The Academy in Peril is a 1972

1972 in music

-Events:*January 17 – Highway 51 South in Memphis, Tennessee is renamed "Elvis Presley Boulevard"*January 20 – The début of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon at The Dome, Brighton, is halted by technical difficulties,...

 album by John Cale

John Cale

John Davies Cale, OBE is a Welsh musician, composer, singer-songwriter and record producer who was a founding member of the experimental rock band The Velvet Underground....

. Like his previous release, the Terry Riley

Terry Riley

Terrence Mitchell Riley, is an American composer intrinsically associated with the minimalist school of Western classical music and was a pioneer of the movement...

 collaboration Church of Anthrax

Church of Anthrax

Church of Anthrax is a collaboration between John Cale and Terry Riley. The record was released in February 1971 by Cale's record company, Columbia Records, nearly a year after the material was recorded.-Track listing:...

, it is mostly instrumental. As the title suggests, the album was inspired by Cale's classical training.

"Temper," an outtake from the recording sessions, was later released on the promotional compilation Troublemakers.

The cover concept and art was designed by Andy Warhol

Andy Warhol

Andrew Warhola , known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art...

.

Track listing

All tracks written by John Cale

1. "The Philosopher"
2. "Brahms"
3. "Legs Larry at Television Centre"
4. "The Academy in Peril / Intro"
5. "Days of Steam"
6. "3 Orchestral Pieces: Faust
   Faust
   Faust is the protagonist of a classic German legend; a highly successful scholar, but also dissatisfied with his life, and so makes a deal with the devil, exchanging his soul for unlimited knowledge and worldly pleasures. Faust's tale is the basis for many literary, artistic, cinematic, and musical...
   
   /The Balance/Captain Morgan's Lament"
7. "King Harry"
8. "John Milton
   John Milton
   John Milton was an English poet, polemicist, a scholarly man of letters, and a civil servant for the Commonwealth of England under Oliver Cromwell...
   
   "

Personnel

• John Cale: bass, guitar, keyboards, viola
• Adam Miller: vocals
• Del Newman: drums
• Ron Wood
  Ron Wood
  Ronald David "Ronnie" Wood is an English rock guitarist and bassist best known as a former member of The Jeff Beck Group, Faces, and current member of The Rolling Stones. He also plays lap and pedal steel guitar....
  
  : slide guitar on "The Philosopher"
• Legs Larry Smith: narration on "Legs Larry At Television Centre"
• The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
  Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
  The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra is a British orchestra based in London. It tours widely, and is sometimes referred to as "Britain's national orchestra"...
  
  : "Days Of Steam" and "King Harry"

Reception

• allmusic - "The predominantly instrumental release . . . steers away from the more grotesque classical/rock fusions at the time to find an unexpectedly happy and often compelling balance between the two sides."
• Robert Christgau
  Robert Christgau
  Robert Christgau is an American essayist, music journalist, and self-proclaimed "Dean of American Rock Critics".One of the earliest professional rock critics, Christgau is known for his terse capsule reviews, published since 1969 in his Consumer Guide columns...
  
  - "There must be more straightforward ways of imperiling the academy than mock-classical mock-soundtracks. Granted, this sounds jake to me, and my continental friends tell me it's excellent of its sort. But I don't much care for the continent (or the sort)--that's why I had to ask them."