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Rock icon John Cale will unveil his latest musical explorations, this time in hip-hop, at a UCLA

At the age of 63, rock ‘n’ roll legend John Cale wants to get funky. The former Velvet Underground creative force has been many things throughout his long career: a child prodigy on classical piano and viola who moved to New York at the age of 21 with the help of composer Aaron Copland; an avant-garde minimalist who collaborated with John Cage; and a violent punk rocker who once cut off a live chicken’s head on stage and threw it into the audience.

“It was a long time ago, but I remember it like it was yesterday,” Cale said. “Stress reliever is exactly what it was, cutting a chicken’s head off. I recommend it any day.”

Cale, who is performing at Royce Hall tonight in a UCLA Live double bill with the Tiger Lillies, may have been crazy during the ’70s, but never funky. And that’s exactly what drew him to creating some of his own beats on his new album, “Black Acetate.” Inspired by Dr. Dre, Pharrell, Gorillaz and Jill Scott, Cale created a handful of hip-hop tracks, two of which, “Hush” and “Woman,” landed on the new album. The beat on “Woman” could be straight off a Snoop Dogg track.

The rest of the album channels ’80s rock, The Doors, electronica, gospel, blues and hard rock. Although impressive, his chameleon character is partly why he’s managed to remain under the mainstream radar for more than half a century’s worth of music-making. He’s been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for his work with The VU, which has heavily influenced everyone from The Strokes to Joy Division, but many people don’t even know who he is.

After creating two arguably revolutionary albums with the band, Cale parted ways with The VU after an apparent power play by frontman Lou Reed. The band shocked listeners with Reed’s racy lyrics about drugs and sado-masochism and Cale’s avant-garde elements, such as the famous viola-drone in “Heroin.”

After his departure, Cale began a prolific solo career and went on to collaborate on or produce about 80 albums, some of which include major works in the rock canon, such as the self-titled debut album from The Stooges, Patti Smith’s “Horses” and Nick Drake’s “Bryter Later.”

Cale has become part of a group of aging British rockers, including The Rolling Stones and Paul McCartney, who have managed to maintain relatively productive and healthy careers. But what sets Cale apart from the others is his constant drive to drastically reinvent himself with each album and even from song to song.

All this genre-hopping may have listeners wondering: Who is John Cale?

“He’s a changeable individual,” Cale said. “He doesn’t like to sit still for very long. I don’t like looking at what I’ve just done. I really want to do something different every time.”

It was in this spirit of keeping things fresh that Cale gave his album the name “Black Acetate.” The predecessor of vinyl records, black acetate records were extremely fragile, often lasting through only a few plays, so they were always new when listeners played them.

“You couldn’t play them more than three times,” Cale said, “but for three plays, you had something that was a finished product. It’s that newness about the acetate. It’s just something that was fresh and really excited me.”

With each new album, Cale admits that, besides the urge to try different sounds, he still feels the need to prove himself as a solo musician. He is still, after all, mostly known for his short stint with The VU and for his work on other musicians’ albums.

“I put myself under pressure all the time,” he said. “(My) weakness will change from day to day. So what (I’m) really faced with is unfinished work, unfinished business. Writing songs, (I’m) always on that edge where (I) don’t know what’s going to work and what’s not going to work.”

Despite his lifelong musical career, Cale still sounds like a young musician at the beginning of his career. But beneath his humble talk about becoming a better recording artist lies a certain confidence as well.

In the electronica piece “Brotherman” on the new album, he says, almost in defiance of potential naysayers, “I write reams of this shit every day/Haha! This is just some of the magic ... Where the heat comin’ from, brotherman, brotherman?”

In other words, John Cale brings the funk.