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I've seen Cale play live twice and it was abyssmal - him fucked up beyond belief doing mostly Paris 1919 material in a Billy Joel/Liberace sort of "style" at the piano where at one point he hit the microphone hard enough with his face that it was quite audible and yet he didn't notice. Chris Spedding carried him through this pathetic set in 1987, and I never would have seen him again, except he was opening for Pere Ubu on their Tenement Year tour and the Showbox in Seattle had no reentry. I've heard nothing in recent years to indicate he's gotten any better either.
That said, as far as the roots of the Velvets go, I'm pretty sure a lot of what makes them so incredibly out there comes out of what he and Angus Maclise brought from the Dream Syndicate, and his grounding in avant classical is awesome, plus his production of the Stooges first album is also brilliant. So I could accept an argument that he started out the better of the two.
In terms of classic solo albums, Berlin and Metal Machine Music are two of the best records I have ever heard, while Sabotage and Paris 1919 are quite good but no where near on that par. Magic and Loss was a great album that came out in the '90s so Reed has stood the test of time infinitely better (though I must admit that I've never seen him live, but I've for the most part always heard good things.)
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