The Meaning of ‘Earth’? Duo Isn’t Sure : Pop music: John Cale and Bob Neuwirth aren’t concerned with simple answers in an album that recalls a ‘post-apocalyptic psychodrama.’

If you want simple answers, don’t ask John Cale or Bob Neuwirth what their collaborative album “Last Day on Earth” is about.

“It is non-specific in time and it’s an interior/exterior travelogue, as seen through the sensibilities of the habitues of the mythical Cafe Shabu,” said Neuwirth with a shrug as he sat in the Universal City offices of MCA Records, which released the album Tuesday.

Cale, in a separate interview from his home in New York, wasn’t any more helpful.

“Well, it’s certainly a Brechtian landscape that’s got a lot of Angst and unresolved problems,” he said.

The truth, apparently, is that neither Cale, the co-founder of the Velvet Underground, nor Neuwirth, a songwriter and visual artist whose colleagues have included Bob Dylan and Andy Warhol, can really say what this piece is about.

The most concrete terms that either offers or accepts in discussion of the album run along the lines of “post-apocalyptic psychodrama.” Musically, they both allow, the closest analogy is probably “Songs for Drella,” the 1991 tribute to Warhol by Cale and his former Velvets partner Lou Reed--though with everything from folk parodies to rock ‘n’ roll, it covers a wider range. Structurally it could be likened to a “Canterbury Tales” in which all the pilgrims are different facets of one multiple-personality case.

But that still doesn’t answer the question, “What is it about ?”

Admitted Neuwirth, “I’m hoping other writers can tell us what it’s about.”

The project began life as a theater piece, commissioned for performance at St. Ann’s Church in Brooklyn, which has long supported avant-garde art. “Last Day on Earth” was originally, in Neuwirth’s words, “an abstract ‘Prairie Home Companion.’ ”

It was performed by Cale and Neuwirth both at St. Ann’s and in Hamburg last year. MCA Records executives Paula Batson, a longtime friend of Neuwirth, and Kathy Nelson heard a tape of the songs and asked Cale and Neuwirth to adapt it for an album.

Cale, 52, and Neuwirth, who won’t give his age but who appears to be in the same neighborhood, have been friends since the mid-’60s, when they were regulars at Warhol’s Factory studio in New York. They teamed for some unreleased recordings in the late ‘70s, but “Last Day on Earth” is the first official project they’ve joined on.

On the surface, they seem to be unlikely collaborators.

Neuwirth, originally from Ohio, describes Cale--a classically trained Welshman--as a perfectionist who labors over every detail. Neuwirth admittedly has little discipline and lives, artistically speaking, for the moment.

Cale, though, says that “Last Day on Earth” is the product of shared artistic values.

“Bob and I both appreciate the value of spontaneity,” Cale said. “Every time there would be a problem, Bob would automatically have a reaction to it, and nine out of 10 times I’d understand. That spontaneity is what I like about collaborations, like in the Velvets.”