventually subsided, it was only natural that the brutal betrayal was never fully forgotten. Most unsurprisingly of all, Cale and Cindy went their separate ways the following year, in 1975. But when his blistering song ‘Guts’ opened with the words, “The bugger in the short sleeves fucked my wife / Did it quick, then split…”, not only was nothing being left to the imagination, but it was more than clear who was in the firing line.
Over half a century down the line, the rock and roll overtures of the Rainbow Theatre have fallen silent, but its legacy very much still stands in that oeuvre, in no small part owed to some of the more raucous events that occurred there, à la Cale and Ayers. What makes it more hilarious, though, is that said venue has since been converted into a church.
As it turns out, ‘Forgive me, father, for I have sinned’, were more or less the exact words Ayers was in search of back in 1974 when he decided to get in bed with Cale’s wife. But would you expect a bunch of psychedelic musicians to move towards the Lord? No, they’ll just get all their frustrations, anger, betrayal, and everything in between out on the stage.
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