Music for a New Society is the eighth solo studio album by Welsh musician John Cale, released in September 1982 by ZE Records and Island Records. With the suggestion from ZE Records owner Michael Zilkha, Cale performed the album mostly improvised live at Skyline Studios in New York City. The album was a creative shift after several rock-oriented albums, with sparse piano-based performances. Background and recording Following on from the commercial success of his previous studio album, Honi Soit (1981), John Cale turned his label, SPY Records, which had released singles from Marie et les Garçons, Lester Bangs, and Cale himself between 1977 and 1980, over to Michael Zilkha. Zilkha absorbed SPY into his label ZE Records. Meanwhile, Cale had dropped working with a band and was touring extensively as a solo performer. Zilkha suggested Cale do an inexpensive solo studio album for the ZE label, with Cale alone on piano in the studio. Cale said, "Before the tapes were rolling I had to have everything mapped out. So I would sit in the studio and work out what the structure of the piece was, then start the tape and off we went." Cale had previously attempted this method as the arranger of Nico's second studio album The Marble Index (1968). The only track that features a full backing band is "Changes Made", with Blue Öyster Cult's Allen Lanier playing lead guitar on it. Cale did not want the track to be included on the album, but the record label insisted. The original version of the instrumental "Mama's Song" featured a recorded excerpt of a telephone call between Cale and his mother, where she had sung the traditional Welsh folk song "Ar Lan y Môr" to him. When she was taken ill, Cale decided not to include it on the album, a decision he was later to regret. Also at the time, Cale was working with actor and playwright Sam Shepard on his opera The sad lament of Pecos Bill on the eve of killing his wife. Shepard had sent some poems to Cale, which he then in turn set to music. Cale's then-wife Risé co-wrote the track "Damn Life" and provided the voice for "Risé, Sam and Rimsky Korsakov", while Cale's first wife, Betsey Johnson, took the photo on the album's cover. The song "Close Watch" is a re-recording of the version originally found on Cale's sixth solo studio