The wedding of John Cale and Betsey Johnson | Photos by Billy Name, 1968

Paul Morrissey Fred Hughes Andy Warhol and Sterling Morrison photographed by Billy Name in NYC 1968

Billy Name – Paul Morrissey, Fred Hughes, Andy Warhol, and Sterling Morrison, NYC, 1968

Paul Morrissey Steve Sesnick and Andy Warhol photographed by Billy Name

Billy Name – Paul Morrissey, Steve Sesnick, and Andy Warhol, NYC, 1968

Billy Name – Lou Reed, Sterling Morrison, Steve Sesnick, and Paul Morrissey, NYC, 1968

Lou Reed photographed by Billy Name in NYC

Billy Name – Lou Reed, NYC, 1968

Billy Name – Nico, NYC, 1968

Billy Name – Viva, NYC, 1968

Viva Lou Reed and Paul Morrissey photographed by Billy Name in NYC

Billy Name – Viva, Lou Reed, and Paul Morrissey, NYC, 1968

The wedding of John Cale and Betsey Johnson 1

Betsey Johnson and John Cale on their wedding day in NYC, 1968

“At the time I met [Betsey], she was designing costumes for the Underground movie, Ciao! Manhattan, starring Edie Sedgwick. Those clothes were spooky as hell. They were for somebody who’d been up too long. And sure enough Betsey took amphetamines every day—diet pills, black bombers. She was a little overweight and very sensitive about it, and she would sit up all night making clothes.”

“I liked Betsey because of the energy she had. Here was somebody who was really alive, a sparkling personality, and also generous. She was doing in fashion what we were doing in music.”

John Cale, The Autobiography of John Cale : What’s Welsh for Zen, 1999

Betsey Johnson and John Cale photographed by Billy Name on their wedding day in NYC

Betsey Johnson and John Cale on their wedding day in NYC, 1968

John Cale, a member of the band The Velvet Underground, married fashion designer Betsey Johnson in New York City in April 1968.

“So we went down to City Hall, and I’d made John this beautiful Edwardian, Victorian black crushed velvet suit with all the ruffles, and I made myself like a matching velvet, burgundy, lace-trimmed pant suit. We went to City Hall, and Bunky was my Maid of Honor, I think Sterling Morrison was John’s best man. I know that everybody like Andy and Nico were at our house, at the loft on LaGuardia Place for this little party, but at City Hall it was just Sterling and Bunky, that was it. I go down in this beautiful pant suit, we’d done everything right, the blood test, whole thing, everything’s right, but they send me home because you can’t get married in pants! I mean you’d think, ‘Did those days exist?’
So anyway, I went back to City Hall in the tiniest like eight-inch mini-skirt I could find, and we got married.”

Betsey Johnson

“I made her cry on the day of her wedding because I forgot to buy her a corsage.”

John Cale, The Autobiography of John Cale : What’s Welsh for Zen, 1999